FEATURE: Groovelines: Destiny's Child – Survivor

FEATURE:

 

Groovelines

Destiny's Child – Survivor

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NOT only am I…

writing about albums celebrating big anniversaries this year. I am also including important singles. One of which is Destiny’s Child’s Survivor. Taken from the album of the same name, the single was released on 6th March, 2001. The album came out on 25th April, 2001 and it is the third studio album from the group. Their final album of completely original material was Destiny Fulfilled of 2004. Of course, the members of the group and the line-up of Destiny’s Child shifted. From a four-piecer to a trio, Survivor is a significant single, as it was the first that featured Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. What many fans consider to be the best and classic line-up, you can hear the instant bond, unity and brilliance of the three artists. Also, after Destiny Fulfilled was released in 2004, the three members did have their own solo careers. Whilst Kelly Rowland had a string of solo albumns, the most recent being 2013’s Talk a Good Game – and turns forty-five the day this feature is being shared (11th February) -, maybe her best work was as part of Destiny’s Child. Michelle Williams released her most recent album, Journey to Freedom, in 2014. Of course, Beyoncé is the most consistent. Her most recent was 2024’s COWBOY CARTER. Whilst she is one of the most influential and extraordinary solo artists in the world, there is something about her being part of Destiny’s Child, and those three women coming together, that is extra special. You wonder whether we will get another album. Consider the state of U.S. politics and how women’s rights are pretty much not considered by President Trump, a trio like Destiny’s Child seem to be more important and needed. Also, they could shout out to incredible women in music and society. Collaborate with some of them on an album. The trio have performed together in the years since their final album together.

However, there is something about Destiny’s Child you do not get with any other group. Rather than it being a commercial move or tied to an anniversary, there is this love and friendship. Considering how Williams and Rowland are these philomel artists but have not put out their own albums in over a decade, it would be amazing to hear them on record with Beyoncé. Girl group and legends from the 1990s and 2000s are reuniting and touring again. New girl groups are coming through and, whilst you might think of Destiny’s Child as a band and not a girl group, there is no doubt they have influenced so many women on the scene now. Seeing these original three queens on stage or in the studio would be a dream. A destiny re-fulfilled! It would be too late to mount anything to mark twenty-five years of the Survivor album. However, something in some form this year, I know, would get a lot of excitement from fans around the world. Even though 1999’s The Writing’s on the Wall might be my favourite Destiny’s Child album, I feel Survivor is the most accomplished and confident album from Destiny’s Child. Given the personnel shift (members LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett split from Knowles and Kelly Rowland. They replaced by Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin. Franklin was also dismissed from the group). Survivor, to me, always felt like this feminist anthem. This call of strength and defiance that was for all women around the world, instead, it has different origins and inspirations. The fact the media were criticising and almost joking that the line-up of Destiny’s Child kept changing and mocking that. Knowles was inspired to turn that negativity into something positive and anthemic. I shall come to that. I know there will celebration around the twenty-fifth anniversary of Survivor in April. However, as its titular single has that anniversary on 6th March, I wanted to look ahead. It is amazing how incredible that Survivor album is. Songs like Emotions and Dangerously in Love. The first four songs are Independent Women Part I, Survivor, Bootylicious and Nasty, the trio meant business!

I want to start with this article that tells the story behind the epic Survivor. How it came to be and what its legacy is. It is not only seen as one of Destiny’s Child’s best songs. It is placed up there with the best singles of that decade. In a really tough and strange year (2001), Destiny’s Child and Survivor did give a lot of people strength:

“You all know Beyoncé-beautiful, with large eyes and a stunning smile. She has previously been described by Vogue as “wholesome and sexy at the same time.”

You also know Kelly Rowland, and if you don’t, ask Silas Nyanchwani.

Beyoncé’s mother Tina was not impressed with the name “Girl’s Tyme” and like any mom would do, she sought God’s guidance on a suitable name for the girl band. It wasn’t strange when Tina pulled the word “destiny” out of the bible for her daughter’s girl group. Her husband Mathew-Beyoncé ‘s father, added the word “child.”

And that is how Girl’s Tyme became Destiny’s Child, comprising members Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, and LeToya Luckett.

In the years that followed, Destiny’s Child became known for line-up change more than for hit songs. In 1997, their lead single “No No No” from their self-titled debut album in 1997 became a success, but the group was still struggling…

In 2000, a popular reality TV show called “Survivor" was born in America. The show is a competition reality series in which a group of contestants are stranded on a deserted island and compete in challenges to win a grand prize. The contestants must work together and strategize to outwit and outlast each other, all while surviving the elements and living on limited resources.

Pundits and skeptics started comparing Destiny's Child to the show “Survivor” because of the group’s internal competition and struggles. It was a question of “who will be the last to survive.”

After 3 members left the group, according to the LA Times, some people even joked that Luckett, Roberson, and Franklin had been “voted off the island,” just like an episode of Survivor.

Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland were not happy with the comparisons and negative chatter. Michelle Williams had then joined the group.

Who was going to survive?

Instead of feeding the sceptics, Destiny’s Child wrote the song "Survivor" in response to rumors of the group's break-up and industry pressure to produce a hit single. The lyrics of the song highlight the group's strength and determination in the face of adversity. The song's message of resilience and perseverance resonated with audiences, just as the TV show "Survivor" did.

Nelson Mandela said that criticism prevents a person from becoming a demi-god; for Destiny’s Child, criticism fueled their songwriting; they also drew inspiration from the hit competition series to create the group’s most popular track to date.

The song Survivor went on to win the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 2002 Grammy Awards.

Today, Survivor is still Destiny’s Child’s second highest-debuting single and currently holds a spot on Billboard’s list of 100 Greatest Girl Group Songs of All Time”.

It’s incredible to think that Survivor got mixed critical reaction when it was released as a single. Such an emphatic and instantly memorable song, luckily critical opinion shas shifted. Maybe criticism around Destiny’s Child and line-up changes. However, take the song solely on its merits as a piece of music and it is one of the strongest songs of the 2000s. In 2016, fifteen years after the release of the Survivor album, some keys places in its creation reflected on its making and success. Near the start of the feature from Entertainment Weekly, we learn a little about the title song:

“DAN WORKMAN (Engineer): When they started Survivor, they were really in a different point in their careers. At the end of every session, I’d get a call from [Beyoncé’s father and the group’s manager] Mathew [Knowles] or someone at the label who wanted to know how it went. The expectations were very high. It wasn’t nearly as relaxed as it was before. There was a sense that the stakes were raised. When we were doing The Writing’s on the Wall it became really obvious to me that the heavy lifting was going to be done by Beyoncé and that Kelly Rowland was the closer. The other girls [who left the group] were not as talented and were not as involved in the creative process. When Michelle came, it was never directly spoken about other than like Destiny’s Child is a trio. No in-depth discussion.

MICHELLE WILLIAMS: Beyoncé was tired of people talking about the Destiny’s Child members changing asking, who was going to be the last one to survive? As the new member, I was being protective over the girls because I was just starting to know them. There are member changes in groups all the time. Things happen. I believe in the journey Destiny’s Child had to take to fulfill the group’s mission: to continue to empower everybody.

TONY MASERATI (Mixer): This was the beginning of pushing the limits of how hard a pop song could get. Their instructions were to make sure it would be at the forefront of the sonic footprint of what R&B and hip-hop should be. For somebody at 19 or 20 years old to hear [such] subtleties is not typical. Generally most young artists are like, “Can I be louder or can I be softer?”

J.R. ROTEM (Co-writer, “Fancy”): Beyoncé knows a lot of soul. Their sensibilities were inspired by tastes that are more sophisticated and by jazz”.

I love the singles from Destiny’s Child. Everyone has their own top five and favourites. When it comes to the best of the best, Survivor comes near the top in a lot of critical lists. In 2024, As The Writing’s on the Wall turns twenty-five, The Guardian ranked the singles. They placed Survivor ninth: “Survivor threw so much shade the way of two former Destiny’s Child members that it occasioned a lawsuit. Beyoncé, Rowland and – in an awesome middle eight – Williams sing up a ferocious storm, but its greatness isn’t really in its lyrics, rather the melody and backing to which it harnesses them: forceful and epic enough that their vitriol sounds like empowerment”. In 2014, Huffpost ranked Survivor in eighth: “Beyonce reportedly concocted the "Survivor" theme after hearing a DJ compare the band's controversy to the incipient reality series. The result is a song (and album) that drills home the perseverance motif with fist-pounding severity. It's a karaoke jam best experienced while belting the lyrics in someone's face, but is "Survivor" truly a great song? A catchy one, a canonical one -- but one without the sleekness of "Independent Women" or the restraint of "Say My Name." It's also kind of long. Still, "Survivor" is obviously a classic, and I'll join anyone who dares holler the lyrics at me in a disco-stained karaoke bar”. There are few reviews of the iconic Survivor. However, Drowned in Sound provided their take on Survivor when it arrived in 2001:

“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…..What? I said mmmmmmmmmmmm…that is the only word which sums this track up. What? Well, urm, I’m 19 years old, same age as Beyoncé and co, and I have a fetish for sexy female vocals. I’ll admit it. What? It’s not a criminal offence y’know! I’m only mmm-ing about this ickle ditty. Cus you know my mummy taught me better than that!

I really thought I’d had enough of strings in pop songs, until this one, ‘Survivor’. The evil lil’ violins perfectly set the background for this choon, fighting against post-drum’n’bass (I’m making up genre’s again, sorry!) machine blippity bloppity tsh tsh plopping. Then there are the vocals…mmmmm! The centre of what everything else spins around. These are harmonies to tell the world about. So I am. Three layers of gospel vocals jump up’n’down and shake themselves all around, just as adoringly sweet as a freshly iced chocolate cake, still warm from the oven. Or the video, if you will...mmmmm...

Hang on! There’s some words amongst this prize winning perfect picture style. Oh baby. Putting themselves into the head of the genderless working man (and I use that term looser than an American pollution manifesto), re-interpreting the feeling of finishing another day, ready to carry on to fight another. However, this song does challenge the notion of the chauvinist values that still remain in the world around us(like many other DC songs). And what better way to get the message to those that are wrong, than through one of the sexiest video’s ever! What? What do I mean “wrong”? Think how equal the world is. How men treat women in comparison to how women treat men. Just think about it. The new women’s liberation movement will be televised. You will be watching and maybe listening too-ooh….mmmmm…I’m a survivor!”.

On 6th March, Survivor’s title song turns twenty-five. It’s brilliant lead single is played a lot today. It is one of those songs that will continue to have meaning and this potency that will go through the generations. And I do feel the world wants Destiny’s Child to get together. I know there have been discussions and plans before. However, given the state of the world, tied to the way female artists are dominating and so many are fans of Destiny’s Child, it would be great to have them here again. As Kelly Rowland is forty-five today, I wanted to publish the feature now, rather than wait until close to Survivor’s anniversary. It is a song that I really love. So do millions of others. One I think will be played and talked about…

DEACDES from now.

FEATURE: Beneath the Sleeve: Hole – Live Through This

FEATURE:

 

 

Beneath the Sleeve

Hole – Live Through This

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THE second studio album…

IN THIS PHOTO: Hole shot by Jeffrey Thurnher for SPIN in May 1994.

from the incredible Hole, Live Through This was released on 12th April, 1994. Perhaps more melodic, structured and less harsh than their 1991 debut, Pretty on the Inside, lead Courtney Love wanted to shock people who though the Californian band had no softer edge. Certified platinum in the U.S. in 1995, Live Through This was a massive critical and commercial success. I think Live Through This is Hole’s best album. Songs like Violet, Miss World and Doll Parts. Such a consistently brilliant album. With the majority of songs written by Courtney Love and Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson, Live Through This is considered a modern classic. It has featured high in lists of the best albums of all time. I am going to start out with an interview originally published by SPIN in April 1994 with Courtney Love. I am not bringing the entire thing in, though there are parts that I was interested in highlighting:

“Let’s get this out of the way. When Love talks about husband Kurt Cobain, which she does with some frequency, it’s with affection and slight amusement. Mostly he shows up in benign little anecdotes. Like how she keeps finding him dolled up in women’s sweaters from the ’50s. Or how, at her urging, he recently agreed to buy them a Lexus. But, after one relatively brief spin around town, and the catcalls of virtually all of their old friends, Cobain insisted they take it back. So they did. Now, they’re back to his scuzzy old Valiant. If you only knew Cobain by Love’s descriptions, you’d think he was an adorable, antic-prone young lug, more Ozzie Nelson than Ozzy Osbourne. And maybe that’s exactly who he is. Point is, her love for him, and for their daughter Frances Bean, is obvious.

I’d been forewarned by Geffen’s publicist, by friends of hers, even by the rest of Hole, that Courtney Love doesn’t trust journalists. Not since Vanity Fair‘s Lynn Hirschberg, whose infamous 1992 profile portrayed Love as little more than Cobain’s heroin-addicted, gold-digging girlfriend. The article contained a particularly scandalous quote, attributed to a “business associate.” “Courtney was pregnant and she was shooting up,” it said. What followed was an approximately yearlong trashing of the couple, chronicled rather exhaustively in Michael Azerrad’s Nirvana bio, Come As You Are.

“Yeah, Lynn,” Love sighs when the subject is broached. “I did a little private investigating on her, you know, and she has no friends. None. None!” For the next, oh, 40 minutes or so, Love’s conversation keeps veering back to Hirschberg, usually with disclaimers. As much as she may wish Hirschberg dead, Love admits she continues to read Vanity Fair. “Shit,” she says at the end of one particularly lengthy diatribe. “Why can’t I just fucking shut up about the bitch? Okay, that’s it. Zip.” She raises one hand and makes a slash across her lips. (When asked to comment, Hirschberg laughed and said, “I thought Courtney was my friend.”)

So what about the actual charges? “Innocent,” Love says, smiling mysteriously. “Isn’t that obvious?” Okay, how about claims that you punched out four people last year, including K-records-Beats Happening’s Calvin Johnson, British writer Victoria Clarke, and a young female Nirvana fan who called her “Courtney Whore” in a Seattle 7-Eleven? “There’s a lot more to those stories, but I don’t intend to go into it.” Several journalists told me they’d received threatening phone messages after criticizing her in print. “So?” When I mention Cobain’s interest in guns, she cuts me off with a glower. Bringing up last year’s legal battle to keep custody of Frances Bean (a result of the Vanity Fair drug inferences) only magnifies the glower. On a lighter note, Lydia Lunch recently accused Love of ripping off her persona. “That’s too bad, because I admire her a lot.” Well, how about the fact that a lot of people just think you’re a mean, horrible person?

“Look,” Love says. “Years ago in a certain town, my reputation had gotten so bad that every time I went to a party, I was expected to burn the place down and knock out every window. So I would go into social situations and try my best to be really graceful and quiet and aloof. But sometimes when people are bearing down on you so hard, and want you to behave in a certain way, you just do it because you know you can.

“I’m so busy these days pleading with everyone that I’m lucid, that I’m educated, that I’m middle-class,” she continues. “It’s stupid. If you ask me, why aren’t people on the cases of the real assholes of this world, like Axl Rose and Steve Albini, both of whom should be exterminated. Really, they should leave on a shuttle to the sun. They shouldn’t be on the earth. Because they’re not good for anything.”

I’d been told by a mutual friend that Love tends to feel comfortable around gay men “as long as they don’t like disco.” Hoping to warm the atmosphere a little, I drop the names of a few famous actors I bedded when younger, and sure enough she giddily spills some beans herself. She practically begs me to “out” a notoriously homophobic music producer. Sorry. We move on. She has a few less-than-flattering adjectives for Evan Dando’s physique. “I’m the one that got him to stop taking off his shirt all the time,” she says. Then there’s the sad tale of her arch-enemy Axl Rose’s rapidly receding hairline, and his crazed search for a cure. “That’s what happens when you mix Prozac and heroin.” Finally, she regales me with a long, hilarious story about how Eddie Van Halen showed up backstage at a recent Nirvana show and practically begged to join them onstage fo the encore, completely oblivious to the fact that bands like Nirvana exist partly to destroy dinosaurs like himself.

Love’s proud of the band’s early work, especially its first LP, Pretty on the Inside, co-produced by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon, a hero of Love’s, and Gumball’s Don Fleming. Still, she says, “That record was me posing in a lot of ways. It was the truth, but it was also me catching up with all my hip peers who’d gone all indie on me, and who made fun of me for liking R.E.M. And the Smiths. I’d done the whole punk thing, sleeping on floors in piss and beer, and waking up with the guy with the fucking mohawk and the skateboards and the speed and the whole goddamned thing. But I hated it. I’d outgrown it by the time I was 17.” She pauses, grabs a glass of fizzy water, and takes a huge gulp. “But fuck people if they didn’t guess it the first time around,” she continues, eyes blurring with anger. “If they didn’t get the lucidity. If it’s one thing I am, it’s lucid. I know that’s not a very heavy word like intellectual or whatever, but still, to take away my lucidity, that pisses me off.”

Live Through This is both a scruffier and more commercial record than Pretty on the Inside. The angsty rants of yore remain, but they’re decorated with a lot more poetry. Milk (as in mother’s) is a recurring motif, as is dismemberment. Female victimization remains the overall theme, this time depersonalized into odd, accusatory mini-narratives in which a variety of female characters receive the protection of Love’s tense, manic-depressive singing. Hers is a natural songwriting talent, full of excellent instincts, and yet wildly unsophisticated. All of which makes Love, in some ways, a more intriguing figure than, say, Polly Harvey, Tanya Donelly, or Liz Phair, each of whom, idiosyncrasies aside, is a traditional talent with an inordinate knack for the pop tune. It’s not inconceivable that Love might have ended up some kind of peroxided Joni Mitchell if it weren’t for the musical gifts of the diligent, like-minded Erlandson, and her unstoppable need to fuck with rock music’s male-heavy history.

“Like I was talking to Sophie…” It’s a few minutes later, and Love’s relaxing again. “Sophie’s done a bunch of Björk videos. And Björk is seen as the Icelandic elf child-woman. But Björk wants to be seen as more erotic. And I’m like, ‘Why?’ Elf child-woman is a good job. And my job as rock’s bad girl is good, too. I should just stop trying to correct people’s impressions.”

I understand, I say, but it’s strange that you’re written off as one-dimensional and didactic when your lyrics, if anything, tend to err on the side of the abstract.

“That’s because I’m not intelligent enough to write direct narratives,” she says sarcastically. “I’ve always worked really hard on my lyrics, even when my playing was for shit. So it’s weird that when I try to work in different styles, to juxtapose ideas in a careful way that isn’t pompous and Byronic, it’s just taken as vulgar. The whole cliché of women being cathartic really pisses me off. You know, ‘Oh, this is therapy for me. I’d die if I didn’t write this.’ Eddie Vedder says shit like that. Fuck you.”

Misogyny’s been a big shock to Love. After all, her parents were ’60s quasi-liberals bent on showing their daughter life’s brightest profile. The first record she owned was Free To Be You and Me. There was a copy of Our Bodies, Our Selves sitting on the family toilet for years. She grew up thinking books and records like these were the culture’s official textbooks. And she remains an avid reader of feminist theorists like Susan Faludi, Judith Butler, Camille Paglia, and Naomi Wolf, though her face crinkles up at the mention of the latter’s newest book. “Ugh. Wimp,” she crows.

I mention a riot grrrl show she’d helped organize in London last year. Rumor had it the show was a critical and financial disaster, despite the participation of name acts like Huggy Bear, Bratmobile, and Hole. Since that fiasco, the riot grrrl phenomenon has been treated a lot less reverently in the British music papers. “Yeah, it didn’t work,” she says, echoing the opinion of other Hole members, male and female. “But then the whole riot grrrl thing is so… well, for one thing, the Women’s Studies program at Evergreen State College, Olympia, where a lot of these bands come from, is notorious for being one of the worst programs in the country. It’s man-hating, and it doesn’t produce very intelligent people in that field. So you’ve got these girls starting bands, saying, ‘Well, they printed our picture in the Melody Maker, why aren’t we getting any royalties?”.

There is a lot written about Live Through This. 1994 is perhaps the greatest ever year for music, though I don’t think Hole’s second studio album gets as much praise and respect as the biggest from that year. I want to get some background and insight into this classic. I am going to end with Pitchfork and their 10/10 review of Live Through This. You can buy this masterpiece on vinyl. I will interrupt the features with one about the woman who appears on the cover of Live Through This, as it is one of the most recognisable and eye-catching shots of the 1990s. A cover that stands with the best of them. However, there is a fascinating story behind it and the aftermath for the cover star. I want to move to this feature from last year. They write how “Courtney Love bare her soul on an alt.rock classic that still surprises”:

“Incredibly melodic but with a punk streak, Live Through This proved that Hole and its antagonistic frontwoman, Courtney Love, could deliver more than just tabloid fodder. It remains a living document of a scene, a cultural moment, and a story of survival at all costs.

Hole’s first record, 1991’s Pretty On The Inside, had earned them considerable street cred. It’s a sludgy assault on the senses with a no-wave, atonal sound that reflected the influence of the album’s producer, Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon. In the three years since its release, however, the band’s profile had been raised significantly. Love and Cobain got married, had a child, and became the poster couple for grunge; the controversial Vanity Fair profile hit (in which Love was photographed baring her pregnant belly, and the magazine asked “if the pair were the grunge John and Yoko? Or the next Sid and Nancy?”); and there was a bidding war for Hole’s next record. The group ended up signing to Nirvana’s label, Geffen, and changed their line-up to start recording their major-label debut.

Love was unabashedly ambitious and not preoccupied with such trivial 90s concerns as “selling out.” With Live Through This, she set out to make a commercial record that also proved Hole was a legitimate band to be reckoned with. After Hole’s original drummer, Caroline Rue, left, Love and co-founder Eric Erlandson recruited Patty Schemel at Cobain’s suggestion, along with and their ace in the hole, bassist Kristen Pfaff, who brought a new energy and polish to the band.

Produced by Sean Slade and Paul Q Kolderie (who’d produced Radiohead’s Pablo Honey), Live Through This captured the band’s raw primal energy while still being an impeccably structured album with codas, choruses, and plenty of hooks, coalescing around Love’s emotional ferocity. The influences were clearly there (Pixies, Joy Division) but the band progressed beyond 80s post-punk retread to create 38 minutes of anthemic punk perfection.

From its blistering opening number, “Violet,” it was clear that Love wasn’t pulling any punches. While some easily recall their favorite chorus off an album, Live Through This is remembered for its screaming chants and ferocious drumming by Patty Schemel, inviting you to pour oil on the fire that is Courtney Love. You don’t sing along, you scream along.

Initially written in 1991, “Violet” became a live trademark during the group’s touring years before it became the album opener. Like Love herself, it’s full of contradictions, calling out the sexually exploitative nature of relationships while simultaneously inviting it upon herself: “Well they get what they want, and they never want it again/Go on, take everything, take everything, I want you to.” “Violet” sets the tone for the whole album, facilitating between intimate, quiet verses to the raging chorus, just as Love easily switches from victim to aggressor to create a dramatic tension that never breaks.

On “Miss World” – and, subsequently, every other track – Love addresses the listener directly, not necessarily as the perpetrator of all these problems but as complicit participants in society’s patriarchal ills. The song starts out softly melodic until the chorus erupts, repeating itself until it becomes a kind of invocation. Even the cover of Live Through This speaks to the album’s themes (desire, degradation, celebrity, and survival), featuring a disheveled Miss World beauty queen who could be a stand-in for Love herself, realizing that a crown does not always bring glory.

Every part of Love’s presentation was an extension of her music, from her intentionally make-up-smeared face to her ragged babydoll dresses. Both the lyrics and imagery for “Doll Parts,” and its accompanying video, show Love both acknowledging how society views women as objects while equally striving to be one. Both “Violet” and “Doll Parts” were early demos that showed Love’s maturation as a songwriter and helped to break the album, along with Erlandson’s tight arrangements.

The album gets its title from a lyric in “Asking For It,” which also references the often-used retort in cases of sexual assault. While never explicitly stated, the song is said to be inspired by an incident where Love was assaulted by a crowd after stage-diving during their 1991 tour with Mudhoney. It’s songs like these that make Love’s lyrics seem more autobiographical than perhaps initially intended. The same could be said for “I Think That I Would Die,” which references her child being taken away. Which makes it all the more interesting that some of the most pointed criticism of the album comes from Hole’s fiery cover of Young Marble Giants’ “Credit In The Straight World,” which calls out their critics and indie rock snobs. It begins with a kind of Gregorian chant before launching into a dual-bass and guitar assault courtesy of Erlandson and Pfaff.

While often compared to the adjacent riot grrrl movement, Love makes it clear that she’s not part of the Washington scene led by Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney, and Bratmobile, singing, “Well I went to school in Olympia/Everyone’s the same/And so are you, in Olympia,” on the closing track, “Rock Star.” Love’s female peers also become the central target on “She Walks On Me,” a song that further drives Hole apart from any kind of established scene. Despite its rebellious mocking tone, “Rock Star” also includes one of the more hopeful moments on Live Through This: just as the song seems to fade out, you hear Love insist: “No, we’re not done”.

I am coming to SPIN again for this feature published in 2024 around the thirtieth anniversary of the magnus opus that is Live Through This. In it, Hole’s drummer Patty Schemel reflects “how the album continues to resonate, holding a special place in the hearts of queer and trans fans”. There might be some who have never heard Hole or Live Through This. I don’t think it is a case of having to be around in 1994. Live Through This is such an influential album, and you can hear it affecting artists today:

“The album is more than queer-coded—it has queer lineages; its feeling, sounds, and themes were driven by queer punk drummer Patty Schemel’s beats and ability to amplify Courtney Love’s words and emotion like no other drummer could do.

“When you’re a kid and don’t feel like you belong and there’s someone saying they’re weird and have so much going on and they’re angry too, we spoke to everybody with that feeling,” Schemel told me, reflecting on how queer people have found a sense of empowerment in Hole’s music and lyrics. At readings of her memoir, Hit So Hard, fans often tell her the band’s music saved them.

When Schemel went into the studio, she had no idea that the album would become so successful. She wanted to prove herself as a drummer, and Hole wanted to prove themselves as a band, not just Kurt Cobain’s wife’s band.

In August 1995, Schemel came out as a lesbian in Rolling Stone magazine while the band were promoting Live Through This, a move ahead of its time. She felt inspired by the active queer punk scene, specifically Phranc, Roddy Bottum of Faith No More, Rob Halford of Judas Priest, and zinester and bassist of Team Dresch, Donna Dresch.

“Once I came out, I was like, ‘I’m never gonna hide it again. I’m never gonna feel bad about being who I am.’ Kurt would say it was okay to be gay, just like he said in the Incesticide liner notes, and people listened to that. I didn’t want to hide and not share my true self, because up until I was 18 I felt horrible about being gay. Punk rock saved me. I found other people who were freaky like me. Playing drums, it was okay for me to consider coming out.”

Schemel’s drums are integral to the power of Live Through This. The songs were collectively written at rehearsals, where the band would work through ideas at length, finding what clicked. Love always had big stacks of lyrics, and guitarist Eric Erlandson would always record their rehearsals since Love had trouble remembering her parts. “Her guitar playing got kind of good,” Schemel remembered, “but she didn’t want to focus on that.”

Since Love always wanted to be wherever Cobain was, Schemel would often travel with the couple. Album rehearsals started at Jabberjaw in L.A. but happened mostly at the Hole rehearsal space in Seattle, and in a few out-of-town writing sessions: one in San Francisco at the Melvins’ rehearsal space and another in Rio De Janeiro, when Love and Schemel used Nirvana’s Rock in Rio rehearsal room to write “She Walks Over Me” along with fellow queer punk musician, Nirvana roadie, and ex-Exploited guitarist Big John Duncan who, according to Schemel, played bass and suggested ideas.

“When I joined the band, the songs started to become a little more shaped, with more layers and form,” Schemel remembered, remarking on how she and Pfaff became a foundation together. “She made me feel so supported. All of her ideas were really cool! For those quiet middle sections where Courtney wanted to do these pretty little REM [style] picking things, like the twinkly things on ‘I Think That I Would Die.’ Courtney always had to have the last word. [Laughs.] But I felt that we kind of became a new band.”

Live Through This was the first and last album the group with this specific lineup got to record together, due to the untimely passing of Pfaff in June 1994—just two months after the album was released.

Hole recorded Live Through This at Triclops Sound in Marietta, Georgia, recommended to them by the Smashing Pumpkins, who had just wrapped up sessions for Siamese Dream. Hole was welcomed to the studio by a fax from Amy Ray, inviting the band to hang out. “Courtney was like, ‘Patty, I think this fax must be for you! It’s the Indigo Girls!’ And I was like, ‘Of course it is.’” According to Schemel, Love was constantly checking the fax machine for messages from Cobain. Unfortunately, due to a busy recording schedule, they never got to meet up with the Indigo Girls, but they did fly to New York to see Nirvana on Saturday Night Live”.

In 2019, the photographer who shot the cover of Hole’s Live Through This, Ellen von Unwerth, shared her memories and reflections with Another Mag. Courtney Love was inspired by an infamous scene in the 1976 film, Carrie. There is so much power in that image of the woman, model Leilani Bishop, and her expression. It still resonates to this day in terms of how engaging it is. It is a cover you keep coming back to, transfixed by that image:

“Courtney Love recently posted a screenshot to her Instagram account from Rolling Stone’s website which – on that same day – released its 50 Greatest Grunge Albums. Hole’s Live Through This came in at number four and almost 68,000 fans and followers liked that image, showering her with a barrage of hearts and congratulations in the comments. Lead vocalist Love, as well as guitarist Eric Erlandson, bassist Kristen Pfaff and drummer Patty Schemel crafted a 90s era-defining masterpiece that has been canonised on virtually every top music list of that decade. The raw, unapologetic honesty of the lyrics, brought to life by Love’s sweet yet deeply sinister vocals, makes the album unforgettable. The same could be said about the spine-tingling album cover image, shot by fashion world favourite, Ellen von Unwerth.

Model Leilani Bishop – the only person on the album cover – embodied an intentionally manic, prom-queen-gone-wrong look. The smudged eye make-up, vintage-inspired feathery locks topped with a dainty tiara, and her awkward embrace of a floral bouquet meant to evoke a certain classic horror film. Speaking to AnOther, Von Unwerth recalls the days before the photo shoot in Los Angeles. “Courtney Love called me,” she says. “We were on the phone for one hour. I didn’t say much but listened, and Courtney had the idea of re-enacting the scene of the [1976] movie Carrie, which I loved, too.” Von Unwerth also reveals that she and Love managed to click from the beginning, adding, “I just met her the night before the shoot wearing her famous schoolgirl dress. We had some drinks and connected instantly.”

Unfortunately, Von Unwerth had not listened to Live Through This prior to the photo shoot. But in her eyes, that didn’t matter. “The album was still in the making, but I was a big fan of Kurt Cobain and was sure that his girls would produce something equally cool. Besides, I go with the flow. I heard the music afterwards and loved it.”

Hole’s second studio album, Live Through This was an anomaly at the time. Love and Erlandson wrote the songs and broached topics like feminism, violence against women, beauty, postpartum depression, motherhood, feelings of self-doubt and relationship woes. Love once openly admitted that she was competing with her husband, Kurt Cobain, during the making of the album. Though many critics alleged that Cobain had a hand in writing the album (he didn’t), his undeniable presence looms like a dark cloud over the album. He sang uncredited back-up vocals with Pfaff on Asking for It and Softer, Softest.

With tragic timing, DGC Records slated the release date for Live Through This on April 12, 1994, seven days after Cobain committed suicide. Three months later, Love and the band suffered another blow when bassist Pfaff died of an overdose.

Von Unwerth unknowingly captured the turbulence surrounding Live Through This in one frame. Bishop’s effusive, open-mouth expression on the cover album speaks volumes as loud as Love’s voice. Von Unwerth says, “I just had done several shoots with [Bishop] and really loved her cool rock and roll attitude.” But how did she evoke such reaction from Bishop? Von Unwerth admits, “This is what I do. It’s like being a movie director.” She also remembered being self-assured when she saw the selects after they had wrapped the shoot. “We all felt that we nailed it,” she says.

And that she did. While Von Unwerth’s diverse portfolio features art from other bands’ album covers like Bananarama, Belinda Carlisle, Janet Jackson, Dido, Britney Spears and Rihanna, somehow Live Through This stands out as a chillingly authentic, visual interpretation of Hole’s music. Von Unwerth naturally connected the band to its fans through a harmonious mix of rock and roll attitude and highly stylised photographical prowess. 25 years on, Von Unwerth declares, “I am very proud that I was part of this album, this band, and this time in music and cherish every moment of it.” And if those “best of” lists are any testament to Von Unwerth’s work, Billboard – back in 2015 – placed Live Through This at number 12 in their 50 Greatest Cover Albums of All Time”.

In 2018, Pitchfork revisited Hole’s Live Through This. Awarding it a perfect score, it is an album of depth, righteous anger and some of the most important music ofg the '90s. Nearly thirty-two years after its release and Hole’s second studio album still sounds like nothing else. This distinct work, you can hear its influence adopted and adapted by so many artists:

“Try to imagine a famous woman who screams for a living today. Not alternative, punk-magazine famous, but American monoculture famous, platinum-selling-album famous, so famous her drug mishaps make headlines in Mexican newspapers, so famous rumors and conspiracies about her celebrity marriage hound her for decades. This woman doesn’t let out sing-screams or tinny emo yelps, but raw, diaphragmatic bellows—or, as David Fricke put it in his Rolling Stone review of Hole’s 1994 album, Live Through This, a “corrosive, lunatic wail.”

He was wrong on the second point: There’s no lunacy on Hole’s records. But there is anger, female anger, which, to a man’s ear, historically scans as madness. Lead singer Courtney Love often told reporters that she named her band after a line in Euripides’ Medea. “There’s a hole that pierces right through me,” it supposedly goes, though you won’t find it in any common translation of the ancient play. It’s apocryphal, or misremembered, or Love made it up to complicate the name’s obvious double entendre—either way, it makes a great myth. A band foregrounding female rage takes its name from the angriest woman in the Western canon, a woman so angry at her husband’s betrayal she kills their children just so he will feel her pain in his bones.

Like all female revenge fantasies written by men, Medea carries a grain of neurosis about how women might retaliate for their subjugation. It is easier, still, for men to express these anxieties by way of violent fantasy than it is for women to communicate their anger at all. In a 1996 New York magazine cover story on women alternative singers entitled “Feminism Rocks,” Kim France, the founding editor of Lucky who also worked as New York’s deputy editor, paraphrased feminist journalist and author Susan Faludi: “While our culture admires the angry young man, who is perceived as heroic and sexy, it can’t find anything but scorn for the angry young woman, who is seen as emasculating and bitter.” This was true for Love, who watched grunge break through to the mainstream only to find that the freedom and rebellion it promised was reserved for her male counterparts. In grunge, men could be scruffy and rude and defy gender norms—they could be rawer than the men modeled in synth-pop music videos or hair metal concerts a few years prior. Women, for all the space afforded them in the subculture’s spotlight moment, might as well have been Lilith.

Hole’s second album, Live Through This, famously came out four days after Love’s husband, Kurt Cobain, was found dead at their home in Seattle. The sudden tragedy threatened to swallow the music, to say nothing of the genre and social movement in which it was encased. Here was a dead rock god, and here was the woman who survived him. Even the album’s title alluded to Love’s endurance through a ground-shaking trauma, though of course she had written the title about surviving her fame, surviving her fraught association with the most beloved man in rock, surviving her pregnancy with their child, surviving the tabloid rumors that would—and still do—swarm her as a result.

“I sometimes feel that no one’s taken the time to write about certain things in rock, that there’s a certain female point of view that’s never been given space,” Love told Sidelines in 1991, the same year Hole released their first album, Pretty on the Inside. While there were plenty of rock songs written by men about hounding and abusing women, there were few about being hounded and abused. The rock canon, like all the others, fiercely guarded its male subjectivity, and Love wanted to break through its ranks.

Love wrote about sexual violence with a snarl, too, but a heavier, more knowing one. “Was she asking for it?/Was she asking nice?” she poses on the seething “Asking for It.” “If she was asking for it/Did she ask you twice?” The song, she’s said, was inspired by a stage dive that took a wrong turn. She leapt into the audience to crowd-surf during a show, and found the crowd ready to devour her. “Suddenly, it was like my dress was being torn off me, my underwear was being torn off me, people were putting their fingers inside of me and grabbing my breasts really hard, screaming things in my ears like ‘pussy-whore-cunt,’” she said. Whatever covenant binds fan and artist, whatever gives the latter power over the former, didn’t apply to Hole—not in totality, at least; not to the extent that it would keep a singer who was also a woman from being molested by her audience in public.

Live Through This refers to autobiographical traumas, but it is not a confessional record. “The whole cliché of women being cathartic really pisses me off,” Love said in a 1994 Spin cover story. “You know, ‘Oh, this is therapy for me. I’d die if I didn’t write this.’ Eddie Vedder says shit like that. Fuck you.” Her lyrics don’t hit like spleen-venting. They’re analytical, no matter how viscerally she howls them, and their insight transcends their origins. Throughout the record, Love speaks to the atomization of the female form that takes place in the eye of the misogynist. To the ogler, a woman is never whole. She’s shards: lips, hair, tits, ass, whatever can be grabbed without consequence, whatever can be bought and sold. Love would know, having stripped for a living before the band broke big, having made a career of, among other things, being looked at. She sings of “pieces of Jennifer’s body.” On “Doll Parts,” against halting guitar chords, she sings about how she’s “doll eyes, doll mouth, doll legs.” Her multiplicity is underscored by backing harmonies from Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff and guest vocalist Dana Kletter, who chime in with the indelible line: “I want to be the girl with the most cake.”

As much as it concerns trauma and misogyny, Live Through This, like all great rock records, quakes with desire. Love deciphers what it means to be an object of desire, but she also plays a woman who wants ravenously. Her wanting, at the time, was a terror; she inspired so much vitriol in part because she refused to be passive, refused to accommodate a man’s hunger without indulging her own. She would not be a vessel or a muse. Her husband did not cast her in the drama of his life. She wanted him and chased him down, and then she wanted their child, and she believed that her desire mattered, that it had substance. “I went through all the shit and pain and inconvenience of being pregnant for nine whole fucking months because I wanted some of his beautiful genes in there, in that child,” Love told Melody Maker, in a profile that called her “a one-woman spite factory” in its tagline, in February of 1994. “I wanted his babies. I saw something I wanted, and I got it. What’s wrong with that?”.

I wanted to dig deep for this Beneath the Sleeve. Hole’s Live Through This is one of the greatest albums ever, and it is one I remember from the 1990s. A fan of Nirvana, I discovered Hole through them. Considering the trauma Courtey Love faced in the wake of Kurt Cobain’s death, she showed so much strength, dignity and bravery. Also, to be able to promote an album like Live Through This and deal with questions around Cobain. In an America that has a misogynistic, transphobic, hateful President who puts women’s rights bottom of his agenda and has split a country, you feel Live Through This is more important needed than ever! This 1994-released album is…

A staggering work.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Smerz

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Alva Le Febvre

Smerz

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I have spotlighted…

a few duos already this year. I think most people are highlighting bands or solo artists, but duos are less common and less commonly discussed. Smerz are a Norwegian duo of Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt. Smerz hail from Oslo and make music that can be described as Experimental Pop/Electronic. I will finish ff with a review of the duo’s 2025 album, Big city life. I am starting with Vogue and their interview. Chatting with Smerz and their off-kilter Pop music for the ages, there are some sections of the interview I was keen to highlight:

“There’s certainly a mysterious, open-ended quality to Smerz’s music, although given the remarkable precision of their songwriting and production, “vague” isn’t necessarily the word I would use. On Big City Life, the duo flit deftly between genres—dream pop, glitchy electro, power ballads, shoegaze, even shades of trip-hop on album closer “Easy”—whipping up all these textures into a sonic soufflé that is uniquely their own. And where their previous records have erred towards the cryptic (at least lyrically), on Big City Life, they’re making room for big, overwhelming feelings: take the brazenly sensual yearning captured on the twinkling “Big Dreams,” or the woozy rush of being head-over-heels in love so beautifully captured on lead single “You Got Time and I Got Money,” the melody of which you could just as easily imagine being sung in a smoky 1920s Paris jazz club as at an underground club night in 2020s Berlin.

“We had a period of listening to cabaret music, and more traditional songwriting, quite a lot, which I guess stitches together the last album and this one somehow,” says Motzfeldt. And the emotional maturity, for lack of a better term, that courses through the album—despite the fizzy, bratty fun of “Feisty,” there’s an air of hard-earned, melancholic wisdom that colors tracks like “Street Style” and album highlight “A Thousand Lies”—can also be explained by the pair having grown up a little. “We started making music in a sort of club music environment, and at some point, that disappeared, and we didn’t find ourselves inside those clubs that often,” says Stoltenberg, discussing the album’s more straightforward lyrics.

Stoltenberg and Motzfeldt’s friendship was first sparked while at high school in Oslo; then, in the early 2010s, they moved to Copenhagen together for university, Stoltenberg to study math and statistics, Motzfeldt to study music composition at the city’s prestigious Rhythmic Music Conservatory. The close-knit community of experimental musicians that orbited the latter—other recent graduates include Erika de Casier, ML Buch, and Astrid Sonne, all artists with a similar interest in the porous outer regions of pop—encouraged them to form Smerz, the name being an abbreviated form of the German word Herzschmerz, meaning heartache.

Given its clever production and Stoltenberg’s consciously dispassionate vocals, Big City Life could easily come across as forbiddingly cool. But there’s a sincerity and a wide-eyed romance to so many of the songs—as well as, on tracks like “Feisty,” a playfulness and winking humor—that lends the project a whole lot of heart instead. Both Stoltenberg and Motzfeldt note that much of the album came from dark nights of the soul they experienced over the past few years. “I guess we have both moved in and out of some different relationships, and we've also moved cities, from Copenhagen to Oslo, and a bit back again,” says Stoltenberg. “The beginning of the writing of this album was the beginning of a lot of shifts in our personal lives”.

I realise several of my Spotlight features concern artists that are not brand new. Smerz have been releasing music since 2017, they are a duo that I think everyone needs to know about. I must admit I have not included an artist who has been making music for that long, but I have seen others spotlight Smerz for success this year. Though not a new or rising duo, they are one that are going to help shape and define Pop music this year. Before getting to a review of their most recent album, there are two more interviews I am including. PAPER spoke with Smerz back in the summer. A duo living their own big city life, I have been following them, I think since 2022, and maybe their fanbase is not quite as large as it should be. However, with every album and year that passes, they recruit new fans around the world:

“Big city life is a continued conversation between the Smerz duo, who have already created a thematically and musically varied set of works since 2017 via a debut EP, a full-length album, and a number of collaborations and compositional projects. On this new album, they've pared down the scale of their artistic wanderings, choosing to create a poignant portrait of life in their (relatively small) home city of Oslo.

Highlights include “Roll the dice,” which finds the duo delivering a self-affirmation before a night out on the town. “You’re a girl in the city and you shouldn’t think twice/ You take two steps forward, keep your eyes on the prize,” they hum over a beat that features an almost slapstick piano line, atonal and coy. Or look at the smashing fun of “Feisty,” which is the album at its most uptempo. A clanging 707 hi hat melds with a set of strings that could be ripped from aVanessa Cartlon cut. Meanwhile the duo hum about the small, innocuous details of a night of drinking and flirting (“He likes to seem mysterious but really he's just dumb/ It's crowded at the toilet, I check my makeup and my bum”).

Smerz’s renewed focus on local tedium was spurred by a major move. They started their career in Copenhagen, a central part of its alt pop scene, which includes fellow artists Erika de Casier, ML Buch, Astrid Sonne and Fine Glindvad (Motzfeldt went to school with many of them at the important Rhythmic Music Conservatory in Copenhagen).

“We developed our whole musical life in Copenhagen. Everyone we know and everywhere we go has some connection to music,” says Stoltenberg. Collectively, their crew of Copenhagen colleagues became a global musical force, receiving an upsurge of interest in 2023 when Smerz, de Casier and Glindvad all contributed to K-pop stars NewJeans’ EP Get Up (Smerz produced EP closer “ASAP”).

It was time, though, for a change. They moved back to their hometown during COVID. Both were coming out of relationships and thus re-entering single life just as the world was fluctuating between various levels of lockdowns and reopenings. There, in Oslo, they could linger in the specificities of home: its culture, its rhythm, its “grey and green” landscape. And there, they could document their everyday experience in Oslo through surprising, instinctual works of pop reportage.

It’s hard not to connect their deep hometown connection to Stoltenberg’s own exceptional tie to the country. Her father, Jens Stoltenberg, was Prime Minister of the small EU nation twice between 2000 and 2013. Stoltenberg doesn’t speak publicly about her family’s political ties, but her ability to largely avoid the topic speaks to Norway’s vastly different social system: where wealth disparity is minimized by a social safety net and the general social code revolves around janteloven, “disdainful attitude to extraordinary achievements … [or] the Nordic trait of placing the value of equality above all else.”

On Big city life, Smerz streamlined everything, comparing its musical creation to a “band jamming.” They assembled a “library” of a few core sounds: a drum machine, software pianos, synthy strings which sound like they’re plucked out of a ‘90s TV documentary’s score. “These songs were made quite fast, with a focus on the songwriting, and less focus on the sounds and the textures,” Stoltenberg shares. “By working a bit more quickly and not focusing as much on the production, you can capture some spontaneous mood or feeling of whatever state you're in”.

Actually I think I will end now with a review. Not a new duo or breaking through, I think it is a perfect time to feature Smerz, as they had a brilliant year las year. Big city life was hugely acclaimed. This is what The Line of Best Fit about one of the strongest offerings from 2025. I do think that Big city life took their music to a new audience. Never resting on their laurels or repeating what went before, I think we will see Smerz releasing music for a very long time to come:

“Catharina Soltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt, known as the Norwegian art pop duo Smerz, have bottled the events of a night out with its ecstasy and fleetingness and gloom through 2021’s experimental odyssey Believer or last year’s fictional pop star Allina, but on Big city life, they head straight to the party.

Their ability to make music about the club and not necessarily in it is strange and unwavering. “Roll the dice”, with its stilted delivery and jabby piano, shouldn’t be a peppy number, but its lyrics point in that direction: “You’re a girl in the streets / And you shouldn’t think twice… / Let the city lights surround you / Make it shimmer, make it bright." It has all the feel of a first night out in a new place, feeling the buzz of concrete and metal pulse. On the record’s mesmerizing opening track, too, they marvel at “The freedom of a big city,” one that can stifle as well as open yourself up to new possibilities. Everything is available, which makes everything daunting.

Nowhere is this better demonstrated than on the album’s beguiling and wonderful centerpiece, “Feisty”. It’s an oddly simple, deadpanned-approach to the club where every line is delivered in accordance with the physics of the night, no dressing or metaphor. Rather, simple descriptions abound: “Makeup on my mind, these shoes so far down / Little red skirt and a blouse my mother found,” like an anthropologist taking notes for those who couldn’t make it. Their writing is complex in its simplicity – further on, they groan at an art school gang who shows up, “and they’re always plenty.” Why “plenty”? There are hundreds of adjectives that would better give focus to the group, but instead, they note the size of the crowd, like a foggy, dense, outline of what’s happening. Whether this is a language kerfuffle or a genuine literary moment, it’s a mind-snagging line that barely says anything. Maybe they’re taking a cue from the gang themselves: “They don’t say much, use their art to show compassion.”

Smerz isn’t always at the club though, and Big city life benefits from periods of downtime. On the refreshingly sincere trip-hop “You got time and I got money”, they slowdance around simple affectations: “I like these clean t-shirts on you / I like the restaurants you choose.” On the swanky spoken-word “Imagine this”, they recount a first date, the boy’s desire at the girl’s surprising cleverness. But they go their separate ways even though the connection was strong: “And as the city turns quiet / You both have to admit / That this isn’t now / But this could’ve been it.”

Similar to Charli xcx, Smerz’ downtempo songs might be more revealing than their anthems. They cry and second-guess before the party on “But I do”, and a zap of realization comes on “A thousand lies”, where they bleakly sing, “I’m realizing lately that I won’t feel like this again.” The anxiety creeps in on “Easy”, the closing track, where their Tirzah-esque voices cut across the haze, daydreaming about closeness that might be harder to achieve. “I’ll be the one you know,” they assure, “We’ll talk about the things you don’t talk about with your friends,” matching a drunk promise that you know you won’t keep. Or maybe the person on the other side just isn’t into you, and there’s nothing you can do. The trip ends with the record’s most brilliant line, succinctly summarizing the whirlwind of a night out before the comedown of realization: “Have I said too much?”.

Catharina Stoltenberg and Henriette Motzfeldt create amazing music together. With Smerz, they have this incredible power and sound. The duo head to New Zealand and Australia soon before going to Ireland and Europe for some tour dates. There might not be much time to release new singles for a while. However, I am sure that we will hear something from them a bit later in the year. If this is the first time that you have heard of Smerz, then make sure that they are firmly…

IN your life.

_____________

Follow Smerz

PHOTO CREDIT: Alva Le Febvre

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/smerz_/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/tag/smerz

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5ltyDCsRY46KgFQ_0vQOPA

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1f8PlfSHEW6fHnILSzm8dI?si=oUPQi8NZQui-TpbuIJDm2Q

Bandcamp:

https://smerzforyou.bandcamp.com

FEATURE: Needle Drops and Scores to Settle: Scene Seven: The truth, no matter what it is, isn’t that frightening: Drive My Car (2021)

FEATURE:

 

 

Needle Drops and Scores to Settle

Scene Seven: The truth, no matter what it is, isn’t that frightening: Drive My Car (2021)

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THE second time…

IN THIS PHOTO: Eiko Ishibashi/PHOTO CREDIT: Bas Bogaerts

I am spotlighting a film score rather than a soundtrack, this is also the most recent inclusion, year-wise. Eiko Ishibashi’s amazing score for Drive My Car. I will come to some reviews of the score and an interview with its composer. I am starting out The Guardian and their review of a marvellous 2021 film. An adaptation of a Haruki Murakami work (Drive My Car is a celebrated short story by Haruki Murakami, featured in his 2014 collection Men Without Women, which explores themes of grief, connection, and loneliness through a widowed actor who hires a young female chauffeur), this film might have fallen under the radar, as the pandemic meant that people could not get to the cinema as much as they would have liked:

“Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s mysterious and beautiful new film is inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same name – and that title, like Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, is designed to tease us with the shiny wistfulness of a Beatles lyric. Hamaguchi’s previous pictures Asako I and II and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy were about the enigma of identity, the theatrical role play involved in all social interaction and the erotic rapture of intimacy. Drive My Car is about all this and more; where once Hamaguchi’s film-making language had seemed to me at the level of jeu d’esprit, now it ascends to something with passion and even a kind of grandeur. It is a film about the link between confession, creativity and sexuality and the unending mystery of other people’s lives and secrets.

Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a successful actor and theatre director who specialises in experimental multilingual productions with surtitles – he is currently working on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and is preparing to play the lead in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He has a complex relationship with his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a successful writer and TV dramatist who has a habit of murmuring aloud ideas for erotic short stories, trance-like, while she is astride Yûsuke having sex, including a potent vignette about a teenage girl who breaks into the house of the boy with whom she is obsessed.

The couple learn that Yûsuke is in danger of losing the sight in one eye – he later learns with a shock that this has changed the short story that she was working on – but this perhaps makes it easier for him to accept that he will need a driver for his trusty Saab 900 when he later directs a new revival of his Vanya production at an arts festival in Hiroshima, a city that is photographed with crisp unsentimentality. Things are complicated by a devastating event in Oto’s life, and Yûsuke being confronted with proof that she had been having an affair with a handsome and disreputable young actor and celebrity called Kôji (Masaki Okada). For complex reasons, he casts this same bumptious Kôji in the lead role for Vanya for his revival, assuring the actor calmly that makeup will cover the age difference, and responds readily but with cool reserve when Kôji keeps saying he wants to talk to him over a drink after rehearsals. This strange duel between the two men is happening alongside Yûsuke’s growing relationship with his driver Misaki (Tôko Miura) whose professional reticence evolves into something else when he starts confessing his anguish to her – prompted by the fact that he likes to play a certain cassette in the car: the voice of his wife running his lines for Vanya.

As Yûsuke, Nishijima has a certain severity, inscrutability and the almost martial self-discipline of someone who is accustomed to leadership and to giving orders to actors while seeming open to their suggestions. (Oddly, when he is in makeup for Vanya, he reminded me of Yasujirō Ozu’s veteran player Chishû Ryû.) Miura’s performance has a reserve of its own, as his confessor and fellow smoker. Chekhov’s play, with all its desperation and regret for missed life chances, has become a touchstone for Yûsuke, and almost a separate character in the movie. What if … Kôji was playing Vanya, not him? What if Kôji was his wife’s partner, not him? What if he had been able to master his feelings, swallow his pride and actively confront his wife with what he knew about her secret erotic life and how much he had been hurt by it? Would this blaze of attempted honesty have saved their relationship? Or destroyed it?

And all the time, Misaki is growing in importance, and in the film’s extraordinary final section, her story is told; a story that need not thematically dovetail with everything that has gone before, other than to show us once again, that other people’s lives are complicated and withheld, and that we are being arrogant if we think that we know everything there is to know about the people that we meet.

Drive My Car is an expansion of a short story, and perhaps it’s true to say that Hamaguchi’s storytelling aesthetic here, as in his other films, is a mosaic or choreography of short stories, an archipelago of lives. Yûsuke, Oto, Kôji and Misaki are living their own stories, and the drama superimposes and overlaps them like a Venn diagram. And there is something very moving when we close in on one particular tale, one life. It is an engrossing and exalting experience”.

Eiko Ishibashi is a composer that is quite new to me. Her score for Drive My Car is extraordinary. I was completely immersed and engrossed when I heard the album. I wanted to discover more about a score for one of the best films of 2021. In celebrating modern-day great composers, women are often overlooked. It is important that composers like Eiko Ishibashi are celebrated and spotlighted more. In 2022, when the soundtrack/score was reworked for the EFG London Jazz festival at Kings Place, London (The Guardian provided their take), Variety spoke with Eiko Ishibashi about crafting and creating Drive My Car’s emotional and stunning score:

“Enter Eiko Ishibashi, an experimental Japanese multi-instrumentalist whose 2018 “The Dream My Bones Dream” was a turning point in an already decade-long career of scores for theater and short films.

Ishibashi’s 2018 album of haunting soundscapes and its electro-acoustic mix of noise, oddball pop, improvisational jazz and minimalist, modern classical music made her a cinematic force equal to Hamaguchi. The more textural and sweeping aspects of Ishibashi’s bittersweet melodies were an elegant match for Hamaguchi’s vision.

After being known for crafting blunt, short films since 2001, Japanese director Hamaguchi’s romantic “Asako I & II” of 2018 signaled an aesthetic shift, a turn toward sweeping narratives with shadowy, but tactile, atmospheres. Such expanse was necessary for 2021’s “Drive My Car,” a tale of a theater director reckoning with the finality of death while working on a stage production of “Uncle Vanya” during long car rides.

To that end, Ishibashi’s contemplative song-score for “Drive My Car,” re-released in February on major streaming services with bonus tracks, is as distant and off-putting as it is intimate and readily engaging.

“Typically, I don’t use a lot of music in my films, but hearing the music Ishibashi made was the first time I thought ‘this could work for the film,’” says director Hamaguchi, who was introduced to her music by “Drive My Car” producer Teruhisa Yamamoto as filming was set to commence. “Hearing her work, I was struck by how wonderful her talent and technique was. It reminded me of a band I enjoyed in my 20s, Tortoise. It had a similar feel that really matched with my taste, so I was very happy to work with Eiko.”

The director says he and Ishibashi share similar backgrounds, generationally, as well as a shared career trajectory. “I think that comes from listening to the same things around the same time. We also share similar tastes in film. She watches a lot of movies and loves John Cassavetes, Douglas Sirk, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and all these filmmakers who I really enjoy. Our film language was very similar.”

Hamaguchi and Ishibashi both agree that making the music of “Drive My Car” in spurts — before and after the pandemic shutdown, as well as during the shoot itself — was a huge help in making her compositions for his cinematic vision their own living, breathing entity.

“Working on it step-by-step with director Hamaguchi while he was filming was very gratifying for me,” says Ishibashi.

The director continues: “We shot the first 40 minutes of ‘Drive My Car’ in its first chunk, around mid-2020, but had to stop because of COVID. We had Ishibashi work on that chunk first — she would send us motifs of different moments, and we would add those pieces into the edit as we went. That process of combining the edit and the music worked really well. Based on those motifs she came up with, I would give notes and she would record a final version after more back-and-forth. It wasn’t this abstract way of communicating an idea of what I wanted … it was visual to begin with. That went very smoothly and I will use that way of working with a composer in the future”.

I will end with a Pitchfork review for a mesmeric score. One of the best of the past decade. Before that, The Guardian spoke with a composer whose amazing score helped Drive My Car to Oscar success (it won the award for Best International Feature Film). Not a one off, “the Japanese musician has reunited with its director for a collaboration unlike any other”.  Her latest work was an E.P. released last year that was a collaboration with Jim O’Rourke. Pareiodlia is a stunning work. This is an astonishing composer who summons something dark, eerie and strangely beautiful. Such evocative and image-provoking, Drive My Car is perhaps more graceful, romantic and tender. Though it does have these turns and unexpected sonic moments:

“Whether it’s Hitchcock and Herrmann, Spielberg and Williams or latterly Villeneuve and Zimmer, film directors often get into a glorious feedback loop with a preferred composer – and the latest is a burgeoning collaboration between Ryûsuke Hamaguchi and Eiko Ishibashi. Her jazz-pop theme for Drive My Car in 2021 was an instant classic – wistful, generous of spirit, even a little Gallic with its touch of accordion – and her score helped to carry the Japanese film to glory at Cannes and beyond, including a best picture nomination and best international feature film award at the Oscars in 2022.

“There was a big awards rush, festivals, and I think Hamaguchi was ultimately quite fatigued from the whole experience,” Ishibashi says, elegantly wrapped up in her cold-looking recording studio in the Yatsugatake mountains west of Tokyo, speaking via interpeter over a video call. “So I think he wanted to do something that was more experimental next. And myself, I’m interested in experimenting with what kinds of work I can do along with images.”

The result is a pair of astonishing new films in which the bond between director and composer is even more tightly fused: the drama Evil Does Not Exist and a short film, Gift, which is silent and designed to be paired with live performance by Ishibashi. Hamaguchi has described the two films, which use different takes, shots and narrative details from the same shoot, as a “small multiverse”.

Gift was the initial idea, after Ishibashi asked Hamaguchi for concert visuals and sent him demo pieces for inspiration. Hamaguchi went big, travelling to film near where Ishibashi lives, and even developing a script that wouldn’t be heard but would guide the actors in the silent film. “Hearing them on set saying these lines, he realised they had wonderful voices; the acting was wonderful,” Ishibashi explains.

So Hamaguchi expanded the film on the fly to make Evil Does Not Exist, a parable about the schism between urban and rural, between capitalism and its muffled opposite, as a glamping company arrogantly rocks up with plans to site a development in a peaceful village. The camera lovingly and languorously settles on feathers, leaves and brooks, and Ishibashi’s music is often beautiful to match. But violence and discord throb in the film’s bones, from the faraway gunshots of deer hunters to the way Hamaguchi will suddenly cut an Ishibashi piece down in its prime, leaving sudden silence.

“I felt an anger that I hadn’t felt in his past films,” she says. “Anger that felt directed towards the way humans work, the unfairness of this whole world.” Watching the raw footage, she says she drew on that feeling to create the film’s central musical theme: long, gorgeous overlapping chords for strings that take left turns into darkness.

In the past decade, three superb albums – Imitation of Life, Car and Freezer, and The Dreams My Bones Dream – were released by US label Drag City, and made her better known to American and European audiences. The latter is a reflection on Manchuria, an area of China named by its colonising Japanese forces – her late father was once based with the military there. Once again, it’s beautiful music laced with disquiet.

“My father carried a lot of scars from the war, but he never talked about his experiences,” Ishibashi says. “That led me to want to learn the history between Manchuria and Japan; the genocides that happened there. I realised there’s very little writing around this, and that led me to think about how perhaps victims can’t necessarily talk about it.

“There is a sense of Japan tending to close off from things that have happened – perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it’s an island country. It tends to also hide away certain facts and history, and carry on as if nothing had happened. In textbooks we don’t learn about Japan and its history as an oppressor, a coloniser, especially after the first world war. There’s a sense that it’s OK to not be learning about these things”.

I want to wrap things up with a review for the Drive My Car score. Reviewing it in 2022, Pitchfork lauded an album that “possesses a cool remove, mirroring the film’s glacial profundity with organic nuance and contemplative improvisation”. In terms of the versions and date order, initial formats like C.D. and cassette appearing in late 2021 in Japan, followed by wider digital/streaming release and vinyl in early 2022. That is why I have listed the release date as 2021, as that is when it first came out:

“Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car is a staggering exploration of grief, betrayal, and acceptance. The loose adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short-story follows Yusuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a stage actor and director, as he mourns the deaths of his young daughter and his screenwriter wife, Oto (Reika Kirishima). Two years after Oto’s death, Yusuke relocates to Hiroshima where he will direct a production of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” Upon arrival, he is assigned a quiet female driver named Misaki (Toko Miura). Throughout many long drives in Yusuke’s vintage Red Saab, the two gradually open up about their individual sorrow.

Now nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best International Film, Drive My Car is a profound masterpiece made all the more entrancing by its score, written by Eiko Ishibashi. The Japanese multi-instrumentalist and composer is best known for her experimental solo work, which ranges from jazz fusion to the imaginative dream pop heard on a recent tribute to a Law & Order character. Like the film’s protagonist, Ishibashi’s score possesses a cool remove and, alongside an ensemble that includes her frequent collaborator Jim O’Rourke, Ishibashi creates a soundtrack that is as moving as the film itself.

Bottom of Form

In the film, Yusuke’s theatrical method requires his cast to internalize the play’s text by running through the script without emotion before they are allowed to begin acting. (Yusuke rehearses his own lines by driving in his car and listening to cassettes of Oto reciting the other characters’ dialogue.) This emphasis on close listening and organic nuance is reflected in Ishibashi’s score, which is structured around variations of two themes, “Drive My Car” and “We’ll Live Through the Long, Long Days, and Through the Long Nights.” The eponymous core theme is set in motion by an opening burst of percussion and tumbling keys imbued with a certain thoughtfulness. This soon evolves into an upbeat and idyllic melody featuring yearning strings and the synthetic squawk of a melodion. However, this whimsical track is not the first piece of music heard by the audience. That would be “We’ll Live Through the Long, Long Days… (Oto),” a ghostly ambient track that abandons the score’s melodicism in favor of stillness, the falling of rain, and the muffled whooshing of passing cars.

In the same way that Yusuke suggests that a good driver allows their passenger to relax, Ishibashi’s score, even removed from the context of the film, allows the listener to sit back and enjoy the ride. Some of Ishibashi’s contributions suggest the transportive effect of driving in a concrete way. “Drive My Car (Cassette)” opens with a tape being inserted in a deck and the sounds of ambient traffic before it drifts into a pensive piano reverie. Meanwhile, Yusuke’s theme, “Drive My Car (Kafuku),” opens with the squeak of a seat being lowered before spiraling into rumination. “Drive My Car (Misaki)” also begins with an automobile sound as the titular character opens the Saab’s creaky front door and turns on the Saab’s ignition. This interpretation of the theme incorporates tumbling piano notes, brushed drums, and the steady thump of an electric bass; that such a reserved character is bestowed a warm theme underlines the idea that her wall of ice will someday melt, given the correct conditions.

Drive My Car’s second theme, “We’ll Live Through the Long, Long Days, and Through the Long Nights,” is more contemplative than its companion. There is an initial melancholy inflicted by strings so sorrowful that each note wavers like a dying breath. The “... (Saab 900)” version of the theme is the closest the score gets to a car crash: Percussionist Tatsuhisa Yamamoto’s fast and furious playing is layered atop the original theme’s piano melody with interjections of droning electric guitar and crashing cymbals. The arrangement is dusted, again, by vehicular ambience: the beep of a locked car, the slam of a door, and the click of a seatbelt. If the score’s other tracks capture a character or existential statement, “... (Saab 900)” is the titular car’s inner monologue as it drifts, and at one point, narrowly avoids getting side-swiped. “…(And When Our Last Hour Comes We’ll Go Quietly),” whose title is pulled from a soliloquy that arrives at the end of “Uncle Vanya,” features guitar work from O’Rourke that changes lanes from downcast meditation to hypnotic climax smoothly, as if there’s not a single bump in the road. And in its last moments, after a few final piano notes, Ishibashi’s glorious Drive My Car score goes quiet”.

You can find the Drive My Car soundtrack/score on Bandcamp. Even though it was released over four years ago now, I listen to it now and it moves me. If you can see the film it scores, I would recommend it. It is a beautiful award-winning and acclaimed film. The score adds these layers and emotions to the scenes. One of the most powerful pairings of music and visuals in recent cinema. That is why I wanted to highlight this masterpiece…

FROM Eiko Ishibashi.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Gracie Convert

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Gracie Convert

__________

THIS is a D.J. and artist…

who I am a big admirer of. Gracie Convert has a terrific show on Soho Radio and I have also featured (several times) her radio mate, Iraina Mancini, who also has her own excellent show. It is station that encourages musical exploration and going beyond the mainstream. On her Soho Radio show page, her show is described as “an ethereal blend of soulful sounds from around the globe, with genres ranging from R&B and Hip-Hop to Afrobeats, Amapiano, Reggaeton, Salsa, Bachata, Baile Funk and more”. I have held off on spotlighting Convert until now as a lot of the interviews were older. I shall lead with an older one, as it is good to go back and see what she was saying earlier in her career. However, last year was one where the French-born artist and D.J. released some terrific singles. Included is one of my favourite of the year in the form of Ma. I adore the composition and Gracie Convert’s vocals on it. So hypnotic and breathy, it is this enticing, seductive and colourful track that brings in some of the styles and genres from her radio show, yet this is a distinct and patented blend. I think I first discovered Convert’s music in 2021 when she put out In my way. I can only imagine how off it was releasing music in a year when the pandemic was sweeping the globe. I love Convert’s passion for music. You can hear it on her radio show. That translates into her own music. I wonder if she has plans for gigs, an E.P. or album this year. I would love to see her perform and I also know there are fans out there who would welcome a 2026 E.P. Her songs from last year were incredible, so anyone who has not connected with Gracie Convert yet needs to.

Before coming to some more recent interviews, I want to go back to 2021. Gracie Convert might not want me to call her an ‘emerging’ or ‘rising’ talent, as she has been releasing music for a long time now. However, she is someone not known to everyone, so it is vital that as many people as possible check her out. In 2021, LOCK spoke with an incredible artist releasing music in a year that was perhaps not ideal. In terms of touring and connecting with fans. I am really excited to hear what comes next. Convert’s music is so diverse but always stunning:

“Good morning/good afternoon, when did you first get into music?

Hiii! Aha this is going to sound cringy I’m really sorry, but I did unfortunately sing before I could speak (show out to Disney for their sing along tapes lol) under the sea and colours of the wind were my faves! I guess it was always something that appealed, I always wanted to sing and dance around, it would’ve been difficult for me to not get into it I think.

You’re French and British, do you think your French heritage affects your songwriting in any way when it comes to experiencing different cultures?

No doubt about it!! I love french R&B and Hip-Hop, I still bang out songs I used to listen to when I was 12 years old. I really looked up to artists such as Zaho and Amel Bent, they’re really sick. My Mum and I never stayed put for very long so I grew up darting around between France, England and South Africa, I’d say it was in Cape Town I really got into R&B for the first time, everything followed from there really. God knows how many hours I spent dancing to MTV Bass and VH1 in front of the telly lol.

Your latest track ‘Something Special’ is all about someone sucking the life out of you – do you have any advice for anyone going through the same thing?

Bad energy, stay far away!! If it’s affecting your mental health, leave yes, it’s always easier said than done, but if you feel like you’re losing your identity get the hell out of that relationship, be it romantic or not. Remember what you wanted before you met that person, the things that made you happy,  remember your childhood goals, don’t let anyone deter you from whatever was important to you before you got sucked in by someone who is destructive to your being.

Many publications such as Notion and Guap are calling you an emerging talent, is there any pressure when being called that?

On most days, those are the words that encourage me to keep putting the work in.

Sometimes when I read these things I feel like people just write them because they feel they have to or feel sorry for me lol, which doesn’t really make sense given I’m an independent artist with no money behind me. Isn’t it called Imposter syndrome?  I’m an unknown artist just starting out, so when publications like Guap (I’ve loved them literally since they started), Notion and Colors (sorry had to mention this one because it was a big one for me!!) recognise my music, I’m like, surely not lol.

Other times, I low key feel like I’ve put so many hours in. I deserve it. It’s always changing, my mood’s all over the place anyway, but to be honest I think most creatives go through the same thing.

You show your love of R&B, Hip Hop and Rap when presenting your radio show on Soho Radio – which I love.  What’s one artist in those three genres that everyone should be listening to?

Oh thanks!! It’s so fun to be a part of and it. I’m going to go with Deante Hitchcock, this rapper who is signed to J Cole’s label. I’m a big fan of J cole’s lyricism and Deante’s give me a similar feeling when I listen to him. Nayara Iz, I think she’s one of the most exciting artists to come out the UK right now, obsessed with Damso too, he’s a french artists and his songs bang, would recommend listening to the songs ‘Macarena’ and ‘Godbless’”.

Before getting to an interview from last year, there is an article I want to drop in. Where the Music Meets highlighted Gracie Convert’s new single, In my way, in June. Someone who can go between style and genres but always has this distinct and original core, I do love how there were articles around this single and others from last year. A phenomenal artist getting some much-deserved kudos and praise. I feel like Convert should be played more on big national radio stations, as she has this amazing talent the world needs to hear:

“There’s something about a voice that sounds like it’s telling you a secret—that leans in rather than belts out. Gracie Convert does exactly that in “In My Way“, the kind of track you play on a night bus while staring at lights and pretending everything’s fine.

Soft chords, barely-there drums, and those sigh-like vocals—”In My Way” channels early 2000s R&B in the best way. Think Amerie meets early Aaliyah with a French-English twist that makes it unmistakably Gracie. There’s a tenderness here that doesn’t beg for attention; it just sits with you, quiet and necessary. It feels like overhearing a voice note you were never supposed to catch—equal parts beautiful and a little too close for comfort.

The production is warm and minimal, thanks to Jack Seagal, with Gracie adding her own fingerprints throughout. That bilingual storytelling she’s become known for is alive and well, giving us both the softness of French vulnerability and the direct hit of English introspection. She sings about that kind of love that chips away at your sense of self—the love you keep justifying until the mirror doesn’t quite recognise you anymore. It’s melancholy, sure, but never pitiful.
And somehow, through the ache, it still slaps. There’s a subtle catchiness to it—one of those tracks that loops in your head not because of a hook, but because of how it felt. It’s that kind of song. The kind you end up humming under your breath without realising”

Prior to finishing with an interview from last year, there is an article that showed love for babe pourquoi t’es comme ça? That bilingual single is another favourite of mine from 2025. This brilliantly consistently and always-surprising artist whose musical palette is broad and compelling. WPGM took us inside this slinky, sensuous and beautiful song whose lyrics are really interesting:

“Co-produced with longtime collaborator Jack Segal, the track is built to feel close-up: hand-instrumental textures, a supple groove, and a vocal that alternates between measured confession and clipped refrain. The press materials frame the song as a reflection on how past love and mistakes calcify into defenses; that framing fits the music’s small-scale intensity and the choice to keep the arrangement economical rather than ornate.

Lyrically, Convert toggles fluently between French and English to map out distance and self-protection. The opening line, “Babe pourquoi t’es comme ça? / Au lieu d’avouer / Tu laisses tout tomber”, places the song in a conversational register, as if the narrator is working through the limits of a dialogue that never quite happens.

The English interjections (“That’s all I’ve got to say inside my head”) and the recurring admission, “I don’t trust nobody / And I don’t know who’s here to stay”, underline the tension between what is felt and what is said aloud. Even the decision to prefer “le silence aux doutes” reads like a coping mechanism: if doubts can’t be resolved, the song suggests, quiet becomes a form of control.

Musically, that guardedness is mirrored by restraint. Rather than chase a dramatic chorus, Convert hinges the hook on a wordless “Hey, ey, Hey, ooh” figure—more breath than proclamation—which helps the bilingual verses carry the narrative weight.

It’s a small but effective choice: the hook trades breadth for intimacy, letting the verses do the emotional heavy lifting, while the cadence and pocket nod to contemporary R&B without crowding the bossa nova sway. The result feels measured rather than minimal, a stripe of jazz-minded economy that leaves space for subtext.

Context matters here. The rollout positions “babe pourquoi t’es comme ça?” alongside Convert’s earlier singles “MA” and “In My Way,” and notes prior support from BBC Radio 1, COLORS Berlin, Worldwide FM, Rinse FM, Notion Magazine, and Spotify editorial lists including Jazz UK and Le Miel.

Those reference points hint at an audience that is already comfortable with genre-fluid songwriting and bilingual phrasing; the new single doesn’t try to broaden that lane with louder gestures so much as tighten it with clearer lines and a more explicit thematic throughline. In that sense, the track reads like a consolidating move—less a pivot than a careful deepening of tools that are already part of her kit.

If there is a modest risk, it’s that the song’s self-contained scale could feel underpowered to listeners expecting a big cathartic payoff. But that seems deliberate. Convert’s choice to foreground ambivalence—the sense of things “falling down,” the cyclical pull of old patterns, the reluctance to over-explain—aligns with the song’s subject and with a production aesthetic that prizes clarity over spectacle.

Taken together, “babe pourquoi t’es comme ça?” reads as a focused vignette within a larger arc: an artist refining a bilingual, cross-genre language for private conversations that rarely resolve cleanly, and trusting that restraint can carry just as much weight as release”.

Let’s finish off with an interview from Secret Eclectic. I need to interview Gracie Convert some day, as I would love to know more about her childhood and the music she grew up on. More about her Soho Radio show and her plans for the future. It would be amazing to see some in-depth interviews with incredible photoshoots where Gracie Convert looks back on her career and we get these questions that take us from her earliest years to now:

“Describe your sound in 3 words

I’d say honest, vulnerable, cross-genre

Tell us a few things about babe pourquoi t’es comme ça? What is the story behind it?

It started as me reflecting on past love and mistakes, and how those experiences can shape us. It can be heard as a love song, but also as a conversation with myself; the guarded version of me now speaking to the more open, vulnerable version of me from the past. The mix of English and French came naturally because that’s how I often think, I’m trying to integrate that side of me more in my music

The track blends nicely detuned synth pads with a bossa-infused beat. How did this unique combination come to be?

I think being a DJ has made me listen to such a huge variety of music that I naturally start blending sounds that maybe wouldn’t usually come together. With this track, the detuned synth pads came out sample I found, and then when I laid them over a bossa-infused rhythm it just felt right. It’s a mix of my influences, the warmth and groove of bossa with the dreamy, imperfect textures I love from electronic music and indie R&B

What advice would you give to your younger self?

To not overthink it, at the end of the day the world keeps turning”.

Gracie Convert is playing Soul Mama on 5th March. If you are able to go and check her out at the Stratford venue then do, as it is a great space and she will be terrific. I think she has had a wonderful past year. Some excellent new music and press. As I say with artists I spotlight, what does this year hold? More radio shows from Convert. I can imagine a series of singles and maybe an E.P. I do hope that there are some summer shows. Her music would sound perfect in the sun with an adoring crowd cheering her on! Go and follow this fabulous artist. I have loved her work for years. She has a lot of fans already but, given the quality of her music, it warrants…

A whole lot more.

____________

Follow Gracie Convert

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/gracieconvert/

Twitter:

https://x.com/gracieconvert

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRYqoYj9KpRJdtZHfTZHVEA

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0kiZpBpCvMEzvCdFVgsAZN?si=Jp0ExHxPSRyY2CWsITQbRw

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: Twinnie

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Joey Schrader

Twinnie

__________

IT is sort of a shame…

that Twinnie does not live in the U.K. anymore, as I would love to meet her and do an interview one day. However, the Internet exists, so an interview via email down the line might be a possibility. A proud artist now of the beautiful Nashville, Twinnie was born in York. An incredible actor and songwriter, her full/real name is Twinnie-Lee Moore. I really love her music and I see her Instagram posts and she is always so real, honest, engaging and funny. Hollywood Gypsy came out in 2021 and I think I wrote about it at the time. Something We Used to Say came out in 2024. What bonds the covers is Twinnie looking pretty glamorous and stylish. In a long dress and putting her hand to her chin, maybe that is the distinct or trademark look. However, last year’s Giddy Up E.P. sees her still looking quite cool and glamorous, but she is astride a horse and it is a different aesthetic. There was a time when Country music was quite off the radar and niche. Now, more and more huge artists are releasing Country albums. Included are Beyoncé, CMAT, and Ringo Starr. If these artists don’t seem on paper to be ‘genuine’ Country artists or fit our idea of a Country act, especially in the case of Beyoncé, she is an authentic and genuine Country artist. It is much in her blood as R&B, Pop or anything else. That is also the case of Twnnie. Many might think a northern-born actor and artist from a traveller background might be a latecomer to Country, though she sounds as passionate and pure as any U.S.-born artist. Twinnie became the first British Gypsy to debut at the Grand Ole Opry. You can see her putting roots down in the U.S. and maybe starting a family there. That might seem intrusive or assumptive, but you feel that’s she’s fallen in love with the land, music and language. However, there are tour dates ahead. Twinnie has some U.K. dates coming in March. I might try and see her at The Lexington in London, as that is going to be a great gig.

Because she has been very busy the past few years and put an incredible E.P. out last year, I want to get to some interviews. I spotlighted Twinnie back in 2022. I am sort of happy with what I wrote, though there have been changes to her sound and career, so there is a lot to bring in. I think Twinnie has developed and evolved as an artist. Her 2024 album and 2025 E.P. are the strongest works she has put out. However, I feel like she is still not at her absolute peak yet. You can sense her getting stronger and building upwards with every release. It is an exciting future ahead. Although she has acted previously, maybe music is taking a priority now. However, I can also imagine Twinnie appearing in film and T.V. Someone who you picture in certain roles, many big artists do balance music with acting. Maybe something she will consider this year. I hope I have got my facts straight! Though there is a brief U.K. tour, I feel Twinnie will spend more time here this year. Maybe some festivals will come up? There are a couple of 2024 interviews I want to come to before a couple from last year. As she put out Something We Used to Say in 2024, there was a new wave of interest around her music. I will start out with Listen to This and their 2024 interview with Twinnie. If you have not come across this incredible artist then you really do need to check her out. Her videos are always hugely watchable and she has an amazing voice. As an actor who has worked on stage, she brings this extra gravitas and physicality to her videos and live performances. A big reason why she is so loved and respected as an artist:

“Nashville-based British country crossover artist Twinnie is bringing the curtain down on her self-proclaimed “sad girl era” with her newest EP ‘Blue Hour (Before The Dawn)’ on 28th June 2024. She spoke to us about her latest single ‘Girl In Your Songs’ her hometown and more:

When did you begin songwriting and recording music?

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I began writing poetry as a child and that progressed to songwriting as I grew older. It’s therapy for me and something that I truly love to do.

What is your earliest musical memory?

As far back as I can remember, I’ve been surrounded by music. I’ve been on stage since I was 4 I think my earliest memory is me singing in the school choir as a butterfly. Looking back now it was very on trend because a lot of my friends call me the social butterfly.

Your new single ‘Girl In Your Songs’ is out now. What was the story/inspiration behind the track?

I dated a Rockstar a many years ago. His song about our relationship got to number 1, so this song is in response to that and I’m hoping to match that success haha.

Where did you record the single and who produced it?

It was produced by the brilliant Barnabas Shaw, and Chris Rafetto. I love them both and they’re both incredibly talented. I recorded vocals IN Nashville and London.

Was it a difficult song to write?

Not difficult really, I love the story arc and it comes from a real experience. I had fun writing this one.

Do you have any favoured stage instruments, effects, pedals, microphones etc?

I love my Gibson j45, my mini taylor and I love my upright piano at home that I write on a lot. I love my trusty sm7b mic made by sure that comes everywhere with me in case I need to play a vocal down while travelling.

Where is your hometown and could you please describe it in five words?

I’m originally from York. I’d probably say, rural, quaint, safe, home, real, down to earth, historic and THE BEST PLACE TO LIVE IN THE UK LOL

You are given the opportunity to write the score for a film adaptation of a novel that you enjoy. Which novel is it and why?

This is something I’ve actually been been working on recently although the screen play is something that I wrote in the pandemic and wrote the music with some amazingly talented writers and actors like Alan Menken, Anna Rose, Lucie Silvas, Mary Steenburgen, Dave Stewart and Andy Garcia. Honestly I love musicals old MGM films or gangsters films once upon time in America starring Robert De Niro is one of my all time favourite scores by Ennio Morricone is perfection. Id love to do something like that.

Who are some of your musical influences? Do you have any recommendations?

I love Dolly, Shania, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan, Tupac, Ella Fitzgerald, Beatles like so many and my musical taste is everything lol.

You should definitely check out my friends from Nashville Bonner Black, Abigail Virginia, Lucie Silvas, Brothers Osbourne, Fancy Hagood, Maggie Rogers all amazing artists.

Do you have any further music releases planned for 2024?

Yes, I have a few singles and a new EP releasing in June. I can’t wait to share it all with my fans. I’m so excited about this next chapter.

What makes Twinnie happy and what makes you unhappy?

Sleep and carbs lol, hiking, reading, hanging out with friends, spending time with the people I love and my dog! My dog sunny is my best pal”.

After releasing the phenomenal E.P., Blue Hour (Before the Dawn), in 2024, EUPHORIA. spoke with Twinnie. Each of her E.P.s and albums is its own thing. They have a different sound and narrative. I do think that she has grown in stature and confidence over the past few years. How long until she is collaborating with huge artists and playing the biggest stages of her career? That possibility cannot be too far away one suspects:

“You have released your new EP, Blue Hour (Before The Dawn), which you’ve said is going to close your “sad girl era.” Why is this a chapter you want to close?

As an artist, I love creating worlds, a lot of my work has been concept-based. This era of Blue Hour was born out of a real-life experience of a ten-year relationship ending and it’s been nearly two years. I wrote a lot of songs and healed a lot from it with this music. I’m in a much happier place now and with summer just starting it feels like the perfect time to close out the sad girl era and bring in some happy, empowering anthems.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Alexander

Does that mean you’ve been in the zone of writing happier songs? How has that been going? Many artists find it easier to write more emotionally driven songs.

I always pull from real-life experiences, but I love upbeat music and dancing and all of that so it’s very natural for me to write positive songs. But these sad songs were needed. It was very much therapy for me.

You just released your latest single, “Girl in Your Songs.” What inspired the song?

This is about a real relationship I had years ago with a famous rock star. He wrote a track about me first and he got to number one, so I did what any songwriter would do and wrote him one back.

With country music being such a huge genre in the US, have you found that the US has been more accepting of your music than the UK?

Country music fans are the best all around the world. It is the fastest-growing genre across Europe right now and I feel really lucky to be a part of the songwriter community in Nashville. We’ve seen so many pop stars come into the genre. It’s a really exciting time and it’s a genre that’s so diverse so I feel like everyone has been supportive. I guess playing the Opry was a huge milestone for me and a nod from the community and fans I’m doing something right.

You made your Grand Ole Opry debut last year. How was that experience?

That was the best experience ever. It was a moment I’ll cherish forever. It was everything I ever dreamed of and so much more”.

A couple of interviews from last year before I wrap things up. I love Nashville Voyager’s interview with Twinnie. As I say, I might try and catch her play in London in March, as I hear only great things about her live sets. She is a tremendous artist that seems to have fitted naturally into the Nashville set. The next few years are going to be immense for her! Personally, professionally and beyond. You can see her doing things that she will remember for the rest of her life:

“Hi Twinnie, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I started performing when I was about four years old, growing up in the Romani Gypsy Traveling community in England. Music and storytelling were always a huge part of my life – it’s just in my bones. I went on to perform in West End musicals like Chicago and Rock of Ages, and had the chance to work alongside legends like Glenn Close, Christian Slater, and Alan Menken, which was such a surreal and inspiring experience.

Before launching my own music career, I spent time as a backing singer and dancer for artists like Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams, which really helped shape my stage presence and performance style. But deep down, I always knew I wanted to tell my own stories – ones that reflect my truth, my roots, and the things I’ve been through.

In 2020, I released my debut album and have been lucky enough to travel the world sharing my music ever since. My sound blends country storytelling with a British twist and a bit of pop energy, and I’ve always tried to use my platform to uplift other women and be a voice for mental health awareness. I co-founded a movement called I Know A Woman to create space for those conversations.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Definitely not a smooth road, but I think the bumps along the way have shaped me into the artist and woman I am today.

Coming from a marginalized background, people had their assumptions about who I was before I even opened my mouth. I sometimes felt like I had to work twice as hard just to feel like I belonged. Then, transitioning into country music as a British artist came with its own set of challenges. Let’s just say, Americans sometimes have a hard time understanding me when I talk. I’m not sure why…I don’t have an accent or anything. Ha!

But, I’ve always believed that music transcends borders and I just kept showing up, writing my truth, and staying authentic to my story.

Mental health has also been a huge part of my journey. There’ve been times where the pressure of the industry – the expectations, the comparisons, the burnout – all took a toll. That’s actually what led me to co-create I Know A Woman during the Covid-19 pandemic. I wanted to create a safe space where women, especially in music, could feel seen and supported.

So no, it hasn’t been smooth. But every “no,” every door that shut, every moment of doubt – it’s all fueled my fire. And I’m proud of how far I’ve come, especially because I’ve done it on my own terms.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?

I think we’re already starting to see a real shift in the music industry, especially when it comes to genre lines blurring and artists being able to carve their own paths without needing to fit into a specific mold. Over the next 5 to 10 years, I believe that’s only going to grow. The gatekeepers don’t hold the same kind of power they once did – fans do. I love that. It means authenticity wins.

Country music, in particular, is evolving. We’re seeing more diversity, more global influence, and more women standing at the forefront, which is long overdue. I think the industry is finally being forced to reckon with its blind spots…and that includes opening the door for voices that have historically been left out. I hope to be part of that change.

From a creative standpoint, I think storytelling will always be the heartbeat of country, but the way we deliver it is changing. Social media, short-form content, AI, even virtual concerts – they’re all shifting the way people discover and experience music. It’s both exciting and a bit mental trying to keep up, but I genuinely believe the artists who stay rooted in who they are while being open to new ways of connecting will thrive”.

The final interview I will bring in is from Star Shine Magazine from November. Coming towards the end of a successful year, this one is going to be another happy and fulfilling one for Twinnie. What you also get from the interviews is incredible photoshoots. So much of Twinnie’s personality and shine comes through! Someone who the camera loves, she has this star quality that explains why her fanbase is rising and she has such a passionate core of fans who are behind her every step of the way:

“What inspired “Don’t Need A Cowboy”?

“Don’t Need A Cowboy” came from a place of self-discovery and empowerment. I wanted to flip the traditional country trope on its head. I like to joke that I’m a hopeless romantic, but the song’s really about knowing your worth and realizing you don’t need to be “saved” by anyone to feel whole.

What was the experience of making the music video like?

It was so fun! I wanted this one to feel glamorous yet grounded, with a nod to classic Western aesthetics and a dash of disco-pop sparkle. I love storytelling through visuals, so filming it felt like an extension of the song itself. I also direct my own music videos!

How would you say growing up in the Romani Travelling community influenced your music?

It influenced my music massively. My upbringing taught me to value freedom, resilience, and self-expression, all of which show up in my music. The Romani culture is deeply musical and emotional. We tell stories through song, and I think that’s why I’ve always been drawn to country music.

Do you tend to write from personal experience, or do you also pull from stories you observe around you?

Mostly personal experience, but I’m a big observer of people. I’m fascinated by human behavior, relationships, and emotions, so sometimes I’ll mix my own stories with things I’ve seen or conversations I’ve had.

When you’re not writing, recording, or performing, how do you spend your downtime?

I love being outdoors…long walks, hikes, anything that gets me into nature. I’m also an avid reader and really value my alone time. Sometimes all I need is a good Netflix binge and a cup of tea to feel recharged!

Anything else we should look out for?

Yes! I’ve got new music coming soon that I’ve worked really hard on. (Here’s a little hint for the vibe: a bit of Cher, a touch of ABBA, and a whole lot of Shania!) I’m also heading out on my “Dirt Road Disco” tour in 2026, and tickets are already nearly sold out! I’m so excited to see everyone.

What message do you have for your fans and future fans out there?

Always stay true to yourself and never dim your light for anyone. Life is about connection, not perfection. I’m so grateful for everyone who listens to my music and finds a piece of themselves in it”.

There is so much love out there for her. I do want to finish with a review for her latest single, I Don’t Need a Cowboy, as it brings things up to date. I think fun, openness, humour and realness are defining qualities with Twinnie. There is no ego or disguise. Even if she adopts various looks for shoots or videos, she is very much herself. Someone who you can connect with and feel a bond with.

“Twinnie – Lee Moore, aka Twinnie, is a boundary-breaking singer/songwriter originally from York, England, but now resides in Nashville, Tennessee. Twinnie has just performed at Glastonbury and has earned critical acclaim from BBC Radio, People, Forbes, Billboard & NPR. Twinnie was raised in the Romani Travelling Community and brings a fierce sense of authenticity & inclusivity to every lyric and song. Her 2020 debut album Hollywood Gipsy was named BBC Radio 2’s Album Of The Week. Since relocating to Nashville, Twinnie has made her Grand Ole Opry debut, appeared on US Radio, and shared the stage with the likes of Sheryl Crow, Lainey Wilson & Chase Rice. In 2024 she made history as the first British artist to sing the US national anthem at GEODIS Park in Nashville. Twinnie is a gifted singer/songwriter with credits for stars such as Kylie Minogue, Bryan Adams, The Shires & Lyndscape. Twinnie is a passionate philanthropist & mental health advocate and founder of the I Know A Woman foundation. Twinnie released her album Something We Used To Say in November last year and released her debut US EP Welcome To The Club. From the album came singles Back To Jack, Giddy Up, and today she unleashes her thigh-slapping ditty Don’t Need A Cowboy, which I will be bringing you today.

Don’t Need A Cowboy – A sweet, cool lap steel intro brings a punchy rhythm beat that lets the track come at us with the usual mellow beats that we have come to know and love Twinnie for. The soulful vocals are really letting us feel the swagger oozing from this charismatic British Country Music Association nominee, which lets us see why she has been nominated. The soothing, melodic, lyrical piece is a real good-feeling track that just lets us see the fun side of this multi-talented musician as she continues her domination to the top of the country music world. We get a Sabrina Carpenter/Dolly Parton groove running through this track, and it just puts a smile on your face. Twinnie is gearing up for her Dirt Road Disco Tour in 2026, so be sure to grab your tickets because it will surely be a laugh-a-minute show”.

Go and follow Twinnie on social media and listen to her music. She is an artist I have been a fan of for years now and I have watched her progress and shine. The U.K. dates coming up will be hotly received. I have never been to Nashville myself, though I can imagine it is a wonderful community when it comes to music. Even if she is a proud daughter of York, her new base in Tennessee is…

LUCKY to have her.

____________

Follow Twinnie

Official:

https://twinnie.komi.io/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/twinnieofficial/

Twitter:

https://x.com/twinnieofficial

TikTok:

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

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCv3bc__yCAlImUHdrsm3qRQ

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/73zbrZKfIqOfVWaSM4k71b?si=LznkGctgRUWtntowxGiV9g

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/twinnieofficial/

FEATURE: Spotlight: Girl Tones

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Girl Tones

__________

THE terrific Girl Tones…

have a string of U.S. dates ahead. The South Central Kentucky sister duo of Kenzie and Laila Crowe are amazing. Both classically trained musicians, Kenzie transitioned from cello to guitar and Laila from piano to drums. I know they have played in London and spend time here. Their video for Leave the City shows them in London visiting tourist attractions. Quite a grainy video, the song is pummelling, punchy and angular. Grungy and grumbly, it also has this spring and lightness in places. It is an incredible single from a duo who released a fair few last year. Among them was Cherry Picker, and Blame. In order to get to know the better, I am going to bring in some interviews. Like I do with a lot of Spotlight features, I will go back to a slightly older interview before coming to those that are more recent. In December 2024, Girl Tones spoke with Culture Flux about ensuring that they keep their edge and make sure the music is both raw and honest. I think that this combination comes through on everything they do:

“The sisters grew up classically trained- Kenzie played cello and Laila was a pianist before transitioning to drums. “The emotion’s more attached to just the beauty of the piece itself and not really the personal attachment. It’s just an appreciation of the art,” Laila says about her connection to classical music. “For our stuff, it’s definitely way more personal, because we’ve put so much time and effort into this, it’s like, intrinsic in my life at this point.”

The two singles so far, “Fade Away” and “Again,” utilize fuzzy guitars, pounding drums, and emotive vocals to rip into infectious melodies and punk attitude. For the new album they’re working on, it felt natural to instill a variety of tracks, considering their listening palette is now so diverse. The goal is to not be tied down to just one genre, but still be cohesive. Kenzie has a tad bit of paranoia surrounding that subject.

“We’re so paranoid that all of our songs are going to sound the same to everyone (laughs).” She has this inner worry that all of the songs sound the same or their doing the same thing over and over, but that the fact that she’s thinking about it means she’s conscious of making an album with ebbs and flows. “I’m very excited for everyone to hear all of the songs,” Kenzie says. “I’m just so curious about how people are going to like it or relate to it.”

Given the lyrical vulnerability of Girl Tones, there is a lot to relate to. “Usually it comes from deep within me,” Kenzie admits. “The lyrics are very vulnerable. Sometimes it comes out of you when you don’t know where it comes from.” From the anger of being let down in the raging “Again” to immature and uncommunicative partners in “Fade Away,” there’s a fury of emotions being spilled out of the two tracks that can feel like an honest release of pent-up feelings.

“It definitely is cathartic… all of the BS we might’ve had to go through to get here, it doesn’t matter, we’re here,” Laila says. Clarifying why they connect so much with the rawness of their sound and lyrics, Kenzie feels that it has always been a part of them. “That’s just who we are. We like to be honest and raw. I mean, isn’t that life? Life isn’t produced. We’re just existing”.

I want to include parts of this interview with Northern Exposure Magazine from early last year. Some important U.K. press, it is interesting how the highlight the visuals and aesthetic qualities of Girl Tones. Their press photos and very colourful and interesting. Even if their most recent video is quite grainy and lo-fi, there is this interesting colour palette one might not associate with their sound:

“And making the most of it they are, Girl Tones are making a name for themselves on their visuals alone, using bold primary colours that electrify their sound – seen specifically in the ‘Fade Away‘ music video. Kenzie said that they felt like they wanted an “aesthetic for the project that people would immediately grasp or connect to.”

“Sometimes you have to put yourself in a box to be able to create something different, so we decided to go with the primary colors. I really don’t know where that idea came from, but I’m really glad we stuck with that because I think it’s a really cool thing.”

The new track, ‘I Know You Know‘, is a more subdued and airy in comparison to the bands previous work, but they are keen to stick with their aesthetic.

“It is going to be interesting to kind of play with the song and see how [visuals] kind of changes, I think that’ll be really fun to see the difference.”

On the note of the new tunes’ newer tone, the girls said that they wanted to set people’s expectations to the unexpected, to show that they “dabble in a lot of different sounds.”

The sisters are both classically trained musicians, saying: “We really didn’t want to pigeonhole ourselves into a specific genre, because that’s just not who we are as musicians”.

“We have always kind of done, you know, classical jazz, all those kind of different stuff and I just think it’s amazing that we’re able to kind of like that in the album to kind of show, hey, we like doing all different types of things.”

The track, out today (14th February) has a Mazzy Star/Radiohead vibe (Girl Tones covering ‘High & Dry’ in the past) and when asked about any new inspiration Laila said that Bjork has been a current favourite of hers.

“I’ve been watching a lot of her music videos and I think her visuals are really cool and creative. It’s hard to branch out and explore new things and to connect with it, so it’s really satisfying when you find artists, new, old or new to you that clicks and you’re like, okay, I get this this is interesting”

“I feel like we’re both constantly kind of searching for that; just go and try on different hats of genres.”

‘I Know You Know’ is an interesting track lyrically, a relationship laced with betrayal and lies with lyrics like “your delusions stuck like glue”. Kenzie wrote the song a couple of years back about a friendship that sadly ended, a twist on the conventional romantic breakup song.

“I have noticed people are relating it romantically to things. When I wrote it, it was more about a platonic friendship, a falling out of that friendship. In addition to that the person was a self proclaimed pathological liar and Ii was so like I don’t know this person… I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

“I love this song because there’s a longing; you love this person and you’ve had such an amazing relationship with this person – but you don’t know that person.”

Kenzie explained that the song sounds like a sad song, but when you properly listen it’s almost a bit eerie, tasteful revenge: “How can you tell someone to let go of this wonderful relationship that you thought you had?”

“I 100% agree that a friend breakup is just as painful as a romantical breakup, or it can be.”

The new tune is produced by Cage’s Brad Shultz, who the band say is “always very insightful and a great outside perspective.” Saying that he definitely brought out and helped achieve the girl’s vision”.

There aren’t that many long or in-depth interviews with Girl Tones, so I am taking a lot from the selection available, rather than fewer that are more detailed. However, I think we can get a sense of them and what they ere doing last year. MUSE. spoke with Kenzie and Laila Crowe about going from being at university to embarking on world tours. It happened so quickly. Testament to the quality and popularity of their music. I think that we will see Girl Tones booked for some U.K. festivals in the summer (I hope so, anyway!):

“M: “Where was your favorite place to play or to visit [across Europe while touring]? Did you get to do much wandering around?”

GT: “We got to do some. It was kind of hard, because there's a lot of show days that were also travel days, but we did get to spend some time in Glasgow, which was really cool. That was one of my favorite places. I think the best crowd was in Cologne, Germany. The crowd was like, super engaged and really rowdy. And like they they were loving it, and it that energy was really good to feed off of and it was so much fun. That was, I think, the best crowd. And then I think Paris was really fun to play too, because it's just so… it was just crazy to be in Paris.”

M: “So how did this come about? I saw that you worked with the Cage The Elephant producer on some of your music as well. How did this all come into fruition?”

GT: “So basically, we started playing music in the same town as where Cage The Elephant is from. And Brad Schultz had heard through a friend about us playing at like these shows or whatever. And I was on campus one day just, you know, walking into school or whatever, and I looked and I saw Cage The Elephant followed us. And I was like, what is happening here? It was just crazy.”

“And then he messaged us, and was like, we should record something. And that's kind of where it started. Unfortunately, that was like right before Covid. So it delayed everything for about two years. But it kind of worked out for the best. You know what? And, yeah, that is crazy. That's like a story that no one else could possibly have. Wow. It's like, sometimes it's like, bro, our life's a movie!”

M: “I bet. That must have been terrifying, though, too. What was it like knowing that you'd be kind of suddenly blasted out in front of this massive audience?”

GT: “It was scary at first, but I feel like we rose to the challenge, because we’ve played music our whole lives. We had not experienced playing in front of like 3000 people, but we've always been performing in front of audiences, and I think that helps you prepare for the next step up. And of course, we were scared shitless that first show we played with them in Atlanta – it was at a 6000 people amphitheater”.

I am going to end with an interview from later last year. I will finish off with an interview from Baylor Lariat. They spoke with Girl Tones after their incredible and truly unforgettable set at Austin City Limits Music Festival. I love this interview because they shout out a Beck album that is my favourite of mine. They also say that a debut album is on its way. That is going to be the most anticipated of this year:

“Q: There’s such a raw, like expressive quality to your sound and tone. Where do these emotional threads come from?

Kenzie: “I would just say life in general … I mean, I was an angsty teenager, so these are kind of older songs. And then we have a song that’s not out yet, that is just about grief. It’s kind of heavy, but I mean, that’s kind of what we write about. I think it’s in a fun way, where you’re able to still enjoy the music without being like, ‘Wow, this is kind of sad.’ So yeah, in life in general, of course, there’s up there’s highs and lows.”

Q: Which bands or records would you say have shaped who you have become today?

Kenzie: “The White Stripes for sure.”

Laila: “I would say also, we love Beck, like specific albums. ‘Guero’ was a good rock one, and ‘Odelay,’ that’s the other one.

Q: What has been y’all’s biggest “rockstar” moment so far?

Laila: “The most surreal was definitely playing Red Rocks. We were like, ‘What have we gotten ourselves into?’ before we went on that stage.”

Kenzie: “That’s a pretty big moment, I would say that. And then after Lollapalooza, when we were walking around town and people came up to us.”

Q: How would you say you guys describe success for yourselves right now, not so much in a career sense, but like as artists?

Laila: “I would say that seeing people in the crowd, seeing it always feels like that’s a success, because this person has listened to the song and likes it enough to listen to it enough to know the words, and it most likely means something to them. And that’s just always so crazy, because I know how much music that I love means to me, and the thought of someone else having that feeling for our music is just like, that’s pretty cool, larger than life”.

I will finish here. There is a lot of hype around the brilliant Girl Tones. They have toured widely and their singles are all incredible. They are this fully-formed duo that I feel are only going to get better and better. Having spend a bit of time in the U.K., I hope they come back at some point this year. What else do they have planned? I guess a debut album is going to take up a lot of time, plus they ae busy on the road. Girl Tones are an act that you have to ensure you do not…

MISS out on them.

___________

Follow Girl Tones

Official:

https://www.girltones.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/girl.tones

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@girl.tones

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@GirlTones/videos

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Tq0nryXkwLARcHDMIZbY6?si=lBXIcapySnytIEiquW82jg

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/p/Girl-Tones-61561967697661/

FEATURE: Spotlight: chokecherry

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

chokecherry

__________

LAST November…

chokecherry put out their incredible debut album, Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls. I only heard it this month, but I am not a confirmed admirer of this duo. The San Francisco act is comprised primarily of Izzie Clark and E. Scarlett Levinson, who handle all songwriting and core instrumentation. Though Abri Crocitto is drummer with them, the newest interview are with Clark and Levinson, and they are on the publicity photos, so I am referring to chokecherry as a duo rather than a trio. I am going to come to some interviews with chokecherry, as they are a really interesting act. I want to get to some 2025 interviews. Building up to the release of Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls, there was definite interest around them. I do hope that there will be more interviews this year, as chokecherry are a phenomenal duo. Out of Rage spend time with chokecherry (oddly stylising their name both in all capitals and all lower-case). I am fascinated about how Izzie Clark and E. Scarlett Levinson and the early days of chokecherry. It will be curious seeing how they blossom and move through this year. I hope they do have some U.K. dates in mind for the future. A definitely appetite for them over here:

“We spoke to both vocalists, Izzie Clark and E. Scarlett Levinson and wasted no time diving into the band's origins. The two met through the incredibly bustling Bay Area music scene, though they really connected after matching on the dating app Hinge, which took them from acquaintances to strong friends as they met and began jamming together to create the band. Originally they were named Amber Machine, but after it was pointed out to the pair that the name sounded like an IPA, they landed on the more fitting CHOKECHERRY. Seemingly born out of the pair's desire to explore new avenues of music, blending their two previous styles of bands, CHOKECHERRY seems to genuinely be a band that's a perfect cocktail of music lovers coming together to make something special, something a few have called, very aptly, bubble-grunge.

This talk on their origins led to how the idea of two front-people came around, with them wanting to bounce off each other, disregarding a notion of making a specific song and letting it write itself. On using Izzie’s belting and screams to couple with Scarlett’s softer vocals; Scarlett reflects "We never really went in thinking, let’s make this kind of music - or let's be a Cocteau Twins like band – CHOKECHERRY just kind of happened the way it happened by getting in a room."

There's quite a range of genre and style within CHOKECHERRY. They explained that because of this, they had a very intentional release order and schedule for the fans; showing their softer and more emotive side with the first few singles then diving into their heavier work to show off a little what fans experience at their live shows, which we are sure have some fun mosh pit action to get thrown into.

They explained they wanted to do this to not only show their range but to give a taster of the genre diversity in their album, to showcase the high and lows of it, which we have to say is a brilliant way to do it. Off the back of that, the pair listed some influences for us - if you like any of the following bands, we implore you to get involved with CHOKECHERRY as they perfectly encapsulate their vibes in their work. The two listed off a wide range for us: MANNEQUIN PUSSY, PAVEMENT, MITSKI, WITCH ELM, JULIE, TURNSTILE, AMYL AND THE SNIFFERS, MY BLOODY VALENTINE, and COCTEAU TWINS - and even some classical influence from WAGNER which you can tell is blended well into their composition.

Scarlett and Izzie also explained their strong visual influence that the music created for them, stating that they were very hands on with everything that surrounded the music, from Izzie drawing the merch designs and co-directing some of the music videos, to Scarlett designing the videos and styling the outfits for all the visuals. They elaborated "The visuals definitely influence the music and vice-versa because we want to make music that's based on how we feel and that compels that in both mediums”.

I am going to end with an interview from KXLU. It is a radio transcript cut down for clarity, but it is an interview I was keen to highlight. Speaking about the San Francisco scene and music community and their remarkable debut, Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls. An album where chokecherry “spotlighted the spectrum of human vulnerability, from tenderness to rage, rendered as powerful femme rock which pulled from their roots in S.F.’s music scene – from dreamy shoegaze to hollering punk rebellion”:

“What communities and locations in S.F. and the Bay ultimately had a major influence on your inspirations and where you shaped your current sound?

SL: “We love the Bay Area music scene. I mean, it absolutely shaped us and everything that we do, and we have a real, like, love affair with it. I’m born and raised there. Izzie lived there for six years, and went to school there as well. We met there. The band started there. Izzie, do you want to talk about it?”

IC: “I feel like San Francisco is a really unique place to make music. There’s not really a music industry, so everyone’s very informed by their peers, and I think we’re all kind of bouncing off each other, getting inspired by each other. There’s also a great deal of diversity, I feel in the genres in the Bay Area – we have an amazing hip-hop scene, an incredible shoegaze scene. We have punk, also just rock-and-roll, which is kind of like what I used to play in my old band. And there’s also obviously a huge psych scene, and so many psych influences.

“And I think having all of those, that whole world of music is in such a small surface area. I think artists are very much influenced by each other, and they pick up so many nuances that are very much Bay Area – for example, like the hyphy music scene and all of that. There’s so many characteristics of the Bay Area music scene that you could hear in the music, which is really incredible.”

SL: “I mean, Izzie was completely right in that, for the Bay Area music scene, it’s very interesting when a scene exists outside of industry, because people are doing it for the love of and for the sake of – not for, like, commercial viability or whatever, and so it’s really authentic. And we have a really good house show scene.”

What inspired the maximalist style of the album art of this era?

SL: “I like stuff and things. [laughs] There’s a ton of things that I have. Always been kind of a kitschy, over-the-top person in terms of fashion style, visual [stuff]. I mean, Izzie co-directed the last two music videos too and has a very strong visual background. And I think that both of us have a tendency to – we really like the drama. I think that I really love the idea of Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls and the point of the album title. Like we’ve been over it so many times, but in the styling of chokecherry.

“Over the few years since [the band] began, I feel like we have gone, you know, a little bit Gothic, sometimes campy. I had a tendency to wear, like, bows for a long time. Both of us really like lipstick. And it’s not that any of those things are essential to who we are, but they are things that we’ve done, and we really like these brighter color palettes. And I think that, you know, with ripe fruit, and the colors and vibrancy that you would see in that – then the idea of something rotting, falling, youth wasted –  there are all sorts of visual identities and signifiers there, but there is something kind of gaudy and wasteful and opulent and over-the-top about it.

“We worked with an incredible photographer named Whitney [Otte]. She shot the album cover, and she just absolutely understood the vision, and it’s complete with scans of actual fruit. All of the things on the cover are real. So it’s real dead, preserved butterflies and bugs that she owns, and real, real fruit. Real flower petals, all, you know, all of that scanned and then Photoshopped it and laid over.

A large theme of your album is wrestling with the unattainability of imagined futures. What would the alternate versions of yourselves be up to now, if you weren’t pursuing your music project?

IC: “I feel like I would probably be doing a lot of visual art, because I used to do a lot of painting before I got into music and also maybe acting. I don’t know. I feel like we – Scarlett and I – would definitely both be doing some sort of art, but I don’t know, what would we be doing?”

SL: “That is a really amazing question. That’s one of my favorite questions we’ve ever been asked. So I think we would both be doing artistic things – we both have always done it, no matter what, throughout our whole lives. I think that the thing is we’ve both always been drawn to it in one form or another. From the time we were very young, I danced and you drew. You know, we did all sorts of things. So I think art would still be a really prevalent part of our lives. But, I don’t know. I think that maybe, I think I probably would have, like, succumbed to the pressure of going to grad school or tried to run a marathon.”

IC: “I could totally see either you’re on Broadway or the head of Amnesty International.”

SL: “I was supposed to work for the NRC doing anti-human trafficking stuff. I was at school, then COVID hit, so I didn’t end up doing that, but I think I would have probably ended up going to law school and dropping out. Quite frankly, I don’t think I would have made it, but I don’t really know. I think that no matter what, we would both still be making art, which is a cool, cool takeaway, but Broadway would be so funny. I would love that.

Yeah, I morbidly was gonna be like, ‘dead’, and I’m like, ‘no, it also isn’t true.’ You know what I mean? I think that one of the things with the imagined futures question too, is the things that are possible given the state of the world right now, and the things that you think about for yourself can be different. Or what you might have, or could have, or would have done differently if you had other options”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Carissa Leong

I will end with a glowing review of Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls from 3 Songs & Out. I know the dup are probably better known in their native U.S., though I can feel their influence starting to spread. As I said before, I hope that they come and play here at some point. I really love their debut album. It is one that I would recommend everyone listen to. I am really excited to see what this year holds in store for chokecherry. Such a magnificent band/duo (depending on how you wish to categorise them):

“Californian duo, Izzie Clark and E Scarlett Levinson, better known as chokecherry, released their debut album on the 14th of November via Fearless Records, 3 Songs found out about it being out and I gave it a listen, I’m really glad I did.

There is no better feeling in music than discovering a great act for the first time and to do it by listening to their debut album makes it even better when you know nothing about them. I miss the days when you would buy an album on spec, take it home, put it on and discover something excellent, although sometimes it didn’t quite work out that way.

I got a similar feeling, without the physical aspect of opening the album, from listening to chokecherry. I love harmonies, always have, and this act have them in spades with some more to spare on top of that. What they also have is a mix of indie, alt-rock, shoe gaze, punk and rock and a smattering of pop to create a wonderful base for their signing.

I don’t know if there is any intention that they tour the UK but if there is I’d like to see how this translates to a live show.

There is drama, there is melody, there are introspective moments and there are moments when you can almost feel the mosh pit forming. There are touches of the Cocteau Twins, Echobelly, Curve, in some bits early Simple Minds and so many other excellent bands but it’s very much chokecherry’s own sound. They are clearly very accomplished musicians and writers but the real joy in this album is in being drawn into it, discovering each new song, deciding it’s the best one on the album then discovering you were wrong only to go back, listen to it again and realise they are all excellent.

The theme that comes through very strongly throughout this album is an exploration of what it means to be truly human, but also a lament, to an extent, for how difficult the world has become and how many people seem to be forgetting their basic humanity. This is an album worth of celebrating true humanity, how we should treat each other, how we should want to be treated and an almost plaintive plea for people to get back to that way of living. It’s a political album with a small p focussing on the need for us to be kinder to each other, to care about each other and to start making that change back to where we were and should be. It deals with these themes in a very personal way, start with your direct relationships and take it from there. Not a bad idea given how messed up the world has become and how intolerant people seem to be of each other these days.

As I said earlier every song feels like it’s the best on the album but my own personal favourite, from repeated listens, is 'You Love It When'. Something about it just clicked for me. I loved the rocky element, the chorus, the longing, if you only listen to one song as a taster I’d recommend this one, it should hook you in to your new favourite band although I think it’s pushed hard by 'Porcelain Warrior' and 'February', so why not listen to all three and then make your mind up.

If they are touring over here I, for one, am in and will be up the front to see if they can translate this album and energy onto the stage. Chokecherry, remember the name, I think you’re going to be hearing a lot more about this album and band”.

The sensational chokecherry need to be on your playlist. There is this amazing connection between Izzie Clark and E Scarlett Levinson. Ripe Fruit Rots and Falls is a stunning album and a sign of things to come. Primed for very big things, go and follow chokecherry on social media. When it comes to this stunning duo, the future looks…

VERY bright indeed.

___________

Follow chokecherry

Official:

https://chokecherry4ever.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/chokecherry4ever/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@chokecherry4ever

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi3jBr_ut4ooqHTuhc7joig

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6FO0bkcJ4D8MJ1REvBRhNT?si=MT_Zi3BVQ3CmlItachUcbg

FEATURE: Spotlight: Grace Davies

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Grace Davies

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LAST year…

was a big one for Grace Davies. She released her debut album, The Wrong Side of 25, and a string of amazing singles, including MDE, and Super Love Me. This is an amazing British artist from Blackburn, Lancashire. It is a part of the world I have perhaps not highlighted on my site before. There is still this massive focus on London, so anyone who hails from beyond the capital is especially interesting to me. Even if Grace Davies has been in music for a little while, her debut album did put her under the spotlight. Now, as we are in a new year, this incredible artist is primed to have a massive year. There are a few great interviews I want to come to, published around the release of The Wrong Side of 25. It is a spellbinding album from a remarkable songwriter. Ones to Watch sat down and spent some time with the supremely talented Grace Davies:

“For Grace, a supremely talented singer from Blackurn, UK struggling through the whirlpool of writing sessions, gigs and meetings in London, turning 25 almost made her quit. This album, titled after that before and after moment, is a recklessly vulnerable work of beauty, a testament to just how much work and perseverance is necessarily to survive in this industry. Its toils, when filtered through emotional and melodic expression, merit wondrous attention. We sat down with this fiery and fun singer for a deep dive on the album, good curry in London, and which is the wrong side of 25:

OnesToWatch: I believe being an artist is one of the most difficult jobs on earth. So, why are you an artist?

Grace Davies: It's a really good question, and I think there must be some sort of weird psychological thing going on to put yourself under that much stress and pressure every single day. 
There must be something wrong with me. But it's the only thing that I know how to do with all of my being, if that makes sense. It's the only thing that I've never trained for that feels correct in my life and that I learned to do without even learning to do it. 
And I just love music, I've been surrounded by performance since I was three. As someone who isn't a big talker, the thought of therapy and diaries is weird. But, being a songwriter is my vessel for that sort of stuff. So, without sounding cringey, I think being an artist is very much in my DNA.

If your musical abilities were taken away from you, what could you imagine yourself doing right now?

Interior design. 


Very specific.

I love George Clark and his architectural programs. And, you know, I can appreciate a good sofa and a good wallpaper, you know? That's my other love. Either that or I would get super, super nerdy and work in Formula One in some sort of capacity.

Well, let’s get to the album, because it is kind of impressive. So, Grace, the hard-hitting question is, which side of 25 is the wrong side?

We'll leave it to imagination about which side I’m on… I came up with the title on my 26th birthday and it was something that I said to my mum when she was like, “Oh, you're closer to 30 than you are 20,” and I was like, yeah, “Wrong side of 25.” I think it just stemmed from me having this sinking feeling that I'm not quite where I need to be in my mid 20s. There's a lot of things that happen when you're 25. You hit this level of “adulting,” where everyone seems to be getting their shit together, particularly from where I'm from. 
A lot of my friends were either buying houses with their partners or getting engaged or getting pregnant. And meanwhile I can barely afford to pay my rent in London because I'm paying for an album. So it's that panic, where your collagen decreases, you're in the “overs” category on the X factor and you're suddenly with Wagner. The industry also says that when you’re past 25, you’re too old to be a pop star. That’s what the album’s about, really. It’s my fear of time moving forward. There’s a song on there called “The Youngest I’ll Ever Be.” You know, you watch movies about people going back in time and changing things, like one of my favorite films, About Time, where he gets in a wardrobe, goes back in time, and reverses things he’s done. Everyone questions whether they could’ve done things differently, or better, but you can’t. I hate that. So the album is about time, and existential crises about being on the wrong side of 25, as some would say, aka me.

Well, if you’re on the wrong side, I’m way past it. I remember when I was younger, we were having this weird conversation about ageism and life endurance and purpose. There was an old movie called Logan's Run, where society valued youth so much that you ascended into your death at age 30. Sometimes it feels like that, in these industries.

It does feel like that. But now, it's been three years since I came up with this album, and I do feel a bit better now. So, there is hope.

There is hope. The concept of “aging out of being a pop star” is interesting, 1) because it’s so often gendered and misogynistic toward growing women, and 2) because it presents a looming failure in front of budding artists who are just starting to reach musical maturity. Were you wrestling with any inner turmoil about powering through these roadblocks and choosing this as a career? How did you keep up the strength to persevere?

I think I hit such a rock bottom with it that I felt there was no way to go other than to just do a 180. At the end of my last EP, in 2022, I was done, I'd already had the conversations with my manager of like, I'm going to quit. This is it for me. I've tried doing the independent artist route, and just financially and mentally, it takes such a huge toll. Particularly when you're trying to put things out to the same standards of major labels, it's really, really challenging. So I felt quite drained by all of that. I was really done. Then, I got put in a writing session that I really, really didn't want to be in. I didn't know the person that I was working with, and I was just over it a little bit. And we ended up writing “A Wonderful, Boring Normal Life” that day, which is on the album. I wrote it with Paul, who I'd never met before and he co-produced the whole album with me. I feel like that day – I don't know what happened in that session, but it very much made me realise or remember what I loved about this job. So I said, “Okay, things can’t get worse than they have been, so we either quit or do a complete 180.” It really is such a gamble, so we decided to go all in”.

Actually, before continuing with interviews from last year, I want to take us back to 2022. That strange year where the pandemic was in full flight, it was a tough time for artists trying to break through. However, it is interesting to look back on that time now. I do want to drop an interview in from NOCTIS and, as they say, this unveiling of a Pop star. Someone who I think will get even bigger and popular as we head through this year:

“Two years after becoming an independent, Davies has since locked down a Top 40 single and sold out the prestigious St. Pancras Old Church for her first ever headline show. Without the backing of a label, she’s had the support of fans by her side through every inch of her journey.

‘It Wasn’t Perfect, But We Tried’ sets Davies up for her “big pop star moment”; big audacious choruses, sublime visuals and a bold sense of authenticity. Infused euphoria can be felt through each of its five tracks, of which some date back almost five years. Carefully polished, each song has taken on a new lease of life, now being the perfect moment for their debut.

Her story is more than just inspiring, it’s real. It hasn’t always been highs for Davies upon entering the industry, so now seeing her riding on waves of soaring success feels the utmost deserved. Speaking to Noctis Magazine about her journey so far, please welcome your new favourite pop star…

Hello Grace! You’ve had a whirlwind of a year, how have you been?

It’s been a wild, wild year! A very busy one and also a very tiring one, but also just very fulfilling to have this new EP out there and having something to show for a year of being stuck in producer mode, which was new to me but also very fun.

What has been the biggest change for you in this last year?

I was living at my parents house and I’ve now moved back to London. I lived in the city for four years and moved back during the pandemic, so that I could fund the “artist thing” independently. Because realistically, I couldn’t pay for that and rent at the same time.

It was a big thing for me being able to move back to London. But being here with all the people that I’m meant to be with every day, music wise, is really fun again”. 

Your new project, ‘It Wasn’t Perfect, But We Tried’, is beautiful! This is your third EP in three years – how did making this EP differ from the rest?

I wanted to level it up in every kind of aspect of life, especially with the artwork and music videos. It’s such a small thing, but the visual aspect of a body of work really matters a lot. I’ve never really walked away from either of my EPs being like, “I love that artwork, I’m really happy with that CD and the pages and all the photos that are in it” and with this one I wanted that, I wanted to feel like a pop star.

I remember the photoshoot on that day, it was when I was wearing the “Wolves” artwork outfit, I said to my manager, “I feel like a pop star,” and throughout my whole nine years in the industry I’ve never felt like that before. Not that that should matter, but I just wanted to level up in that sense. I feel like I’ve stepped it up a little bit each time I’ve done an EP, or hope I have anyway. I just wanted it to be one big euphoric “I’m here” moment.

You helped produce each track on the EP – how was getting to grips with this?

I think because I have such a strong vision and I can hear things in my brain, it’s just about sitting there and flicking through sounds and going, “that’s what I can hear!” It’s difficult to get to grips with the new system, but then at the same time I think when you can hear something it just sort of happens. Toby Scott who I produced “Wolves”, “Breathe” and “Supervillain” with, we spent weeks just sitting in his studio in Brighton next to each other at the computer screen and that was such a brilliant process for me.

It was the same sort of thing that I did on the first EP, I went to Sweden and sat with the producer for a couple of weeks. But this time, I just felt way more involved. There’s a song called “Windows & Walls” on the EP which I must have re-recorded the vocal and piano like two or three times because I just couldn’t get it right.

I think producing something yourself is amazing because you get your name above the door, but there’s also this thing where you can’t step back and say it’s finished very easily when you’ve written it, sung it and produced it. You’re way too close to it all and that’s something I really struggled with this year, just knowing when things were right. I was relying on people around me to be like, “Yes, it’s fine! Step away from the computer!”

You started self-producing throughout lockdown, is it something you’re going to continue with?

Yeah, definitely. No one cares about my music as much as I do. I think I always put a massive amount of pressure on myself to make sure that it’s really good and really right. And you can’t always rely on other people to get it as good as you necessarily would. So yeah, I’ve just got to keep chipping away with it and learn more production stuff. Fun!”.

In July, CLASH spoke with Grace Davies as she released The Wrong Side of 25. It was a moment that she had been waiting for for so long. I do think that it is one of the best debut albums of last year. Davies is a stunning artist who is going to be in music for a very long time to come. I might be a bit late to get tickets, but she plays London’s Jazz Cafe on 5th February, so go and catch her if you can:

“Davies was motivated to start writing when she was 15, and keen to enter competitions for young local musicians in Blackburn and its surrounding areas that required artists to perform original material. In order to do this, aided by YouTube tutorials, she sat on her bedroom floor every night and taught herself piano. “For me, it was always more of a necessity than something I wanted to do. It wasn’t until further down the line that I realised I actually love songwriting. Now I see it as something I need for my own sanity. I see it as therapy, It’s like writing a diary entry.” She says.

“When I look through old school reports and speak to my mum about what she used to hear at parents’ evenings, all the teachers would be like ‘Grace is exceptional at creative writing’ and I always just kind of ignored that. And now that I’m a full time songwriter it’s like, well that makes sense doesn’t it?”

She goes on to break down the overarching theme of the record. “‘The Wrong Side Of 25’ is something I said to my mum on my 26th birthday. I’ve always had this weird panic about time. You know when you watch those films where they go back in time and change things. I always get really freaked out by that because I would love to do that, but I cannot, because that isn’t real!”

She expands, “It’s like how X factor has an ‘Over 25s’ category. Like, am I now suddenly grouped in with Wagner? Because realistically, that is a perfect example of how the music industry puts a shelf life on your artistry, by essentially implying that if you’re over 25, you’re too old to be a pop star. It’s mortifying to me that I’m now supposedly in that category, especially as someone who is considered an ‘up and coming artist.’”

Now 28, Davies admits that she no longer feels as existential as she did when she began working on the project. “I do think that the album that I’ve created now is head and shoulders above what I could have created seven years ago. It’s not even comparable to the songs I was writing back then.” She explains, “So in some weird and twisted way, me landing on making an album now is perfect, because I couldn’t imagine making better music for my first album. I love it so much.”

Breaking down the eighteen month process that led to the record’s inception, Davies tells CLASH “I wanted to bring in orchestras, I wanted to bring in live musicians and do things that I had never done before. Music has become this thing that people can make so easily on their laptops, and you can replicate sounds so easily, but you can’t replicate the magic of being in a room with musicians.” She continues, “Again, I thought, I’m gonna do this for me. If this is the first and last thing I ever do, it’s going to be exceptional.”

“I’ve been performing with jazz and swing bands since I was a teenager, so being in front of a 15-piece orchestra and having them play my music back to me was a priority. I saved all the pennies in the world to do that. We recorded live drums, live brass, and found a producer that completely got me and my sound, and didn’t have an ego that excluded me from the production,” she says.

For independent artists, touring and performing live is becoming an increasingly challenging landscape, especially in an ecosystem where grassroots venues are closing their doors for good at an alarming rate. On November 6th, Davies and her band will play their biggest headline show to date at The Jazz Cafe in Camden – a venue that in 2020 had to run a crowdfunding campaign to save it from permanent closure.

Speaking on this issue, Davies tells CLASH “These spaces are crucial. If we only support artists that can fill out Wembley, or only go to shows at the O2, a much bigger percentage of the music industry dies, compared to the fractional minority that can fill those arenas and stadiums. It’s so important that artists use those indie venues, but also that those venues and the public support us. It’s a symbiotic relationship”.

I am finishing with a wonderful and interesting interview with HUNGER. Although Grace Davies is a slightly new name to me, listening to The Wrong Side of 2025 and her work before, you can tell how good she is and how much she wants this. That music is her passion and she is going to make wonderful albums for years. A tremendous artist that we should be very proud of:

“What was the experience of co-producing the album like?

I loved it. I’ve never had more fun in my career than when I made this album, because I got to create music that didn’t necessarily fit radio moulds or would be a TikTok sound. It was just about making something really fun and experimenting. Paul (Whalley) has a wicked studio. He’s not the kind of producer who just works off a laptop — his space is filled with instruments of all shapes and kinds. That was a completely new experience for me. What’s great is that he understands I can produce, even though I have more of a producer’s head than an engineer’s hands. He’ll say, You just tell me what to do. Even if I’m not physically doing it myself, the idea came from my brain — so in that sense, I’m still producing it. He’ll say, I’m just your engineer for the day, which is refreshing, because a lot of producers have pretty big egos when it comes to that sort of thing.

Do you ever feel pressure to make ‘TikTokable’ music?

There is pressure. I think all artists feel it — it’s just a matter of whether you acknowledge it or not. In the past, especially when choosing singles, I’d always think, Oh, has this one got a lyric in it that could be a trend? And I just didn’t want to do that with this album. If something blows up on that app, then honestly, brilliant, because we know what a powerful tool it is, and, unfortunately, it is the only way a song can do well for an independent artist these days. You can have all of the Spotify billboards and the radio plays in the world, but it doesn’t move the needle anymore. So, [TikTok] is incredibly important, but I’ll never create something that feels inauthentic to me. It’s just not who I am. I have to be able to sleep at night, twenty years from now, knowing that I made an album that made me happy.

You have a beautiful song on your album, ‘Butterfly’. Can you tell us a bit about that?

It’s an emotional one. It’s one we’ve been performing live for about a year now at little acoustic shows and stuff, and it’s always the one that gets people. It’s been a real underdog in terms of the album because it’s so stripped back, so it’s been really nice to see the reaction to that. It’s a song that means a lot to me, and one that I debated writing for a long time because it didn’t feel like my story to tell. It’s about my grandparents, and I didn’t want to write something really sad about the fact that they had Alzheimer’s and dementia. I wanted to write something that felt like it honoured their memory and was a love song for them — one they would have sung to each other at the start of their relationship, and also at the end. It feels like a nice nod to that experience without being too traumatic.

If you could go back to 2022 when you nearly gave up music, what would you tell yourself?

I honestly would say the best is yet to come, even though we’re doing things on a smaller scale in terms of the number of listeners, or the fan bases that you once had on a show like X Factor compared to now. It’s been eight years, but the enjoyment I got out of making this record has been like nothing I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve never felt prouder of myself and my music.

Who are your biggest inspirations?

There are very obvious nods to the artists that I grew up on in this album such as ELO, ABBA, Robbie Williams, Roxy Music and Earth, Wind and Fire. There are numerous references to the ’70s and ’80s. I’m very lucky to have had parents who had excellent music taste, particularly my dad, so I just wanted to make an album that felt like those artists who made me who I am. They made me so in love with music, and they made me want to pursue music, and if I really think what my younger self would want to do, it would be to make music like that. And that’s what I’ve done”.

Following perhaps the biggest year of her career so far, this year will see her capitalising on the release of her debut album. I guess there will be new singles and some big tour dates. Maybe a few festivals. I have seen various sites tip Grace Davies for success this year. It is an important time for the Blackburn artist. Her fanbase is growing and there is a lot of attention coming her way. Music that instantly moves you and lodges in your brain, this is a unique and spectacular artist…

TO behold.

_________

Follow Grace Davies

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/itsgracedavies/

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/gracedavies

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/55VbVrjmAWcvCknVFfPzvK?si=ahYAcg14SCqfH99n2bvYfQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-V7HWd70GVDGNdffwEb2RQ

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/gracedaviesofficial

FEATURE: If She Knew What She Wants: The Bangles’ Different Light at Forty

FEATURE:

 

 

If She Knew What She Wants

The Bangles’ Different Light at Forty

__________

THERE may be some…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Bangles in 1986

debate as to which albums from The Bangles is very the best. I personally love their 1986 album, Different Light. As it was released on 13th January, I am marking forty years. However, when it comes to my favourite song of theirs, it will always be Eternal Flame. That was included on their 1988 album, Everything. I think the consensus is that their 1984 debut, All Over the Place, is their crowning glory. That Different Light is more commercial. However, think about the legacy of the songs on the album and how they are played to this day. The Prince-written Manic Monday. Walk Like an Egyptian. Walking Down Your Street. The amazing four-piece of Susanna Hoffs, Vicki Peterson, Michael Steele and Debbi Peterson released a phenomenal second studio album. I am a particular fan of Susanna Hoffs and follow her on social media. I just love her voice and feel some of the best moments across The Bangles’ career are defined by her – including Eternal Flame. However, let’s talk about Different Light. If their debut had a more 1960s-indebted sound, this was more Top 40. Some would say radio-friendly and commercial, though it was the U.S. group changing directions and evolving. If some in 1986 were not keen on this musical switch, in retrospect, Different Light is seen as a slick and refreshing album. One that still sounds great today. In terms of modern-day groups like The Bangles, I guess you could maybe point to HAIM. Paramore? I don’t think there is anyone exactly like them. That is a shame, as the connection in the group and their incredible back catalogue should inspire a contemporary tribute. Maybe nobody can touch The Bangles!

Bringing in new songwriters and collaborators, Different Light reached number two in the U.S. and three in the U.K. It was that move from L.A. street sounds and something rawer to a more polished sound that was a notable shift. I think that Different Light fitted more into the landscape of 1986. Think about the albums and artists from that time. Madonna and Peter Gabriel released incredible albums. I want to move to American Songwriter. They note how Different Light too The Bangles to the stratosphere. It was an immense album that make them a worldwide success:

“Pioneers” might not be the most accurate term. But it’s fair to say that the pop music landscape didn’t include a lot of groups like The Bangles in the early 80s. Only their fellow Californians, The Go-Go’s, were enjoying much success at the time as an all-girl band.

The Bangles, at least originally, featured more of a raw, rocking sound. Their 1984 debut album All Over The Place contained nine originals out of 11 songs on the record, including five songs that were written solely by bassist Vicki Peterson. Peterson shared vocals pretty evenly with Susannah Hoffs. Sound-wise, they hearkened back to 60s garage rock and power pop on the album.

A confluence of events helped change their sound and commercial prospects. First, Prince took a shine to them, and he offered them a song called “Manic Monday” that was pretty much ready to heat and serve. That song featured a softer, more pop-friendly tone than the first record.

In addition to that, the band’s writers just didn’t have as many original songs in the hopper that seemed single-worthy. Producer David Kahne saw the opportunity to take advantage of the anticipated burst of popularity. He commissioned some other songs that seemed perfect for mid-80s pop radio. Kahne also took the playing out of the band’s hands on these tracks, heavily relying on session instrumentalists to fill out the sound.

The Bangles struck gold on MTV with a series of increasingly popular videos. In the years after the record’s completion, some of the band members would express ambivalence about the direction Different Light took away from their rocking roots. But they couldn’t deny the triple-platinum success that assured them career-long prominence.

Revisiting ‘Different Light’

It’s understandable that The Bangles might not have loved the cover songs being chosen as the key singles. But they deserve credit for putting their stamp on them in undeniable fashion. Susannah Hoffs, who became the unofficial voice of the group because of her prominence on the big hits, deserves a lot of credit for that. (The media’s focus on her would cause problems for the band down the line.)

Hoffs injects sultriness into the narrator’s harried tale in “Manic Monday”. She captures the pathos in Jules Shear’s lovely character sketch “If She Knew What She Wants”. And she runs wild with the final verse of the novelty “Walk Like An Egyptian”.

But Hoffs’ leads wouldn’t have proven quite so effective without the gorgeous harmony vocals provided by the other members of the band (Vicki Peterson, her drummer sister Debbi Peterson, and bassist Michael Steele). The album tracks might not pop like the singles, but they’ve got heart and style. Steele’s solo lead on the downcast “Following” stands out from that pack.

When they returned in 1988 with Everything, they had ditched Kahne. But some lingering resentment about the division of labor eventually led to a hiatus. Their hearts might have belonged to a different musical era. But Different Light proved that The Bangles were right on time”.

I shall get to some reviews soon. In 2013, The Bangles’ Vicki Peterson was interviewed by Rediscover the 80s. She was asked, among other things, about Different Light and The Bangles in 1986. Filing videos for iconic songs that were played on MTV. How the band ascended to new heights and were known everywhere. I think, forty years later, Different Light still stands up:

“Q: Please tell us a little about when, how and why The Bangles came to be. Your voices blend so perfectly, was that the case right from the start? How did the band's name get chosen and evolve? Please tell us a little about the other members and what each of you brought to the group.

Vicki: In late 1980, Debbi and I found ourselves all that remained of our post-high school band, and fortuitously met Susanna Hoffs through an ad in a newspaper. Yes, the first time we met to just see if we clicked, it was slightly magical. Our voices did have a natural blend and we shared that anachronistic passion for music of the '60s. We got the name "The Bangs" from an article on hairstyles in an old issue of Esquire magazine... we soon had to change it because of a New Jersey band (an all-boy band, no less) and thus added the extra consonants.

Our first bass player was Annette Zilinskas, who was 19 at the time, lovely and talented, but loved Rockabillly music more than the pop we were writing. We soon found Michael Steele who was purported to be the best female bass player in town, but was actually one of the best, period. Susanna had never been in a real band before, but she was creative and energetic, a good writing partner with an angel's voice.

Q: "Manic Monday" was the band's first big pop hit and it was actually written by Prince. How did The Bangles end up recording that song? How was it offered? How did the song evolve as you made it your own?

Vicki: Prince apparently saw our "The Hero Takes A Fall" video and became interested in the band, appearing mysteriously at shows and playing an encore or two with us. When we were in the studio, we got a message that Prince had a tape for us. There were two songs on the cassette - one of which was "Manic Monday". I think it was Apollonia, one of his "proteges", doing the vocals on his version. He told us we could just use the tracks and replace the vocals, but of course we tracked it ourselves from scratch.

"Manic Monday" was the first single released from their Different Light album in January of 1986 and climbed the charts eventually peaking at #2 in April. It became an international hit and also reached the top 5 in eight other countries. The song was written by Prince under his pseudonym Christopher and, coincidentally, was blocked from reaching #1 by another Prince song, "Kiss". This song often runs through my head on many Monday mornings. Here is the video for "Manic Monday" by The Bangles...

Q: Did you ever get any feedback from Prince to find out what he thought of your recording?

Vicki: Prince came to a rehearsal before the song came out and gave us the thumbs up (even though there was no keyboard player that day and I was playing the harpsichord figure on the guitar...and not well, I might add).

Q: Then you had a worldwide hit with "Walk Like an Egyptian". What can you share with us regarding how this song was conceived and created? How was it decided that you'd sing the first verse of the song

Vicki: This song was written by Liam Sternberg and its provenance is still a mystery to me. All I know is that David Kahne, our producer at the time, showed up at rehearsal with a tape of a demo of the song, sung with a droll charm by Marti Jones. I realized that we were never gonna write a song like that and there was nothing remotely like it on our album so far (or anywhere else, for that matter) and I agreed to try it in the studio. We had a sing-off for the verses, with Kahne as head judge. Don't know that I'd ever do it that way again.

"Walk Like an Egyptian" was released as a single in September of 1986 and quickly reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December and held the top spot for four weeks. This was the first song by an all-female group playing their own instruments to reach the top of the Billboard Hot 100. It was a worldwide smash hit which also reached the top of the chart in at least six other countries. Vicki sings the opening verse and then the girls take turns singing the others. The song received heavy radio airplay and I always for some reason remember in the video the close-up on Susanna Hoffs' eyes when she looks from side to side. Here is that video for "Walk Like an Egyptian" by The Bangles...

Q: Again, did you have any feeling that this song might become the hugely successful pop hit that it did? What were your feelings about "Walk Like an Egyptian" when you first recorded it? What are your feelings about the song now 27 years later?

Vicki: I really didn't think the label would release it, but I did have a feeling that if they did, it wouldn't be ignored. There was a period in the '90s, when I was living in New Orleans and playing with the Continental Drifters, when I could not imagine myself ever singing the song again. Now, though, when we go out and finish the night with it, it's a blast. People just love it and have so much fun.

Q: How about the other hits from that album like "If She Knew What She Wants" or "Walking Down Your Street"? Any comments or details about those?

Vicki: "If She Knew What She Wants" is a smart, thoughtful song by the smart and thoughtful Jules Shear. I liked the idea of the vocals being performed in a call-and-response structure, and enjoyed the process of slightly changing Jules' original arrangement - which I always have to remember whenever I have the privilege of singing the song with Jules.

Different Light was released in January of 1986. It eventually went 3x platinum and reached #2 on the Billboard album chart. Including to the two covered earlier, it included four hit singles including "If She Knew What She Wants" which reached #29 in July of 1986 and "Walking Down Your Street" which reached #11 in April of 1987. The Bangles were as hot as any band in pop music at that time.

Q: Were you prepared for attention and all of the other things that come with the pop stardom? What are some of your best memories and coolest things you were able to do at the height of popularity for The Bangles?

Vicki: It was a bit of a surprise that many of the things we were asked to do following the album's success had absolutely nothing to do with music. My favorite moments were when we were thrown in with other musicians (during a TV show or awards celebration) and I could feel like a peer to some of my musical heroes.

Q: Your videos received lots of exposure on MTV back then. Did you enjoy making the music videos back then? What do you remember about working with Gary Weis, who directed a couple of your videos, and how those videos were made?

Vicki: I just ADORE Gary Weis. The Rutles was a big favorite of mine and I was so excited to be working with its director. I enjoyed working on his videos in particular, although the video for "Egyptian" was sort of smashed into a tour schedule and was a bit chaotic. We worked with a choreographer in Florida and then shot the performance bit in New York City. The way I remember it, Gary just went out into the streets and grabbed people and had them "walk like Egyptians" all while we were getting into costume for the performance/dance bits”.

A couple of reviews I want to get to before wrapping up. On 13th January, we will mark forty years of Different Light. In 2003, SLANT provided their impressions on one of the biggest albums of 1986. After Different Light, The Bangles would release Everything in 1988. If you have not heard this album before then do go and spend some time with it. I think it is fantastic and it actually does not sound dated. Many albums from that time do:

“Though it was considered a slicker, more commercial move for the Bangles at the time of its release, Different Light (the band’s sophomore effort) sounds surprisingly fresh in hindsight. From their Beatles-inspired moniker to their warm, Mamas & the Papas-esque harmonies, the band seemed determined to pay homage to the past. But their ‘60s-style pop melodies and classic rock references (check the Doors-ish, carnival-like keyboards and quirky guitars of “Standing in the Hallway” and “Return Post”) were deftly matched with the then-current new wave and rock rhythms of the early ’80s. “Following” is a dark acoustic ballad reminiscent of Joni Mitchell’s brand of ’70s folk, while the title track rollicks along with genuine pop-punk fervor. Guitarist Vicki Peterson’s voice might pale in comparison to Susanna Hoffs’s distinctive vocal, but her songwriting skills are clearly the strongest here: “I wanna paint your portrait/Hang your colors on my wall/Discussing form and content with my friends and drinks.” And while its biggest hits were written by other artists—the Prince-penned “Manic Monday,” the novelty tune “Walk Like an Egyptian” (a slice of ’80s-pop kitsch that sounds out of place here), and “If She Knew What She Wants”—album tracks like “Angels Don’t Fall in Love” and “Let It Go,” which were written by the Bangles themselves, are the glue that holds Different Light together”.

Let’s finish off with this review of as truly fantastic album. I do think there has been retrospection and more positivity towards an album that divided some in 1986. Given the longevity of it and how many of the songs are played today, there is no denying it is important and popular. A massive chart success for The Bangles, I do wonder if its members will think about it on its anniversary. It was a magic year for them:

“The Bangles were special because they had all the members on lead and backing vocals. Susanna Hoffs and Vicki Peterson also played guitars. Micki Steele played bass and guitars on some tracks while Debbi Peterson played the drums. They were all seasoned and had paid their dues. Hoffs was 27 years, Vicki Peterson was 28, Steele was 31 and was also known as the founder of The Runaways, before leaving them prior to their first album and Debbie Peterson was the youngest at 25.

Manic Monday

The song is written by “Christopher” and Hoffs. “Christopher” was a pseudonym for Prince. At 157.5 million streams on Spotify, it’s one of their biggest. Only “Eternal Flame” and “Walk Like An Egyptian” are bigger.

In a Different Light

My favourite track. It’s rocking from the start and the vocals remind me of “California Dreamin” from The Mamas And The Papas

Walking Down Your Street

This was a skip for me.

Walk Like an Egyptian

192 million streams on Spotify. It’s so overplayed these days, but goddamn it was infectious when it came out. The vocal melody was so unique. Press play and start walking like an Egyptian.

Standing in the Hallway

It’s pop rock, with a bit of rhythm and blues.

Return Post

A rare running time of 4.22 however the track was not their best.

If She Knew What She Wants

A Jules Shear cover from 1985 which has this 60’s feel.

The album standard slips towards the backend with tracks like “Let It Go”, “September Gurls”, “Angels Don’t Fall in Love” and “Not Like You” being seen as throwaways.

However the introspective acoustic cut, “Following”, written and sung by Steele, is excellent”.

A tremendous album that was a left-turn from their 1984 debut, Different Light brought them into households around the world. Released on 13th January, 1986, I discovered this album years later. Eternal Flame was the first song of theirs that hit me. However, I really love Different Light. Its title is appropriate. Getting to see the Los Angeles band in a new light. One that was perhaps a bit brighter. It does have that sound of California, whereas All Over the Place could be more about England, or even New York. Forty years down the line and Different Light still shines. A brilliant album whose hits and great deeper cuts make it an essential listen. Do go and check out this…

SIMPLY wonderful album.

FEATURE: Family Business: Fugees’ The Score at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

Family Business

Fugees’ The Score at Thirty

__________

ONE of the most important…

IN THIS PHOTO: Pras, Lauryn Hill and Wyclef Jean of Fugees/PHOTO CREDIT: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

and extraordinary albums of the 1990s turns thirty soon. The masterpiece second studio album from Fugees, the trio consisted of Ms. Lauryn Hill, Pras (Michel) and Wyclef Jean. I shall finish with a review for The Score. It is one of the biggest creative leaps ever. 1994’s Blunted on Reality is an okay album, but it only has moments of brilliance. The Score was a huge step forward. I think because it featured more of Ms. Lauryn Hill. Her voice seemed to be more prevalent. She would release one solo album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, in 1998. Released on 13th February, 1996, The Score reached number one in the U.S. Production was handled by the Fugees, Jerry Duplessis, and Warren Riker. In terms of he tracks on the album, it features Ready or Not, Zealots, Killing Me Softly with His Song, and Fu-Gee-La. It also has incredible deeper cuts such as How Many Mics and Family Business. Fugees have performed together since The Score was released, though there has been nothing in terms of huge gigs or anything significant. I feel there are splits and tensions within the group. At the end of last year, Pras (Pras Michel) was sentence to fourteen years in prison for using money to peddle political influence in the U.S. It means that the trio will not reform or play any gigs together. It sort of gives The Score a more complex legacy than it would otherwise have had. Not that members of Fugees have been free from controversy through their careers. However, with the sentencing of Pras Michel, it does mean that any hopes of a fully-fledged tour or reform is now impossible. Certified seven-times platinum in the U.S. and one of the most popular and influential albums in Hip-Hop history, I do hope there is retrospective about The Score around its thirtieth anniversary. Controversy and splits within the group do not take away from the brilliance and importance of The Score.

In 2021, SPIN shared an article that they first published in April 1996. An interesting interview with Fugees, it must have been exciting seeing the trio release this amazing new album after what could only be described as a somewhat middling debut. The Score was the album they had been promising. Their second studio album would prove to be their last:

“In hip-hop’s cosmology, “hardcore” rap means a cantankerous MC kicking rhymes like bodies over harsh, skeletal beats. “Alternative,” on the other hand—singing, melodies, instrumentation, any sort of peace-and-love attitude—translates as “no skills.” So hip-hop trio the Fugees—Wyclef “Clef” Jean, Lauryn “L” Hill, and Prakazrel “Pras” Michel—aren’t at all pleased to be in this section.

“We are a hip-hop group, point blank,” says 20-year-old Hill, a doe-eyed gamine of startling beauty and as brawny and nimble a rapper as she is a rapturous soul singer. “‘Alternative’ is like saying ‘she’s attractive for a dark-skinned girl,’ a backhanded compliment. Just because we can play instruments, we can’t be real hip-hop? The reason I make the kind of music I make is to bring musicality back to the ghetto. It’s about being creative, and sometimes adding a motherfucker if it means getting my point across.”

The Fugees titled their sophomore effort The Score because it settles that issue the best way possible, with moody spaghetti-Western riffs, noodling jazz horns, R&B memories, Jamaican rude-boyisms, a radical reinvention of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and the Refugee Camp’s own live instrumentation. The Score leads off with “Red Intro,” a street-corner poetry rant from Ras Baraka, son of poet Amiri Baraka. A flowing edit takes us to the Fugees, smoked out and ripping lyrics back and forth to sound an old-school battle cry. “I used to be underrated / Now I take iron / Makes my shit constipated / I’m more concentrated,” raps Hill.

“That gangsta shit is B.S.,” says Jean, the group’s live wire guitar hero and at 26 the oldest. “The real thugs and gangsters got the rappers saying that shit. The gangster to me is the guy who owns Sony [the Fugees’ label], the guy who owns SPIN, the guy who owns MTV. Hardcore is like being in the house with the eight of us, mom on welfare. That’s what I call hardcore. I don’t mean to sound preachy ’cause we’re a bug-out group.” “Hardcore for hard times,” says Hill more succinctly.

The trio met eight years ago at Columbia High School in South Orange, New Jersey, when Hill entered her freshman year. Haitian-American Michel, a junior and the son of a church deacon, asked her to sing on his rap tracks. They were joined by his older cousin Jean, a self-taught musical prodigy, himself the son of a fire-and-brimstone preacher who hated Jean’s “devil’s music” and once refused to sign a label contract his then-underage son was offered. In a gesture of proud defiance, they named themselves the Fugees for the Haitian refugees who were then washing up on U.S. shores.

Except for Salaam Remi’s straight-up hip-hop remix of “Nappy Heads,” the Fugees’ 1993 Blunted on Reality debut pleased music critics and confused radio programmers and hip-hop purists. No wonder: Jean cites as influences an eclectic mix ranging from Eek-a-Mouse and Peter Tosh to B.B. King, Thelonious Monk, and even the Pet Shop Boys and Yes. The classic-R&B-loving Hill, who worked as a teen cabaret singer and theater actress, today studies history at Columbia University. “In class, I’m always like ‘hey, does anyone else notice that this is the same shit that made it so conquest and subjugation was the basis upon which America and the West was built?’ You know what I’m saying? It’s always Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke.”

As the album flopped, Hill’s featured appearance in Sister Act II inspired suggestions that she take up the mic solo. “I don’t find it a compliment when people say that,” Hill says heatedly. “These brothers are like members of my family. Families sing together and they blend. There’s something that we do together that makes perfect chemistry. It’s been perfect since I was 14 years old.” Jean raps his response in The Score‘s “Zealots”: “The magazine says the girl shoulda went solo / The guys should stop rapping vanish like Menudo / Took it to the heart / But every actor plays his part. / As long as someone was listenin’ / I knew it was a start.”

This time around, the Fugees produced the album themselves, creating the same impromptu spirit in their New Jersey Booga Basement Studio that they have in their dynamic live act, a revamp of an old-time soul revue that’s one of the best shows in hip-hop. Steering clear of “A” audiences, they’ve been playing to the hip-hop heads in the hoods, the “hardcore audiences, blunt smokers, weed smokers, gun toters, like kids on our block who we grew up with,” says Jean. “I can hold my guitar or sing, but it’s with a rebel voice.”

Their efforts seem to be paying off. In late December 1995, the Fugees won “The Battle of the Beats” on Hot 97 (a New York City hip-hop radio station) five nights in a row with The Score‘s “How Many Mics,” defeating the Wu-Tang Clan and “whatever is so-called hip-hop today,” says bass-voiced Michel, a tall, lanky 23-year-old not easily impressed. “Hip-hop is a culture—dance, lingo, style, music—and that’s what the Fugees is. Anyone can rap”.

In 2021, Consequence wrote a feature celebrating twenty-five years of Fugees’ The Score. For anyone who wants to understand the rawness of '90s Hip-Hop, they recommend that people listen to this album. One, they say, that remains an oracle twenty-five years after its release. A further five years later, and whilst its legacy might have changed or been affected by circumstances within the group and around its members, the power of the music remains undiminished. Maybe as powerful now as it was in 1996:

“Part of its lasting impact stems from the trio of Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, and Pras Michel having released their classic sophomore effort in a year where the fabric of Black music was palpably changing. In 1996, the world would witness 2Pac’s last release (All Eyez on Me), the beginning of Jay-Z’s musical reign (Reasonable Doubt), and debut albums from game-changers Lil’ Kim (Hard Core) and Foxy Brown (Ill Na Na). Influential groups like Outkast and A Tribe Called Quest also released notable projects that year (ATLiens and Beats, Rhymes and Life, respectively), but the presence of women emcees in rap groups was practically nonexistent. Blunted on Reality, the Fugees’ vastly underrated debut record, had first introduced hip-hop audiences to Ms. Lauryn Hill and her New Jersey outfit back in 1994, but it would take the group’s groundbreaking follow-up a couple years later for them to gain widespread notice.

That punched ticket was 1996’s The Score, which rightfully cemented Fugees’ place in hip-hop history and boasts the hardware to prove it. The album was certified six times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. At the 39th Annual Grammy Awards, The Score won for Best Rap Album. The sonic eclecticism that set the group apart from their contemporaries stemmed from their Haitian roots. “Everybody seeks refuge,” Jean told Vibe magazine in 1996. “We find refuge in music.” The way the album infused Caribbean melodies and sounds with soul, reggae, pop, and R&B — in addition to their use of timeless samples and potent lyricism — made it an instant classic.

“Red Intro”, featuring an appearance from Ras Baraka (son of poet Amiri Baraka), acts as a gritty and dramatic harbinger for The Score’s esoteric and gripping themes regarding capitalism, identity, and the normalization of hyperviolent masculinity. The spoken-word dimensionality of “How Many Mics” reveals that Hill, who rips through the introductory verse with equal parts passion and skill, plays second fiddle to absolutely no one: “Laced with malice/ Hands get calloused/ From gripping microphones from here to Dallas/ Go ask Alice if you don’t believe me/ I get in her visions like Stevie /See me ascend from the chalice like the weed be.”

She continues to ride her own wave on the explosive “Ready or Not”, which boldly samples Enya’s “Boadicea”. Hill proves her mellifluous prowess as a vocalist and rapper and venomously declares: “So while you imitating Al Capone/ I’ll be Nina Simone/ And defecating on your microphone.” Jean’s precocious wordplay coupled with Michel’s knavish similes (“I refugee from Guantanamo Bay/ Dance around the border like I’m Cassius Clay”) showcases the chemistry that makes the Fugees such a formidable trio on The Score. Jean was the provocative mouthpiece that teetered between revolution and redemption; Michel was the stern, yet playful, poet who would often get enthralled with his own musings; and Hill was the unpredictable virtuoso that bonded them together so remarkably well.

“Zealots” playfully and boldly pays homage to the ’60s doo-wop era. “The Beast” treads into political territory with razor-sharp precision by bashing Republican figures like Newt Gingrich by name, calling out the disturbing regularity of police brutality and America’s racist prison problem. Jean’s poignant observation of how wealth won’t save him from discrimination since he’s still a Black man is piercing: “My inner conscience says throw your handkerchief and surrender/ But to who? The “Star-Spangled Banner”?/ Oh, say can’t you see cops more crooked than we/ By the dawn early night, robbin’ niggas for keys/ Easy, low-key crooked military/ Pay taxes up my ass/ But they still harass me.”

Hill effortlessly floats on its follow-up, “Fu-Gee-La”, as she interpolates Teena Marie’s 1988 hit “Ooh La La La (If Loving You Is Wrong)” for the chorus while adding a bit of her own pomposity: “Ooh, la-la-la/ It’s the way that we rock when we’re doing our thing/ Ooh, la-la-la/ It’s the natural la that the Refugees bring.” As the lead single from The Score, “Fu-Gee-La” epitomizes how the three artists aptly complement each other: Hill’s vocal lucidity is a perfect contrast to the ebb and flow of Jean and Michel’s forward-thinking verses.

However, the album’s signature moment remains when Hill takes center stage on the Fugees’ rendition of the 1973 Roberta Flack classic “Killing Me Softly”. It feels bare and extremely intimate even as the bass drops 90 seconds into the song. Jean’s adlibs (“One time! Two times”) add a little gusto on a record that is already perfect. In the UK, this famed cover was the biggest-selling single of 1996. It was massive in the States as well and hit No. 2 on the Hot 100. It also won Best R&B performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal at the 39th Grammy Awards ceremony. “Killing Me Softly” celebrated Hill’s powerhouse range, which remains entirely immersive whenever it is showcased.

From beginning to end, The Score is a cogent representation of the arduous, yet resplendent, nature of hip-hop. All of its complexities — which encompass poverty, sexism, institutional racism, and inter and intraracial violence — are harrowing to hear but necessary to know and understand. Fugees acted as truth oracles whose inventiveness went on to inspire generations of rappers to come. The Score has stood the test of time and is a necessary listen for those looking to understand the rawness of ’90s hip-hop. Reflecting on its impact 25 years later confirms something that the group knew when they started making music together: The Fugees were always ahead of their time”.

I am going to end with a Pitchfork review of The Score. However, in 2016, they marked twenty years of a Hip-Hop classic. They also spoke with those who collaborated on and affected the album, including the last great Roberta Flack (who recorded the original version of Killing Me Softly/Killing Me Softly with His Song). It is a fascinating read:

“From the group to the label to the producers to the guest stars, no one had predicted the impact The Score would have on the music world. Once the album landed on the Grammys stage in '97, where it took home two awards, it seemed like the Fugees had it all together. Internally, though, it was another story. The tumultuous romantic relationship between a very young Hill and Clef, who was married and six years her senior, reached its peak during the recording of The Score. L-Boogie would loosely document the affair in her 1998 opus, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, while Wyclef would be more blatant in his 2012 memoir. Specifics remains hazy and have evolved into urban folklore—everyone who touched the project has one story or another. Pras recounted one harrowing tale of Wyclef breaking up with Lauryn moments before she entered the booth to record "Ready or Not," Hill crying her eyes out as she sang the hook. Then there are the stories surrounding The Score's tour, where Hill and Jean briefly reconnected before Lauryn got together with Rohan Marley. And to this day, fans speculate that Hill’s suicidal thoughts on "Manifest" were because of Clef, but who really knows? What we do know is that the love child of this toxic romance became one of the best-selling hip-hop albums ever. Strip the love, the hurt, the bickering—strip it all, and you still have a masterpiece that made history.

Salaam Remi

Producer on "Fu-Gee-La" (The Score’s lead single), "Nappy Heads" remix (from Blunted on Reality), "Vocab," and "Ready or Not" remixes (from Bootleg Versions EP)

"Going into ’95, I was working on music for Spike Lee’s Clockers. I had [the Fugees] come down [where I was working], and we did a song that was supposed to be on The Score but never got on there, called ‘Project Heads.’ During the session for ‘Project Heads,’ which I was also trying to get into Clockers, there was a beat I had made for Fat Joe that Lauryn heard. She was like, ‘Look, where’s that Fat Joe beat?’ During that session, I played the beat on her request and Wyclef jumped up and pretty much spit his verse, ‘We used to be number ten, now we’re permanent one…’ What I did was—on my dime and my time—I recorded ‘Fu-Gee-La’ in my studio. That song was done, and then they went and got the budget for that second album. Then, they started working on beats. First David Sonenberg [Fugees’ manager] wanted me to produce the whole album along with them, but I wasn’t really with it at the time. So I was like, ‘Come to me if you need some advice and I will chime in here and there.’

"Basically, the vibe of The Score was based around ‘Fu-Gee-La.’ If you take away ‘Fu-Gee-La’ it’s there, but ‘Fu-Gee-La’ is The Score, so that’s why it ended up being the first single. With that, Wyclef had his verse, and Lauryn went through singing a lot of different things, from ‘Never Dreamed You’d Leave In Summer’ [which she would later sing on Common’s 'Retrospect For Life'] to Chaka Khan records to all types of stuff. When she finally hit that ‘ooh la la la,’ that was the hook. During that process, Lauryn probably recorded her 16 bars every day for seven days straight. She came back in every day to redo it, because she’s that level of a perfectionist.

"At one point Lauryn hit me and said she was doing a singing record on the album and wanted me to produce it. But at that time they didn’t really have the budget. So Pras calls me one day like, ‘Yo, let me ask you something. If we wanna do "Killing Me Softly," how would you approach that song?’ I was like, ‘Hmmm, I would kind of do it like "Bonita Applebum."’ He said, ‘Oh, that was the same thing I was thinking. I’ll call you right back.’ And there you go: They literally made ‘Bonita Applebum’ into ‘Killing Me Softly.’

"The combination: Wyclef was very eclectic, Lauryn knew every soul song under the sun—she’s like a jukebox—and then Pras. If you look at that album, it says the executive producer is Pras, co-executive producers are Wyclef and Lauryn. It’s because Pras has the pop ear. From my perspective, a lot of their process during The Score was, ‘What would Salaam tell us to do?’ It’s because we had gotten to that point where I mentored them into now taking their talent and molding it into a record that people liked..."

Roberta Flack

Fugees covered "Killing Me Softly With His Song," the most famous version of which—a No. 1 in 1973—was Flack’s.

"Honestly, I had not [heard of the Fugees prior to 'Killing Me Softly']. The Score came on us like a mighty wind, and I was totally blown away by the power of the group—their musicality, their political message, and their creativity. They wanted to change the lyrics [to 'Killing Me Softly'] to make the song about anti-drugs and anti-poverty. They were all about politics. Given their name and all, the (Re)Fugees, it made sense. It was more Norman [Gimbel] and Charlie [Fox] [the songwriters behind 'Killing Me Softly With His Song'] that wanted their song to not be changed. I feel that the meaning of the song changes depending upon the singer, depending upon the listener. They gave the song a new meaning and exposed it to a new generation. They invented a new version of the song, using some musical ideas from my version. I was surprised they picked that song to be included with the others on that album, as it didn’t have the political emphasis, but then again it depends on the frame of reference from which you listen, right?"

In 2021, The Ringer shared a compelling piece that argued how, on The Score, Fugees disguised resistance as art. This huge political statement as any Hip-Hop album of the decade, songs like Fu-Gee-La, are especially important when it comes to representing and putting into focus those displaced. Refuges and those oppressed. The Score gave voice to hose people. In some ways, The Score has a new relevance in the modern-day. In terms of asylum seekers and refugees who are being villainised and risking their lives to find safety. Those murdered by genocidal regimes. There is nothing in modern music like The Score:

“The Score matters because there are places where the blatant political statement, extremely effective as it is, cannot go. When I was 12, I was at a fairly conservative school where a Black friend was ordered to remove his Malcolm X T-shirt by a member of the staff. As my friend retreated to his bedroom to change, the staff member offered her verdict on the civil rights activist. “Horrible man,” she scoffed. However, if she had seen a T-shirt bearing the faces of the Fugees, she might not even have looked twice, even though their underlying message was just as radical as so many of Malcolm X’s speeches. The Fugees disguised resistance as art, the same way that enslaved Africans once hid martial arts from their colonial masters by pretending that they were a dance.

They needed this disguise all the more, particularly because—as historian and professor Tricia Rose has observed—this was an era when major radio stations and media outlets were aggressively promoting hip-hop that celebrated materialism, which generally made it harder for music with the content of The Score to cut through. So much of that period featured feuds that were aggressively stoked by outsiders, especially by media outlets seeking controversy: It is poignant to remember that, even at the height of the supposed Cold War between the East Coast and the West Coast, rappers from both of those areas hung out with each other—Pras, a friend of Tupac’s, was in touch with him shortly before the rapper was murdered. That the Fugees managed to fight their way through that toxic fog, and to show the world that their style of hip-hop was commercially viable—it sold 22 million copies worldwide—is an understated part of their legacy.

At the core of the Fugees’ resistance was their assertion that, contrary to most current and historical narratives, it was cool to be a refugee. The name of their group, chosen to honor the Haitian heritage of Pras and Wyclef, suggested that a refugee was an outlaw, a warrior-spirit; the name of the album, The Score, implied that the act of fleeing one’s country for another was as daring as carrying out a heist at a heavily guarded casino. (If anything, it is much more so.) This reframing of escape as a courageous act rather than a cowardly one spoke to those times, and it speaks to ours now.

When the Fugees released The Score, the West had just witnessed—and, if we are being honest, refused to prevent—two of the most horrifying human rights abuses in recent memory, both of which had led to the mass exodus of people from their homelands. In just a few weeks in 1994, hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered by their fellow citizens—in many cases, their neighbors—in Rwanda. In 1995, over the course of just 12 days, the same thing happened to 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica. In the global consciousness, the stock of the refugee was therefore particularly low—people in conflict zones were meant to be killed and not heard. The Score arrived in that world, defiant and unashamed, daring and endlessly epic.

If we fast-forward to the present day, we see that the position of the refugee is similar, perhaps worse. When war came to Syria in 2011, the thousands of people who escaped were largely seen as part of a crisis, their suffering portrayed as a burden for the countries they ran to rather than a tragedy. When those people, along with others fleeing horror of similar intensity in Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, started drowning in huge numbers as they attempted treacherous trips to Europe, the response of much of the European media and politicians was merely to mock them. In the most infamous case, a British tabloid referred to refugees as “cockroaches”—a description which drew a horrified rebuke from the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights, who compared it to language used by the Nazis.

The Score recast these people, the most disposable of all humans, as mythical figures. “I, refugee from Guantanamo Bay / Dance around the border, like I’m Cassius Clay,” raps Pras on “Ready or Not.” And this album did not portray images of gentle souls, either. These were not the type of refugees who would arrive in a new country and live quietly and fearfully in their buildings, hoping that no one paid them too much attention. In other words, the Fugees were not “good immigrants.” Their work was a blend of heavenly melody and lethal wit. As Hill put it, they were “sweet like licorice, dangerous like syphilis.” Even their heritage was radical, with Wyclef hailing from Haiti—a nation long maligned for its poverty, but which in the early 19th century was the home of the world’s first successful revolt against enslavers”.

I am going to end with a 2021 review from Pitchfork. They awarded The Score 9.3 (and unusually high score for them!). Such a seismic and enduring album, they dissected and passionately discussed “a socially conscious blockbuster grounded by the realities of the immigrant experience”. I heard the album for thew first time at the end of the '90s. It had an impact on me. In years since, its significance has grown. It is one of my favourite albums of the mid-1990s. A masterpiece:

“Upon its release, few would believe that The Score would represent nearly a quarter of Lauryn Hill’s creative output. She had long been identified as the group’s breakout talent, fending off suggestions—and offers—to leave her group behind long before it eventually dissolved. She seemed to have been anointed for stardom from a young age; Before graduating high school she had already acted in an Off-Broadway play (Club XII, the hip-hop Twelfth Night), daytime soap (As the World Turns), and two feature films (Sister Act 2, King of the Hill), as well as releasing the Fugees debut. In the face of the undeniable talent on display on The Score, she grew tired of feeling that people (and press) assumed that her male collaborators were largely responsible for her—and the group’s—success, tired of being seen as Wyclef’s girl.

And while she would evolve into something bigger than hip-hop on her 1998 solo debut The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, her work on The Score remains unparalleled in the genre; no MC has ever sung with such soul, power, and grace, nor has any singer ever spit as hard as she does here. If that statement sounds histrionic, just try to come up with a list of her peers that sing and rap even remotely as well as she did. Cee-Lo? Pharrell? Drake? It’s laughable. There’s a reason why everyone freaked out when Azealia Banks dropped “212”; the skillsets just do not often intersect, despite the AutoTune crooners that have since flooded the pop charts. And even the OGs place her at or near the top of their best-ever MC lists. Yet even after all the praise and recognition, she still felt somewhat unseen, somehow unappreciated. This would manifest itself in Miseducation, both in its powerful expressions of vulnerability and in her tyrannical exclusion of her collaborators from that album’s writing and production credits.

The Fugees recording career barely lasted three years. Flooded with offers and opportunities in the wake of their multi-platinum opus, the group began to fracture. Wyclef began recording The Carnival, supported—both emotionally and creatively—by Pras and Lauryn, who both make guest appearances. But when Lauryn started writing songs for her own solo debut, Wyclef gave her the cold shoulder, a stinging rebuke in the wake of the many solo opportunities Lauryn had spurned in solidarity with her group. The dynamic was made all the more awkward by their clandestine romance, despite his marriage to another woman, and later, Lauryn’s with Bob Marley’s son Rohan. And when the birth of Lauryn’s first child became embroiled in a paternity scandal, the fracture became a fissure, ending hopes of a prompt reconciliation.

The Score was the product of chance alchemy, made by three artists whose independent visions coalesced just long enough to create something remarkable. In the process, they laid out a template for hip-hop’s cleared-sample era, where the curation of old records was more important than how you chopped it up and disguised it. Rappers and producers quickly realized that if you had to pay for it, you might as well make the sample recognizable to those that remember the orginal, and court that new audience in the process. “Killing Me Softly” exists across several decades: It borrows from the Roberta Flack version, which itself a re-arranged cover of the Lori Lieberman original; the Fugees version adds the boom-bap drum beat from A Tribe Called Quest’s “Bonita Applebum,” which itself samples “Memory Band” from Minnie Riperton’s Rotary Connection.

The Fugees managed to diversify the voice of the ghetto, one often depicted in a single dimension. They reclaimed pride for Haitians worldwide, a heritage maligned for its postcolonial poverty and strife but still remembered as the setting for the new world’s first successful revolt of enslaved people against their oppressors. Their sound was multifaceted because they were, too, their music diverse, just like the Black experience”.

Ahead of its thirtieth anniversary on 13th February, there will be new pieces and articles written around Fugees’ The Score. Not blunted by reality of the fact a third of the group is imprisoned, the significance of the music, the landmark album that it was the legacy it has is extraordinary. That is the main takeaway and thing to remember: the sheer brilliance of the music and the dynamic within the trio. I think Ms. Lauryn Hill’s growing role as a vocalist is what makes The Score stronger and more immediate than Blunted on Reality. The confidence in the group and the consistency is higher. After thirty years, few other Hip-Hop albums have such weight and importance. Its relevance is still so huge. Even though Fugees would not last much longer beyond 1996, The Score is an album that shows them…

AT the peak of their powers.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Naomi Jane

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Naomi Jane

__________

THIS is an artist…

who not only makes incredible distinct, wonderful, uplifting, urgent, powerful and beautiful music. I think she is also so important and inspiring. In terms of how she uses her platform. I already have so much respect, admiration and love for Naomi Jane. I only discovered her recently, but her music, work and incredible words have already made their way into my heart and mind. In terms of what you need to know about Naomi Jane, this is taken from her official website:

“Naomi Jane is a rising singer-songwriter celebrated for blending soulful storytelling with powerful pop and indie influences. Hailing from a bicoastal upbringing between New York and California, she began honing her craft early – training as a classically trained mezzo-soprano and learning multiple instruments galoremag.com. Critics have drawn parallels between Naomi’s poetic lyricism and the emotional depth of icons like Joni Mitchell and Alanis Morissette​ mundanemag.com, a testament to the maturity and authenticity she brings to her music despite her young age. With a background in theater and film alongside music, Naomi’s artistry is truly multidimensional, rooted in both performance and songwriting.

Early Life and Artistic Foundation

Growing up bicoastal, splitting time between New York City and California, gave Naomi a diverse cultural foundation. She immersed herself in music from childhood, developing a three-octave mezzo-soprano range through classical vocal training​ galoremag.com. At the same time, she became a multi-instrumentalist, picking up guitar, piano, violin, saxophone and ukulele, which later allowed her to craft richly arranged songs as a solo artist. Before her pre-teens, Naomi was already showcasing her talents on stage – performing at prestigious New York venues like Feinstein’s/54 Below, The Players, and Green Room 42 . These early performances  laid a strong performance foundation for her music career.

Naomi’s love for storytelling led her naturally into acting as well. She landed prominent roles in theater productions, including portraying Young Teddy Trager in the award-winning musical Aussie Song, and even a gender-bent turn as Jack Kelly in Newsies. Other regional theater credits included leads in Legally Blonde, The Sound of Music, and Frozen​ broadwayword.com. Her screen debut came via a children’s music program on PBS Kids, followed by a part in the award-winning series Assisted Living. Notably, she also starred in a cult-favorite indie zombie film A Night with the Sheintops, adding film acting to her repertoire ​IMBd. This breadth of experience in performance – across singing, playing instruments, and acting – contributed to Naomi Jane’s distinct stage presence and narrative flair as she transitioned into recording original music.

Breakthrough: Songwriting and the Letterman Trilogy

In her mid-teens, Naomi turned her focus to original music, channeling her life experiences into songwriting. A major early milestone was her song “Little Miss,” an empowering pop anthem about self-worth, which went on to win First Place (Teen Category) in the 2023 International Songwriting Competition, outshining over 14,000 entries from 120 countries ​independent.com. This prestigious award put Naomi on the map as a songwriter of considerable promise, with judges praising the maturity and catchiness of her work.

Around this time, Naomi crafted what she calls the “Letterman Trilogy,” a trio of interlinked singles that narrate a journey of young love, heartbreak, and growth. The trilogy – comprising the songs “Pretty Boys,” “Little Miss,” and “Grown Ups” – uses the symbol of a letterman’s jacket as a through-line to represent stages of a teenage relationship. In “Pretty Boys,” Naomi candidly critiques the disillusionment of high school romance; “Little Miss” follows with a reclamation of confidence and identity after heartbreak; and finally “Grown Ups” concludes the arc by reflecting on coming-of-age lessons as adolescence turns into adulthood​. Wonderland Magazine praised Naomi’s ability to navigate “the emotional highs and lows of youth” in these songs with striking authenticity​. When the concluding ballad “Grown Ups” was released in late 2024, Billboard Argentina lauded it as a “masterful reflection” on the transition from adolescence to maturity​.

2025 Breakthrough and Recognition

If late 2024 set the stage for Naomi Jane, 2025 truly became her breakout year. The new year saw sweet talk continue to attract media buzz and industry accolades. Numerous publications highlighted Naomi as an “Artist to Watch” in 2025, impressed by her early achievements and artistic vision. Galore magazine’s annual spotlight on rising stars featured Naomi, emphasizing how her bicoastal upbringing and classical training contribute to music “rich with emotional depth and poetic lyricism”​ galoremag.com. Mundane magazine likewise listed Naomi among “2025’s Most Promising Emerging Artists,” noting that following the success of sweet talk, she was poised for an even bigger year with new videos and singles on the way ​mundanemag.com​ . “Naomi Jane is an artist you don’t want to miss in 2025,” Mundane wrote pointedly​, a sentiment that was echoed across the music press.

Crucially, Naomi’s rapid rise has come with broad critical approval. Wonderland Magazine applauded her authenticity in writing about youth, while Earmilk highlighted the nuanced way she tackles the struggles of relationships (particularly in her song “Pretty Boys”)​. Even international outlets have taken notice: in Argentina, Billboard spotlighted Naomi’s storytelling and described her focus on love and coming-of-age themes as resonating with both young listeners and a universal audience​ billboard.ar. Such praise from global music media, combined with the tangible streaming numbers and competition wins, have solidified Naomi Jane’s reputation as a multidimensional young talent with a voice beyond her years.

What’s Next for Naomi Jane

Six upcoming singles - summer hit worthy, euphoric “In the Moment,” dance‑ready “I Cry,” and four more - lead into Naomi’s first LP Dissonance (April 2026, co‑written and produced by multi‑award‑winner Adam Zelkind). “It’s alt‑indie‑folk‑pop at its core, laced with flashes of country and my theatrical DNA,” she says, promising to keep bending genre lines.

Beyond music, Naomi produces Broadway benefits against gun violence and advocates for equal‑access arts programs for youth. “I create worlds where listeners feel seen, safe, and empowered,” she explains.

As she balances new releases and performances, Naomi remains grounded in the storytelling that defines her artistry. EARMILK aptly summed up her current trajectory: “Naomi Jane is quickly making a name for herself with fans drawn to her confessional lyricism [and] hook-heavy choruses with rich storytelling. The creator is multi-talented and…has a background in theater, film, and television. With more music coming, we can’t wait to hear what is next from Naomi Jane.”​ earmilk.com  This excitement is shared by her fan community and media alike – Naomi’s journey is just beginning, and all signs point to a bright future for this young artist as she continues to evolve”.

What I also love about Naomi Jane is her official website. It is so comprehensive. It has so much information, all her social media links and press. I do hope that the incredible artist and actor plays in the U.K. at some point. On a section of her website called Why, there are these statements and reasons why she is in her. This is one that specifically caught my eye: “Activism isn’t an add‑on; it’s part of my creative obligation. I believe that art should serve, so I use my platform to advocate for universal access to arts and music education for youth and to press for meaningful gun‑violence prevention. Community service and good stewardship are how I pay rent on the privilege of having a stage. The wider my reach grows, the more room there is to invite others into that work - yet the heartbeat will always be the song itself”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Calli Cohen

I think that so few artists are politically and socially driven. In terms of protesting against and raising awareness of violence in the world, gender inequality and the cessation of women’s body autonomy in the U.S. to genocide in Palestine, it would be nice to see more artists speak out. I am looking forward to her album being released. I would urge everyone to go and listen to it when it comes out and follow her on social media. I am going to come to some 2025 press. However, before that, I want to take things back to 2024 and the Letterman Trilogy. Wonderland Magazine covered this wonderful work by Naomi Jane:

“Some of the greatest stories are written in the shape of a trilogy, and Naomi Jane’s collection of songs is one of them. Being only fifteen years old, Naomi Jane has written the “Letterman Trilogy,” a powerful narrative that explores love, heartbreak, empowerment, and the journey of growing up. Three interconnected singles are the chapters in the story, “Pretty Boys,” “Little Miss,” and “Grown Ups.” Together, they depict the challenges and victories of adolescence.

Naomi is a young prodigy about to become a shining star in the music industry. She received classical training in piano and as a mezzo-soprano, but she was self-taught in the art of pouring her heart into the notes in the shape of lyrics. This is what has become her signature sound and the reason why she is known as the “piano poet.” Her music is carefully crafted, while her storytelling is vulnerable and intimate. As a result, the LA-based artist has fascinated audiences of all kinds, gathering thousands of fans on her social networks, hundreds of thousands of streams, and even a prize at the 2023 International Songwriting Competition for “Little Miss.”

During the past months, Naomi has released a series of songs known as the “Letterman Trilogy”. Each song explores a distinct stage of emotional growth, offering a glimpse into the challenges and triumphs of adolescence. Individually, they are all beautiful masterpieces, but together they unfold an emotional story of learning and evolution.

“Pretty Boys” was the first release of the series. It delves into the unmet expectations in young love, and the pain in seeing naive beliefs fall apart. “Little Miss” focuses on the importance of reclaiming one’s identity, regardless of expectations and the insecurities of teenage years. Finally, “Grown Ups” is a reflection on what love and growing up truly mean, a mix of emotion and fear, and how fragile it can be.

Every song in the trilogy captures Naomi’s style and talent to tell a good story. The vulnerability and honesty she allows herself to express in her lyrics, being so young, is remarkable. Even though it might seem her themes are sad at first, a constant in the verses of her trilogy is the way she reclaims the protagonist of her own narrative. Self-empowerment, self-worth, and a resilient mindset are some of the lessons she has learned at a young age, which she now shares in the shape of songs.

The “Letterman Trilogy” is also a visual chronicle. Through three music videos, we see Naomi’s live emotions that range from love, loss, and self-discovery. A vintage letterman’s jacket is the unifying symbol that connects all the pieces as a metaphor for growth.

With the “Letterman Trilogy” complete, Naomi Jane continues to make her mark on the music industry. After listening to the collection, it is natural to want more from her, and she is working now to please her fans with the release of her next story, an EP with interconnected videos. We are eager to see her growing as a star and changing the music world”.

Last year was a big one for Naomi Jane. In terms of what she achieved. Her debut E.P., sweet talk, was released. An E.P. that is catchy, deep, varied and distinctly her own work, few artists have written about the messiness and realities of love more succinctly and memorably than Naomi Jane. This is the type of artist that we need in music. I hope that other sites and journalists are tipping her for success this year, as she is going to go so far in the industry. SPIN assessed the remarkable sweet talk last January:

“The EP begins with an irresistibly infectious song titled “Heartbeat Melody,” a captivating and lively piece, pulsating with the exhilarating energy of new love. Here, Naomi’s voice really comes into its own and takes center stage as she captures with tremendous eloquence the exciting uncertainty that accompanies the early stages of a budding relationship. The song’s bouncy beat, with its catchy chorus, nicely establishes its status as an instant catchy song.

But “sweet talk” isn’t only about that euphoric, thrilling beginning of love that most people hold so dear. It also delves deep into the complex, multidimensional intricacies of relationships, which “Like Like Love,” one of the EP’s tracks, emphasizes. This song focuses on the fragile, sensitive struggle between light, carefree love and the deeper, more solemn devotion that can emerge later on. It captures the poignant moments when feelings begin to evolve, deepen, and take on unsuspected importance.

“TACOBELL” easily steals the show as the EP’s lead track, a cleverly observed commentary on the vast gulf between the exalted ideals of romance and the stark reality that most people face. It’s the neatness of Naomi’s lyrics. Her infectious melody is brimming with memorability and sets her above the rest. In terms of storytelling, this song highlights Naomi’s dazzling gifts for taking the most mundane details of everyday life and turning them into a compelling, golden song.

As the EP progresses and unwinds, the mood becomes thick with melancholy and solemnity. “Socks” is a heartbreaking ballad that perfectly describes the aftermath of a breakup, with perfect echoes of pain and deep longing that always resonate later when the loving relationship finally ends. She sings so raw, surprisingly vulnerable, and poignant.

“Press Send” is a standout track that wraps up the EP on a triumphant note, celebrating self-worth and independence. With Jane’s emotive powerhouse vocals and empowering lyrics, it becomes a cathartic anthem for anyone who has endured the pain of love.

“Sweet talk” highlights Naomi Jane’s incredible talent as both a gifted songwriter and a captivating performer. Her remarkable ability to craft music that speaks volumes—relatable, emotionally resonant, and thought-provoking—has connected with listeners of all ages and backgrounds. With infectious melodies, honest lyrics, and a compelling narrative, her work leaves a lasting impact”.

Busy with gigs and new music, Naomi Jane released a brilliant single, IDWK (I Don’t Wanna Know). Her output last year was remarkable, and there is a lot of exactment around an album. What it might contain and the tracks that will be included. I think this year is going to be best so far from the American artist. I know there are those in the U.K. that love her music, so it would be good to see her over here at some point. This article is about IDWK (I Don’t Wanna Know). Its video will be arriving shortly. If 2025 was the end of one chapter of her career, this year marks the next one. Perhaps the most important so far:

“Naomi Jane isn’t framing “IDWK (I Don’t Wanna Know)” as a casual brush-off or a quiet fade-out. In her own campaign language, the track is the “call before the shift” — a consciously chosen hinge between the world she’s already built and the one she’s stepping into next.

Released as a song on December 19, 2025, with an official video set for January 23, 2026, “IDWK” arrives as a moment of inventory: Naomi looking back at the Letterman Trilogy, sweet talk, and the broader “dawn” era, then naming the next question out loud. The line that anchors the release — “When you leave the party, where do you go?” — becomes less a situationship refrain and more a thesis about growth, endings, and what it costs to choose yourself.

Part of what makes “IDWK” feel positioned as a pivot is the sheer intentionality behind Naomi’s rollout. Since 2023, she’s maintained an aggressive, disciplined rhythm — roughly a new song and visual every six weeks — and the press release argues that “IDWK” is the first true crossroads of that long-game planning.

It’s presented as the twilight bridge between “dawn” (a tightly interlinked visual-and-song universe) and dissonance (a working-title debut LP era promised to lean into alt-indie / folk-pop with a country fringe, new instrumentation, and a shifted perspective).

Naomi describes the track as one of her most vulnerable, closing out a heartbreak storyline with a firmer sense of self-worth: she doesn’t want the confusion again, and she’s no longer romanticising weak excuses — a sentiment encapsulated in her favourite lyric, “I’ll drink up your spillin alibi.”

The campaign also treats visuals as a core part of the storytelling, not an add-on. The “IDWK” video is described as revisiting key “rooms” from past releases — including “Little Miss,” “TACOBELL,” “In the Moment,” “Lightning,” and “Mr. Incognito” — while planting Easter eggs intended to reward repeat viewing and fuel fan theories about what’s coming next.

That approach fits an artist who has built a catalogue where every release is meant to connect, and where new listeners aren’t simply catching a song — they’re stepping into a narrative system already in motion.

While the press release leans hard into momentum — citing major view counts, streams, followers, playlist stats, and songwriting accolades — the more interesting angle is what that momentum is being used for: a clear artistic reroute, not just a bigger version of the same.

The next chapter is framed as more organic, more textured, and more instrument-forward, with Naomi also positioning her platform around youth arts access and gun-violence prevention as part of her creative responsibility. If “IDWK” is truly the threshold song it claims to be, its success won’t only be measured in numbers — it’ll be measured in whether listeners choose to take her hand and walk into the unfamiliar with her”.

There is no doubt Naomi Jane is going to be in music for many years. She will play huge stages, tour around the world, and release a series of incredible album that will be talked about years from now. An important activist who knows the important of using her voice for good and to speak about issues that need to be discussed, it is no wonder Naomi Jane is so respected. Everyone needs to show their love and support for…

A modern-day queen.

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Follow Naomi Jane

Official:

https://naomivoigt.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/naomijane_official

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://x.com/naomijaneoffic

YouTube:

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

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/NaomiJaneOfficial/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/24e3hF9IcHsGYNWMqwjIZv?si=ZWjgOt6KQq-3m7RIsqyaNQ

FEATURE: Call Me By My Name: Chesney Hawkes’s The One and Only at Thirty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

Call Me By My Name

Chesney Hawkes’s The One and Only at Thirty-Five

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THERE is no doubt that…

PHOTO CREDIT: Celtic Manor

this is one of my absolute favourite songs from the 1990s. One of the best of the decade. If some simply see it as a great one-hit wonder, I think we should give much more respect to Chesney Hawkes and the phenomenal The One and Only. I think this is a song that still sound so affecting today. The passion in his voice and that incredible chorus! The single was released on 4th February, 1991, so I want to mark thirty-five years of this celebrated classic. There is a lot to discuss regarding the song. I love its video and how Hawkes is almost this matinee idol. Or more a cooler 1990s version of a legendary actor like James Dean. So cool and seductive, I was seven when it came out. I think I did hear it when it first came out. If some critics were a little snobby or dismissive of The One and Only, there is no arguing with its chart performance. Number one in the U.K., in years since, this song has been taken to heart by so many generations. Perhaps the production sound is very much rooted in the 1990s. However, I still get this rush when I hear the song played. It warrants much more than being seen as this novelty. It is an incredible strong song with so much to highlight. The One and Only featured in the comedy-drama film, Buddy's Song (1991), in which Chesney Hawkes starred as the eponymous Buddy, with Roger Daltrey playing his father. Spending five weeks at number one in March and April 1991, I remember when this track was dominating and everywhere. It was a time in U.K. music when perhaps Rave and Dance was more popular. Pop would perhaps reach a peak around 1993, 1994 or 1995. There was something about this song that connected with the record-buying public. The lyrics by Nik Kershaw do not only relate to the song. They definitely resonated with listeners. They are clever and timeless: “I've been a player in the crowd scene/A flicker on the big screen/My soul embraces one more in a million faces/High hopes and aspirations, and years above my station/Maybe but all this time I've tried to walk with dignity and pride”.

That sense that we have all had. That idea of being a minor player or being seen as minor but, in spite of doubts or being trying to put you down, walking with pride and dignity. I will come to a 2024 interview where Chesney Hawkes talked about the aftermath of The One and Only. How fame, in a sense, chewed him up. Maybe it was quite a feat to live up to. Being associated with this one song and living in the spotlight. The pressures and downsides of popularity. There is some debate as to its exact release date, though I am pretty sure that it was 4th February, 1991. It hit number one on 24th March, 1991. I am not sure how much this song will be written about around its anniversary. It is a song that I really like, so I wanted to focus on it. In 2017, for The Guardian, Chesney Hawkes and songwriter Nik Kershaw discussed the background to the song and what it was like putting out this chart-topping into the world:

“Chesney Hawkes, singer

My dad was in the Tremeloes. As a kid, I watched him – Len “Chip” Hawkes – in his leather trousers with his shirt open and girls screaming. “That’s what I want to do,” I thought. But without the leather trousers. By the time I was 17, I was in a band, writing songs and playing solo piano at weekends, in pubs or at weddings. It wasn’t quite the big time.

Then I had my wisdom teeth out. As I was waking up in the hospital bed, I saw the Who’s Roger Daltrey on GMTV. He was looking for someone who could sing and play guitar to portray his character’s son in a new film, Buddy’s Song. I opened my mouth and gurgled. My dad took me to the auditions.

Out of hundreds of boys, I got the part. There were already songs for the film and I wrote some, too, but the record company wanted a hit. Then a publisher friend of my dad’s played him some new Nik Kershaw songs that Nik was hoping to get recorded by other people. When dad heard The One and Only, he said: “That’s a smash.”

Dad played the demo through the speakers at Abbey Road, where we were recording. I was a huge Nik Kershaw fan and was desperate to meet him, but everyone else hated the song. Then a few days later a bloke from the record company rang to say: “I’ve listened to it a few times. Maybe it has got something.”

My 15-year-old brother Jody played drums on the record. Nik co-produced and played guitar, doing crazy things like playing it with a pencil. We totally hit it off, but the film only did OK and the song barely dented the Top 75. Then I was on The Little & Large TV show, which had a huge Saturday-night audience. The song started steamrollering. Before I knew it, we were No 1 all over Europe and in the US Top 10.

We were living the dream, girls camped outside the house and everything. People either loved the song or hated it. At the Brits, Phillip Schofield pushed a pretend me into hell using a pitchfork. That was a bit much, but the song still gets me gigs and I’m loving every minute of it.

Nik Kershaw, songwriter

I’d just finished a four-album deal with MCA Records and they didn’t want any more, so I was at a crossroads. By then I was tired and starting a family, so I wanted to be around for them. I decided to see if I could get another career going as a songwriter and producer.

The One and Only was pretty much the first song out of the bag. My string of hits in the 80s had rather dried up. I’d had a few knocks and was feeling a bit “nobody loves me”, so I wrote the song about self-respect. It came together quickly, but I didn’t think much more about it. Then, 18 months later, I got a call saying they were using it in the film.

Ches was a new, fresh face, like I had been seven or eight years previously. We had great fun in the studio, doing things like recording feedback and playing it backwards in a sampler. When the record company started spending money on the single, I knew it had a chance, but I never thought it was a potential No 1. Ches did all the promo. I sat in an armchair sipping merlot while it flew up the charts.

I don’t think many people realise I wrote it. The song has bought me a couple of houses, and Ches and I are still best mates. I sometimes wonder how it would have worked out for him if he hadn’t had to follow a No 1. He was nurturing his own career nicely until I turned up to spoil it with a hit that overshadowed everything. He’s hugely talented, but he never got a chance to prove it, because of that song”.

I will wrap up soon. However, I do want to come to an interview from The Telegraph that was published in 2024. Even if some have dismissed the song or see it as middling, I feel it is a true gem. One of those unique songs that had this incredible success and legacy. The fact that we are still talking about The One and Only and it gets radio play. Thirty-five years after its release, I feel greater respect needs to be given to this anthem. One you cannot hear without singing along, so infectious and memorable is it! If you have never heard the song then go and listen now:

“People think I must have made millions off The One and Only but I really didn’t. I always say I should write a book: Fame, No Fortune! Yes, I had a lot back then – you get advances, people throw money at you. But what you don’t realise is it goes really quick, and the label spend a fortune, so you have to pay that back before you see any royalties. It’s an age-old story: my dad got totally ripped off by his management and label back in the 1960s.

So as big as that record was, I didn’t break even for 10 years. I still couldn’t live on the royalties from it. It’s not like I’m making thousands every year. Nik got a much bigger cut as the writer – he got a couple of houses out of it.

Back then, I thought my career was over. I was chewed up and spat out. It was like being in the club in a booth in the VIP arena sipping champagne, being looked after, and then suddenly the bouncers come grab you and kick you out the back – the door slams and you’re in the rain. I was only 21 when that happened and I didn’t know how to deal with it. I’ve since done a lot of reflection, some therapy, and I look back and think “Actually that was a bit s---. It was a tough thing to go through, so it’s OK to feel emotional about it – let it out and cry a bit.”

It was strange because I really did everything the wrong way around. I had the fame, and then I started paying my dues afterwards. I went from travelling the world, being mobbed by screaming fans, to playing with bands in sh---y little clubs in Camden with five people watching us, and no one knew who I was. That was very humbling. Now and again there’d be some drunk at the back shouting “Do The One and Only!”. I experienced the biggest highs and then the real lows. I remember our amp blowing up because we couldn’t afford the right equipment.

It was also a weird feeling going from having all those girls outside the house to people not looking at me twice in the street – that took some getting used to, figuring out who I was without the attention. The press made it worse too: they built me up as the next big thing, everything was “Chesney this” and “Chesney that”, then the next minute they just loved knocking me down. It’s part of the British psyche. I went from being the It boy to dirt on the shoe – yesterday’s chip paper.

It was really heartbreaking, and there were definitely times where I didn’t know who I was and what would happen next. I wondered if my career was already over.

It’s terrible now with these reality shows – there’s been some awful treatment of kids who go through that process. I feel for them because I went through something similar and didn’t have any support after. Back then, it was “Therapy, what’s that?”. They get all this incredible hype, front pages, five minutes of fame, and if you don’t have the right support around you, you can buy into that crazy s---. But none of it’s real. I know that now – but you don’t understand it at that age. If you believe it, the good stuff and the bad, it really affects you. Now with all the social media comments too, it’s like arrows flying towards you on a battlefield. You can’t avoid it.

I’ve had that chat with my kids – they’re 19, 21 and nearly 23. But will they listen? I think you have to experience things to learn those lessons, and as a parent you’ve got to let them trip up here and there. I’ll be there to put an arm round them when they need it.

The funny thing for me is that I’m still defined by a three-month period in my life when I was a teenager. That’s strange for a 52-year-old man. People who meet me in the street, if they do recognise me, it’s all about The One and Only. I sometimes feel like saying “What were you doing when you were 18? Can you imagine being defined by that forever?”

But I’m very aware that that period of my life is what got my career started, and now I love that music. There was a time when I wouldn’t play The One and Only because I was an angry kid rebelling against what had happened to me.

Nowadays I do these retro festivals as well as my own headline stuff, and it’s so amazing to see people reliving their youth. That’s what music does, doesn’t it? It connects you to another time. I’m so honoured to be part of so many people’s lives. I’ve had messages over the years saying they played the song at their wedding or their brother’s funeral. So I can’t have any regrets or bitterness about that making me a “one-hit wonder”, because it’s so beautiful”.

4th February is when we mark thirty-five of Chesney Hawkes’s The One and Only. Even if he never achieved anything as monumental and successful as his debut single, he is this incredible artist who has had a respectful and long career. He released his latest album, Living Arrows, last February. He spoke to The Guardian about his career and his life now. Some artists who had hits back in the 1990s try to distance themselves from it or see it as another time. However, Hawkes definitely has some fond recollections and memories from the time – even if the impact of fame was not all great. This single was a rightful chart smash and made a lot of people happy. And that is something that we…

CAN’T take that away from him.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: God (Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)/’The Man with the Child in His Eyes’ (The Man with the Child in His Eyes)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the photoshoot for Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), the first single from her 1985 album, Hounds of Love/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

God (Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God)/’The Man with the Child in His Eyes’ (The Man with the Child in His Eyes)

__________

WHEN thinking of which Kate Bush…

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

characters to bring together for this instalment, I definitely wanted to include the first one from Hounds of Love. I have brought in characters from her other albums, yet her most acclaimed album has remained untouched. It contains so many different characters, and I will cover off some more soon. The first is the biggest and most powerful in all of her music. It/he is also the subject of her most-streamed song. One that has ridden high on various iTunes charts and continues to climb in terms of popularity. God is the subject here. I will talk more about religion and the significance of religion or the spiritual in her music. However, it is worth learning more about one of Bush’s most important songs. Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) has had this long influence and regard. It was originally included in 1985’s Hounds of Love. Its lead single, released on 5th August, 1985, it only reached number three in 1985. You may say this is a decent position, however, a song so instantly impactful and iconic should have got to number one. Though it was a great year for music, I am struggling to think of a single released that year as good as Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). It did then get a new attention and popularity featuring its inclusion in Stranger Things. That meant that a whole new generation and fanbase and, with that, the song got to number one in the U.K. It meant it was a long overdue chart topper that should have captured more of the public love in 1985. Featuring in the final season of Stranger Things, it has meant that the song has surpassed a billion and a half streams. Among its recent honours, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) reached the top of the European iTunes chart. It also placed in the top twenty of the Official ingles Chart. Doing well on the Daily Global Spotify Top 50, this song continues to have this extraordinary life! I do wonder how much further it can go. I am not sure if it will rise higher in the charts by the time this feature has been published or will dip.

I do like how a song from an album over forty years old can succeed at a time when we have these huge Pop artists and there are so many other artists. Testament to the quality and relevance of this song. I did say this last year when writing a host of features to mark forty years of Hounds of Love. How people could relate to the lyrics. It is this idea of the song’s heroine wanting to do a deal with God so that she and a man could swap places and walk in each other’s shoes to better understand one another. Such a universal desire, what if there was a way of doing that?! I will touch on religion. However, I want to discuss Generation Alpha, Kate Bush in 2026 and darker themes and issues that could apply to the song. Or its lyrics are pertinent in a way. However, before getting there, it is worth bringing in some interview archive where Kate Bush talks about the inspiration behind Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Thanks to Kate Bush Encyclopedia for the resource. They provide some background and interview archive:

“Song written by Kate Bush. The song was reportedly written in one evening in the summer of 1983. It was the first song recorded for the subsequent fifth studio album Hounds Of Love. The electronic drums, programmed by Del Palmer, and the Fairlight part were present from the first recording of the song. The lyrics speak of Bush’s impossible wish to become her lover, and he her, so that they could know what the other felt. Kate played the first versions of the songs to Paul Hardiman on 6 October 1983. He commented later: “The first time I heard ‘Running Up That Hill’ it wasn’t a demo, it was a working start. We carried on working on Kate and Del’s original. Del had programmed the Linn drum  part, the basis of which we kept. I know we spent time working on the Fairlight melody/hook but the idea was there plus guide vocals.”

The working title of ‘Running Up That Hill’ was ‘A Deal With God’. Representatives at EMI were hesitant to release the single as ‘A Deal With God’ due its use of the word ‘God’, which might lead to a negative reception. Bush relented and changed the title for the single. On the album and subsequent releases the title was ‘Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)’.

This song is very much about two people who are in love, and how the power of love is almost too big for them. It leaves them very insecure and in fear of losing each other. It’s also perhaps talking about some fundamental differences between men and women. (Kate Bush Club newsletter, 1985)

It is very much about the power of love, and the strength that is created between two people when they’re very much in love, but the strength can also be threatening, violent, dangerous as well as gentle, soothing, loving. And it’s saying that if these two people could swap places – if the man could become the woman and the woman the man, that perhaps they could understand the feelings of that other person in a truer way, understanding them from that gender’s point of view, and that perhaps there are very subtle differences between the sexes that can cause problems in a relationship, especially when people really do care about each other. (The Tony Myatt Interview, November 1985)”.

It is startling that A Deal with God had to become Running Up That Hill. The original title is more relevant than the one we know now. It is more about that spiritual deal than it is about this release. The heroine/woman running up the hill, running up the road – with no problem. If a deal can be done and two lovers could better understand one another, then it would be this revelation and freedom. Maybe it shows a shift today that there would be no issue using ‘God’ in a title. Even a more religious nation like the U.S., perhaps they are not as devour as they once were. In no way is there any blasphemy or anything anti-God. Bush was born into a Catholic family and I feel has retained her faith. She said how her career was a mission from God. She has brought religious figures into various songs through the years. I explored that when I wrote about Lily and four biblical figures that were included in that song. In terms of God. In future features, I am going to explore Them Heavy People. About religious teachings and figures like Jesu and the mystic George Gurdjieff, an early example of spirituality in Bush’s work. That song was included on 1978’s The Kick Inside. The Dreaming’s Suspended in Gaffa mentions God’s name, though it is a brief reference. The Song of Solomon from The Red Shoes is one I hope there is more information about, as I would love to know more about it. Hounds of Love’s Waking the Witch and 50 Words for Snow’s Among Angels also connect to religion and spirituality. However, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is the sole song where God is very much at the centre. It joins a select few classic Pop songs where one has to consider the personal and ecumenical. The divine and spiritual around the more humble. I do think that one of the strengths of Kate Bush’s music is her spiritual nature. I guess Madonna was another artist with Catholic roots who did bring religion and faith into her music. A fascinating connection between these artists. However, Madonna never wrote anything like this Kate Bush classic. Rather than focusing on the personal, Bush instead looked at how men and women in love can often make mistakes or there is this communication barrier. If a deal with the Almighty can be struck, then this could lead to harmony.

I think that the song could be updated for today. Many artists covered Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) after it topped the chart in 2022. Among those who have tackled it are Halsey and St. Vincent. I do feel the song is universal, though it is heteronormative. It is a straight couple. We are in a time of huge prejudice, discrimination and misogyny. What is powerful is this idea of two people being able to understand each other if they could swap places. Perhaps not something Kate Bush has ever considered, what is God could grant this wish now, but more to do with the toxicity and abuse that many women and members of the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community face. Would that ever help?! There is so much ignorance, transphobia and misogyny. Lives of women especially horrendous. They way they are viewed and treated by men online. Image-based abuse and misogyny are rife. I feel there is this epidemic that does require a lot more intervention from governments. Rather than reveal the shocking and disrupting extent regarding women’s safety online, at the base level, there is this need for greater understanding. No saying women ever should need to understand where men are coming from and why they do this. It is the other way around: men absolutely need to put themselves in the place of the women that they think nothing of abusing and degrading! If Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) resonates with people because that idea of swapping places and getting an idea of what someone else is thinking is so powerful and difficult to do, I also feel there is a more wide-reaching relevance. Rather than it being purely about lovers and cutting through tension and ignorance, think about the divisions we have today. In terms of those who spread hate and abuse women and the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community, what would happen if those responsible for causing distress and harm actually were the people they aim this at?! One feels that it would be a sovereign experience. New dynamics to a classic song. Would a loving and fair God stop such a universal and needed appeal?! Over forty years after the track was released, has it become easier for those in relationships to communicate and emphasise?

Before moving on, it is worth thinking about Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and how it is spearheading this fandom and love of Kate Bush. Generation Alpha (those born in the rearly-2010s) are discovering Bush through this song. I wonder whether the nature of God and doing a deal with something unknown and invisible has affected them. I do think that the youngest and newest Kate Bush fans are among the most impassioned and curious., Bush set records when Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) reached number one in 2022 The longest time between number ones for an artist (forty-four years and eighty-three days). Bush became the oldest female artist to have a U.K. number one (sixty-three years and 342 days). In 2023, the song became the first solo recording by a female artist from the 1980s to surpass a billion streams on Spotify. Bush was sixty-four. Few female artists of that age are highly regarded and have the same opportunities as younger artists, so one would also hopes ageism could be tackled if those marginalising older women could swap places and see the damage that does. It is humbling and inspiring that so many young people are discovering Kate Bush. I hope that it is not a homogenised focus on Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). I am an atheists, though I do feel that it is important to have faith, religion and spirituality explored through music. It is vital that music represents everyone. Religion less and less common in music. One powerful aspect of Kate Bush’s 1985-released work of genius is that Bush is turning to God. Rather than point the finger and tear the other person apart, she is reflecting on all the anger – “Is there so much hate for the ones we love?” – and wanting it to be resolved. This patience and different perspective that was not explored in music at that time. It is also not something you hear now. Taking these personal and intense emotions and almost praying for some sort of realisation and mutual understanding.  “Let me steal this moment from you now/Oh, come on, angel/Come on, come on, darlin'/Let's exchange the experience“. Rather than praying to God or invoke his name in a rather ordinary or familiar way, he is almost this arbiter and proxy. Someone who can help men and women – or lovers of all genders and orientations – put themselves in each other’s places so they can see the hurt they are causing. Such a powerful and timeless message and feeling.

If the first ‘character’ – it seems odd referring to God as such! – is mysterious and anonymous because he has never been seen and is this spirit rather than an actual person, the next character I want to bring in is anonymous and mysterious for a different reason, Because we do not really exactly know who the person is. The Man with the Child in His Eyes is the eponymous character in the song from The Kick Inside. The second U.K. single released from Kate Bush’s debut, there might be misconceptions around the title. I have previously written how Bush has this positivity for men. In music, there are few artists completely positive and understanding regarding the opposite sex. Men often torn apart and cast aside. However, Bush is someone who has always been positive towards men. The idea of the ‘child in his eyes’ is not to do with children or anything sinister. Instead, it is the way men retain this child-like curiosity and quality – if you could ever say this is positive?! – through their life. Bush had so much wonder for men and loved them. Found them very attractive and sexy. Growing up with two brothers and a very supportive father, she had positive male role models right from childhood. David Gilmour was her mentor and paid for her first professional recording session. Bush played almost entirely with male musicians, so there were very few moments where she was ever angry or accusatory towards men in her music. Here, we get some interview archive where Kate Bush discusses the inspiration behind The Man with the Child in His Eyes:

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

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

If the single version starts with the enticing and thrilling “He’s here!” echoing, the album version does not include that. It is a shame. This was one of three songs that was recorded at AIR Studios in London in June 1975. Bush was sixteen when the song was recorded. In terms of the lyrics she wrote and what she was talking about, it was exceptionally mature. I discussed Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and how other Pop artists of the day were not discussing God or relationship compromise through the same lens as Kate Bush. In 1978, when The Man with the Child in His Eyes was released as a single, there was really nothing like this. A couple of points to note regarding the ‘Man’ from the title. Many people assumed that it was David Gilmour. It is not really a song about a particular relationship and this odd love. Think about how Buch weas writing about love for The Kick Inside and there is a lot that is quite classical. It could feature in centuries-old novels or older romantic fiction. Poetic, sensual, literary and gothic, we get this vision of a man “lost on some horizon”. Perhaps this explorer or sea-farer, this is not a conventional or run-of-the-mill song of desire or lost love. In fact, I think the song is more imagined. “I hear him, before I go to sleep”, “Nobody knows about my man”, and “Listening to a man I’ve never known before” seems to suggest an imagined man or this fantasy. Bush immersing herself in the pages of a book of poems. My favourite line is “And he’s so aware of all my situations”. What situations are these?! That specific phrasing is fascinating. “And when I stay up late/He’s always waiting, but I feel him hesitate”. Is that her literally in bed with this person and a physical hesitation, or is it this more detached and less personal viewpoint?

Others feel the song is about an early love of hers, Steve Blacknell. Dating him when she was a teenager, he did once have in his possession the original hand-written lyrics of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. In hot pink felt tip pen, it is something I would like to own more than anything. The lyrics were auctioned off and I wonder who has them! These lyrics are “lost on some horizon” themselves! It is not a new thing where people guess the identity of people mentioned in songs. Who was Carly Simon referring to in You’re So Vain? Tracks from high-profile artists where they mention someone who wronged them always gets people speculating. However, here, people knew very little about Kate Bush. She was not as high-profile as she would become, so the possibilities of options were limited when it came to this man. However, rather than it being a paen to a special lover, it is more a general look at men and the way they have this child inside them. Also, in terms of The Man with the Child and His Eyes, it would be problematic assuming it to be literal. As Bush was only sixteen when she recorded the song, if it was released today and we reads the lyrics to be about this girl who was waiting to her older lover to return, that could cause controversy. Another mystery around The Man with the Child in His Eyes relates to the age Bush was wen she wrote it. Many assume she was only thirteen when it was written, though Bush herself has said she was sixteen. There are some incredible female artists who wrote stunning songs of immense beauty very song. Can anyone claim to have written something as unusual, profound and poetic as Kate Bush at the age of thirteen?! So many major artists take years to write something this good. They work with collaborators and other songwriters. Even The Beatles were mostly doing cover versions in their early years. However, Kate Bush wrote originals and was writing in this extraordinary unusual way. Unusual in terms of how different she was to artists around her.

It makes me think about Kate Bush’s earliest songs and the critical impressions. In 1978, she was subjected to so much sexism, misogyny and patronisation. Critics dismissing her because she was young and a woman. Often highlighting her lyrics as being juvenile and weird, there has not really been this reassessment and reappraisal. People do not really discuss now how incredible these earliest songs are. It is ironic that critics in 1978 were harsh on Bush’s lyrics considering what was around then. The basic and rather one-dimensional Punk lyrics. The mainstream not exactly offering up songs that were so insightful, fascinating and rich with possibility. They were direct, largely unsophisticated and sloganeering. There were some amazing artists offering something different, but Kate Bush was so far ahead of her time. People also need to talk about how influential The Kick Inside is today. In terms of the artists who clearly take similar directions and perspectives. We discuss Hounds of Love and its influence, though The Kick Inside is such an important and influential album. The Man with the Child in His Eyes is such an accomplished work from someone so young. Bush proving her genius right from the off! If Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) is a song about a very specific inspiration who everyone has a different visual impression of, The Man with the Child in His Eyes is perhaps misconstrued. People assuming it was about a boyfriend or someone close to Kate Bush. Instead, it is more about all men. How Bush viewed them. Celebrating and cherishing their child-like innocence, the narrative has changed. How many artists discuss the opposite sex in this way? There is positivity in Pop, yet there is still a lot in the way of recrimination, disagreement, division and isolation. The Man with the Child in His Eyes is like poetry. Performed on SNL in the U.S. in 1978, it was her only appearance on the show. Considered to be one of her best songs, I would love to see this given a chance to appear on the small or big screen at some point. So many standout lyrics. “Maybe he doesn’t love me/I just took a trip on my love for him”. Almost psychedelic in the way she “took a trip on my love”. So much to dissect and discuss. It is an indescribably beautiful and moving song from…

A teenage prodigy.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential February Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

Essential February Releases

__________

THERE are some…

must-own albums out next month that I want to highlight. Although a lot of the biggest albums are going to arrive in the spring and summer, there are some great ones coming out before then. I am going to start out with albums due on 6th February. An album from a wonderful band you should know about, Mandy, Indiana’s URGH is one I am looking forward to. You can pre-order it here. Out through Sacred Bones Records, here is some more information about an album that is among the highlights of the first quarter of this year:

“For Mandy, Indiana, the truth is the only way through. On their Sacred Bones debut URGH, the four-piece - vocalist Valentine Caulfield, guitarist and producer Scott Fair, synth player Simon Catling, and drummer Alex Macdougall - are a force of uncanny nature, grafting together a record that is as much a call to action as a parlay into oblivion and transcendence. Across the ten tracks, the band interpolate their own unconventional language into a mantra for self-determination and resilience, forging a template for a brighter future before it fades to black.

Much of the album was written during a residency at an eerie studio house in the outskirts of Leeds, then recorded across Berlin and Greater Manchester. It was an intense environment partially due to the health issues faced by Caulfield and Macdougall during the writing and recording process.

Yet Mandy, Indiana remain uncompromising. Caulfield uses her voice as a distorted instrument and a weapon, oscillating between playful and eviscerating. The throbbing siren-sound of “Magazine” stands alongside the cut-up vocal fry of “try saying” and the shapeshifting ferocity of “ist halt so,” which channels the urgency of protes movements, referencing resistance to the genocide in Gaza while speaking to struggles more broadly, while final track “I’ll Ask Her” is a deliberate directness calling out toxic boy’s club culture and a tenacious reckoning that hangs over the album at large.

Although there are still undeniable “bangers” (like the frazzled rap of “Sicko!” featuring billy woods), URGH often feels hewn with precise cinema. From the bristling techno of “Cursive” to the deconstructed feedback loops of “Life Hex,” the album moves between industrial catharsis and cinematic unease, threading a tension that Fair describes as “a remix of itself.” This contrasting palette is both a necessary aspect of the record as well as the underlyin connective tissue. Though deeply personal, URGH reflects the violent, fractured state of the wider world. Caulfield’s lyrics grapple with assault, systemic indifference, and the omnipresence of pain, while also insisting on moments of beauty and solidarity. URGH belongs in the physical world, and the artwork by Carnovsky, featuring an anatomical illustration of Andreas Vesalius, underscores the record’s visceral confrontation with the body and its limits. URGH is both otherworldly, and physical and cathartic, both a first step toward healing and a refusal to let the conversation die”.

Another album from 6th February that you need to check out is Puma Blue’s Croak Dream. It can be pre-ordered here. Though I am new to this artist, Croak Dream is an album that sounds fascinating and well worth investigating. In terms of their previous music, Puma Blue has taken a step into new territory by the sound of things. This is someone that you need to put on your radar:

“With his new record Croak Dream, Puma Blue (real name Jacob Allen) returns to the spectral intimacy that first won him a cult following, now reimagined with the raw, instinctive energy of his live band. The album fuses lo-fi jazz balladry with jungle breaks, krautrock textures and trip-hop atmosphere, drawing comparisons to Portishead, Jeff Buckley, and D’Angelo.

Written in solitude and brought to life in collaboration, Croak Dream was conjured from tape loop sessions at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, co-produced and engineered by Sam Petts-Davies (The Smile, Frank Ocean) where the band improvised to fragments of Allen’s songs they’d never fully heard. The result is a dreamlike collage of baritone sax-drenched ballads and restless grooves: tender, feverish, and alive.

This record marks a daring evolution for Puma Blue, balancing bold sonic experimentation with raw emotional clarity, tailor-made for the stage”.

An album that was delayed from last year – or the release date was changed -, there is a lot of understandably excitement around the release of Robbie Williams’s BRITPOP. Sporting one of the best album covers we will see this year, there is not a lot of detail yet about the music and the inspiration behind the songs. Maybe Williams trying to capture a period of British music that he observed but was not part of. As he was fired from Take That before Britpop exploded, it was a difficult time for him. In an article published by the BBC in October, one big reason why BRITPOP’s release date was moved was to avoid going up against Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl:

“If Robbie Williams had his way, you'd have heard his next album already.

The singer claims he pushed back Britpop after learning its original release date would clash with Taylor Swift's The Life of a Showgirl.

He told BBC Radio 1 hosts Rickie Haywood-Williams, Melvin Odoom and Charlie Hedges he was determined to claim a record 16th UK number one album.

Robbie is currently tied with The Beatles on 15, something he said he "desperately" wants to better.

'I'm really competitive'

It's unclear why Robbie is holding off on sharing Britpop until February, but Taylor's latest album soared straight to number one on the Official Album Chart.

Taylor's dominance suggests the former Take That singer was right to stay out of her path if he wants to top the chart again.

"I'm still a big deal but I can't compete with that one," joked the 51-year-old.

"So I've shifted it. I've moved it a little bit."

He said being in-line to overtake a record shared with The Beatles is surreal.

"It's an alternative reality that I step into when I think about my career and I think about that particular record," he said.

"But I'll take it. Don't get me wrong. I'm really competitive, too, which is why I moved the album.

"I desperately want that thing”.

There are a few albums from 13th February that are well worth pre-ordering. One is Ásgeir’s Julia. You can pre-order it here. This is an artist who I have been following for a little while, so I am excited to see what comes from Julia. The Icelandic artist is truly terrific. He is another artist I would recommend people check out. Julia is going to be a real treat. Rough Trade provide some details of what we can expect:

“On his fifth studio album, Julia, Icelandic singer-songwriter Ásgeir enters intriguing and uncharted territory. After years of engaging translators such as John Grant and working with the poetry of his father, Einar Georg Einarsson, Ásgeir has penned his lyrics by himself for the first time in his long and celebrated career. The result is a deeply contemplative body of work, steeped in nostalgia, that sees Ásgeir meditating on his past regrets as well as his hopes for the future, guided by the spectre of the album’s title character.

Ásgeir has long been lauded for his intricate folk-pop, lush production, and wistful, emotive falsetto. Julia marks a shift toward not just lyrical self-reliance but cathartic directness, songs that feel not just exquisitely performed, but lived in. “This was kind of the first time I was writing lyrics totally on my own,” he shares. “It was scary. I’m still trying to find myself within that. But I tried to open myself up and I learned a lot through that process, and it was definitely therapeutic for me.”

This new sense of vulnerability threads through the album’s ten tracks, written and recorded over the course of nearly two years. Many of the songs were first composed on guitar, with Ásgeir aiming for simplicity, prioritising melody, clarity, and meaning. The production, co-developed with longtime collaborator Guðm. “Kiddi” Kristinn Jónsson, remains organic and understated, allowing Ásgeir’s voice, and importantly his voice as a writer, to come forward”.

I would not normally highlight a soundtrack album as one to buy. However, as Charli xcx is providing the songs for Wuthering Heights, it is definitely one that everyone should buy. Available on beautiful black and green marble, you can pre-order it here. We have heard a couple of songs from it, including the incredible House featuring John Cale. Again, there are not really many details out there for the music and what the album will sound like. However, when news broke that Charli xcx would be providing original songs for the soundtrack, there was this positive and excited online reaction, as Grazia report:

“The first look at Emerald Fennell's adaption of Wuthering Heights has dropped and it's everything we could have hoped for - especially with cultural icon Charli XCX on board.

Yes, you heard that right - the official teaser of the film reveals that Charli will be contributing original songs to the film. Posting the clip on Instagram, she wrote 'new original songs by me for Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. in theatres february 14th. happy early valentines <3'

Naturally, fans went into meltdown over the news, with many commenting on what a dreamy collab this is. 'Two of my fav artists together. This is insane,' wrote one. Another penned 'this insane crossover omg.' A third wrote 'Emerald Fennell, Charlixcx AND Margot?! I'm soo obsessed.'

They have a point. Both Emerald Fennell and Charli XCX have achieved huge cultural recognition with their respective projects, Saltburn and Brat. The two coming together to work on what's set to be one of 2026's most talked about films is genius.

Like Fennell's Saltburn, the film is set to be divisive, with the adaption anything but conventional. On release, the film was described as 'a compound of vulgar depravity and unnatural horrors.' Just last month, reports from a test screening found that viewers allegedly called it 'aggressively provocative and tonally abrasive' with one scene of a public hanging in which the 'condemned man ejaculates mid-execution.' But Fennell is never one to shy away from a fiery public debate - and neither is Charli.

When Charli's set at Glastonbury was met with criticism for using Auto-Tune and her style of dancing, she had the perfect response. Taking to X, she wrote that 'the best art is divisive and confrontational' and that she enjoys the discourse. 'like the idea that singing with deliberate autotune makes you a fraud or that not having a traditional band suddenly means you must not be a “real artist” is like, the most boring take ever. yawn sorry just fell asleep xx,' she wrote.

Like Fennell, she doesn't shy away from being too loud and her music pushes the boundaries of pop - yet her lyrics always manage to capture something of the zeitgeist. In fact, Charli has even commented on how much she admired Fennell in the past. In a 2023 interview, Charli spoke about how watching Saltburn 'triggered' her to her upbringing. 'Emerald Fennell IS the devil in the details,' she told The Line of Best Fit. 'Emerald's flair for delicious specifics really transports the audience back to THAT time.'

One thing's for sure - this could be pop culture's most fiery collab yet”.

Two more albums to cover off before getting to albums from 20th and 27th. I want to move to Chet Faker’s A Love for Strangers. In order to get a bit more context and insight into this new album, I am highlighting this article. You can pre-order the album here. For some reason, Rough Trade are not stocking the album until April, and the release date has not been pushed back as far as I know, so I have included a link from HMV. In any case, this is an album that I am looking forward to, as Chet Faker is a remarkable artist. It seems like A Love for Strangers is going to be among his very best work:

“Nick Murphy, better known to many as Chet Faker, has announced a new studio album, A Love For Strangers, due February 13, 2026 on BMG, and has released a buoyant lead single, This Time For Real, to whet appetites. The single arrives with a playful, kinetic video that follows Murphy as Chet Faker tearing through New York City by jet ski, sports car and pedicab, a jaunty visual that matches the song’s anthemic, self-aware charm.

This Time For Real finds Murphy at his most immediately catchy, pairing an earworm chorus with lyrics that tip a hat to the pressures and pleasures of artistic success, all delivered in that warm, slightly sardonic voice that made him a global surprise after Built On Glass. The track’s swagger-free confidence is a neat scene setter for A Love For Strangers, a record the announcement frames as Murphy returning to the restless curiosity that birthed Chet Faker in the first place.

A Love For Strangers follows Hotel Surrender from 2021, and it arrives after a period of reflection marked by the 10 year anniversary of Murphy’s breakthrough, Built On Glass.

That 2014 record vaulted Chet Faker into the spotlight, blending soulful songwriting, electronic textures and a beautiful looseness that made songs like Smoke And Retribution and Talk Is Cheap fixtures across playlists and festival stages. Since then Murphy has alternated between releases under his stage name and work under his own name, including the more experimental instrumental Music For Silence, plus high-profile collaborations with artists such as Flume and Marcus Marr, showing a restless creative life that refuses to settle.

The announcement frames A Love For Strangers as a coming-full-circle moment, a project born of personal rediscovery and the recalibration that followed a decade of attention. Murphy’s trajectory is unusual, in that he has repeatedly shifted between the persona and the person, testing how far a stage name can carry new ideas, then stepping back to experiment away from expectation. That tug-of-war between identity and invention is audible in This Time For Real, which balances anthemic hooks with cheeky self-reference, and promises an album that looks outward, while reckoning with the burden of looking back.

Fans will recognise familiar strands in Murphy’s approach, the marriage of classic songwriting instincts with modern production smarts, but the tease suggests A Love For Strangers will also nudge into fresh territory. If Built On Glass announced him to the world, and Hotel Surrender broadened his palette, this next record sounds like an attempt to reconcile the two impulses, to make songs that hold immediate appeal, while rewarding listeners who follow the twists in his career”.

Two incredible Pop artists release albums on 20th February. One is the American icon, Hilary Duff. I am looking ahead to luck… or something. Available on C.D. and tape, I would advise people interested to get it on vinyl. Duff is an incredible artist. Promising something truly special and personal, you can pre-order luck… or something here. I do really like her music, and I think her forthcoming album will get a lot of critical love. And it will be a big commercial success:

“Multiplatinum global icon, Hilary Duff returns to the pop world with her sixth studio album, luck… or something, her boldest and most self-assured project yet. Co-written by Duff and her husband and Grammy®-winning songwriter/producer Matthew Koma, the album features 11 brand new tracks, including the critically acclaimed single “Mature”.

After rising to fame as the titular star of the Disney Channel blockbuster, Lizzie McGuire, Duff first kicked off her music career with 2003’s 4X platinum Metamorphosis (featuring the Top 40-charting “So Yesterday” and “Come Clean”), then released her platinum-selling 2004 self-titled LP and 2007 autobiographical dance-pop collection Dignity.

With those three albums alone selling a collective 15 million copies worldwide, she also established herself as a producer, entrepreneur, philanthropist, and New York Times-bestselling author, all while continuing to deliver standout performances in TV and film, including her award-nominated turn on Darren Star’s Younger.

Recently signed to Atlantic Records, Duff is now launching a thrilling new chapter and sharing her first new music since 2015’s Breathe In. Breathe Out”.

Not only one of the most anticipated debut albums of this year, Leigh-Anne’s My Ego Told Me To is going to be remarkable. The former Little Mix member is a phenomenal solo artist. In terms of albums that will define this year and be among the best-reviewed, I do think that My Ego Told Me To is going to be right up there. You can pre-order the album here. Even if you are not aware of Leigh-Anne or consider yourself a fan, this is an album that I think you need to hear. One of our most important Pop artists, there is going to be a huge critical reaction when this is released:

“Leigh-Anne Pinnock is ready to reintroduce herself. After conquering the pop world with one of the biggest groups on the planet and stepping out as a solo artist, she has reached a new clarity: no more compromises, no more limits.

With the introduction of her debut album My Ego Told Me To, Leigh-Anne isn’t reinventing herself, she’s restoring the woman she always was. Bold, unapologetic and free, this album is the purest expression of her artistry to date and musically reflects every facet of Leigh-Anne Pinnock, unfiltered, independent and finally on her own terms. “Everything that has been in my heart, everything I’ve wanted to do, I’m doing now. It feels like freedom. It feels right”.

February is a bit of a quiet one for new albums, but there are some tremendous ones coming out. I am moving to 27th February and Bill Callahan’s My Days of 58. You can pre-order a copy here. This is what Rough Trade say: “Bill Callahan continues to open uncanny depths of expression, blazing one of the most original singer-songwriter trails out there. Applying the living, breathing energies of his concerts to this album production, he sharpens his slice-of-life portraiture to cut deeper, releasing a stream of singalong consciousness: poetic, cinematic, novelistic, comedic – and above all – musical”. The Quietus ran an article in November when news of the upcoming album was announced:

“Bill Callahan has shared details of his first studio album since 2022’s YTI⅃AƎЯ.

Spanning 12 tracks, My Days Of 58 was made by Callahan together with the band that backed him on his last tour in support of his previous LP: guitarist Matt Kinsey, saxophonist Dustin Laurenzi and drummer Jim White. The experience of touring with the three musicians showed the artist “that they could handle anything I threw at them,” he said.

Going into further detail, Callahan added: “Improv / unpredictability / the unknown is the thing that keeps me motivated to keep making music. It’s all about listening to yourself and others. A lot of the best parts of a recording are the mistakes – making them into strengths, using them as springboards into something human.”

To mark the announcement of My Days Of 58, Callahan has shared lead track ‘The Man I’m Supposed To Be’”.

The final album I am highlighting is Swet Deth by Crooked Fingers. You can pre-order the album here. Though this is an album new to me and I have had to do a bit of reading and listening back to Crooked Fingers, I was instantly intrigued. I do feel that Swet Death should be heard by everyone. One of the most interesting releases of next month. Well worth getting the album:

“One afternoon, Eric Bachmann’s son returned from school with a sheath of pictures he’d drawn, all of them macabre. “There were crows and sinister figures with scythes and tombstones,” he recalls. On one, he had written ‘Deth, Sweet Deth,’ and everything clicked in my head.”

Swet Deth, Bachmann’s first album under his Crooked Fingers moniker after a 15-year hiatus, organized itself around the image: its songs are about death, yes, but there’s a sweetness to them, a wry sensibility to his lyrics that comes from having experienced many kinds of death and the life that follows in its wake.
“Crooked Fingers” is a historically slippery concept — no two albums sound alike or feature the same lineup in studio or on tour. Hearing parts in these songs that called for instruments he didn’t play or vocals that weren’t in his register, he found himself expanding the roster of guest musicians further than he had on any album in his catalog, including Sharon Van Etten (“Haunted”), The National’s Matt Berninger (“From All Ways”), and Superchunk’s Mac McCaughan (“Cold Waves”). But first he started with family, friends, and frequent collaborators. Jon Rauhouse plays pedal steel. Bachmann’s wife, Liz Durrett, contributes vocals, as do members of his touring band, Skylar Gudasz and Avery Leigh Draut (of Night Palace).
There is a freedom to this collection of songs, a groove to them that would belie their agonies and anxieties were mere death the album’s point and not what comes before. For Eric Bachmann, that has been growth, as a musician and as a man. Like the tree sprouting from the graveyard on its cover, Swet Deth is surprising and lush, a shock of color against its morbid landscape, proof of life in the shadow of its opposite. “RIP Eric Bachmann,” one tombstone reads. As Crooked Fingers, he’s never felt more alive”.

Even if more albums will come out towards the spring, the ones I have spotlighted above are all worth seeking out. I am particularly excited by Leigh-Anne and her debut solo album, though Charli xcx, Hilary Duff and Robbie Williams are going to put out big albums, alongside some treats from smaller artists. A varied month with some great music due, I hope the recommendations above…

HAVE been of some use.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Adult DVD

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Adult DVD

__________

EVEN if the amazing…

Adult DVD put out their debut single in 2021, I do think they are considered a rising band. Perhaps unusual for a band who have been together for a while, all of the original members remain. The Leeds sextet consists of Harry Hanson (lead vocals), Greg Lonsdale (synth/vocals), Danny Blackburn (guitar/synth), Jake Williams (synth), Jonathan Newell (drums), and George Manson (bass). Since their Next Day Shipping E.P. in 2024, the band have been busy. With a run of amazing dates ahead, 2026 s going to be a packed one. I want to bring in a few interviews with the band from last year, as they are a sensational prospect. I think this year is going to be their best so far. Perhaps an album will arrive at some point. Even though they are a band who firmed during lockdown – ort at least emerged and released music then -, last year was one where they were truly on the radar. Mancunion spoke with the group last March:

“Adult DVD emerged from lockdown boredom: at first it was Harry Hanson and Greg Lonsdale (who plays synth and provides backing vocals) “writing tunes via the internet to each other”. He would start by using a Roland TB-303 Synthesiser, a synth originally designed to simulate bass guitars. The sound of this synth is iconic and gave rise to genres such as acid house and techno. The sound originated from Hanson growing “bored of regular indie guitar music” citing an influence of early Adult DVD as “indie bands with electronic elements” such as LCD Soundsystem. The band’s song-writing process differs from many other contemporary bands as they have four synth players, a unique element that most would find difficult to utilise. The layers of the song are built up gradually; the band has “never written a tune altogether in a practice room”. The songs that the group writes are curated carefully to make listeners dance and they ensure that the many instruments all get their chance in the spotlight.

Next, Hanson spoke about how their approach changed from writing and recording the first EP Fountain of Youth compared to their newest EP Next Day Shipping. He says there is “an element of trying new things on Next Day Shipping now that the band knows what we’re doing, now we have time the sprout new ideas”, giving credit to his bandmates Jake Williams and Danny Blackburn on their increasingly great ability to mix songs, stating this as a clear reason that they can experiment more now. It is evident that the camaraderie of this band is an essential element to the way they create music; each member brings something unique to the table to keep making the “dance music with guitars” that they love and excel at making. The band is sticking to its roots of making fun guitar music to dance to, even while their sound is evolving to become more “technical as we learn to get better at the synth”. Hanson says that when the band first started, they were “struggling to get a noise out of it”, now the band is doing even bigger things and can project an upward trajectory with their immense amount of talent.

In the current music climate, it can be difficult for new bands to be discovered and even harder for them to make a profit touring. With stations like BBC Radio 6 Music focusing on new artists, it can help these bands push through to the mainstream. He says that Emily Pilbeam has “championed us from the start” with her BBC Introducing mixtape, going on to say that “if she wasn’t supporting us as much as she has done, we probably wouldn’t have had the 6 Music backing”. In days when it is increasingly harder for bands to sustain a music career due to the cost of production and touring, it is good to hear that the music industry is still supporting up-and-coming bands”.

I want to move to an interview from the autumn. The Line of Best Fit spoke with a six-piece who “excel in tales of both the niche and the quotidian, set to music that bashes together rock and rave”. There is still a huge focus on artists from London. It is clear that things are shifting. More focus on cities away from the capital. With the Mercury Prize going to two non-London acts in succession, there is more recognition and celebration of artists from other parts of the U.K. Adult DVD are one of our brightest young bands:

“The breadth and flexibility of Adult DVD’s lyrics provides them with a freedom to expand their sound more, adds Hanson. “I don’t feel like we have to stick to anything, especially because we haven’t done the first album yet.”

One thing that is constant in Adult DVD’s music, however, is energy. It’s mirrored as much on record as it is in live shows, with some reports applauding the band’s ability to getLeeds’ allegedly motionless crowds dancing (Hanson disagrees, believing it to instead be Londoners). They’ve even added matinees to meet demand for their high energy shows.

Speaking on his bandmates’ behalf, Hanson says that performing live is their favourite part of being in Adult DVD. Regardless of flailing limbs and "embarrassing dancing – none of us can dance”, Hanson says, an Adult DVD show is all about “letting loose” and “not worrying about what you look like”. It’s partly why the band writes about whatever bizarro or banal thing has piqued their interests. “Because the music’s so uplifting and dancey,” Hanson adds, “it kind of doesn’t matter what we’re saying.”

Adult DVD formed during the pandemic after members from previous Leeds-based bands joined up for a new project. Leeds native Hanson met Adult DVD synth-player and backing vocalist Greg Lonsdale while doing bar work at the Brudenell Social Club. Lonsdale introduced Hanson to his Uncle Buzzard bandmates at the time: George Manson (now bassist in Adult DVD), Jake Williams (synths) and Danny Blackburn (guitars/synths). Jonathan Newell (drums) was in Hanson’s former band, Glass Mountain.

PHOTO CREDIT: Titouan Massé

Newell is originally from Bradford and Williams is from Shrewsbury. The remainder hail from near Teesside. Hanson aside, the others adopted Leeds as their home when they arrived there for higher education. Hanson pursued music production at Leeds Conservatoire – formerly Leeds College of Music – coinciding with fellow Leeds band and the 2024 Mercury Prize-winners, English Teacher, who were also enrolled at the institution.

If that all sounds rather tight knit and collaborative, well, it is. The music scene in Leeds is “very supportive” and close-quartered, explains Hanson. “Partly it’s ‘cause it’s so small that if you slag a band off they’ll probably see you around the corner, know what I mean?” Hanson says, smirking. In recent years English Teacher have placed fresh attention on the city. So have caustic, comical post-punkers Yard Act and jungle revivalist Nia Archives.

“The scene definitely seems to be really bubbling,” Hanson says. “There’s loads of new stuff, especially in dance music.” He lists DJ Subaru and Farwell Moscow, as well as electro-noise outfit Bathing Suits. “As clubs are shutting, there seems to be a scene rising.”

Leeds is fortunate to have a host of celebrated music venues – from the Brudenell to Hyde Park Book Club. But it’s not immune to the struggle of keeping venues open. The Old Red Bus Station, for example, shut in January this year, citing an “unassailable” rise in operating costs. In 2023, 13% of shuttered grassroots music venues were in Yorkshire.

The band’s immediate ambition is to play more shows abroad after an “amazing summer” ticking off several European festivals. Hanson says it felt “like a holiday” they never wanted to end. The bucket list UK festival was Glastonbury where they playing the BBC Introducing stage, no doubt bolstered by early support from Leeds’ “legend” of a BBC Intro presenter, Emily Pilbeam.

As for the future, the band are looking forward to finally revealing their debut album. “That’s what l’m really focused on now,” says Hanson. “And I want to come back to that album five years later and think, ‘I'm still really proud of that.’” We have every confidence”.

In December, Adult DVD were interviewed by Rolling Stone UK. Making this joyful and distinct Dance-Punk music, a Soulwax and LCD Soundsystem-influenced group who demand to be heard. I think that the arrival of their debut album is going to be a big event. Whilst solo artists are still favoured and given the most focus, there are these incredible bands that are being highlighted:

“Was this musical style quite intentional from the beginning? Was there something here that you didn’t get from previous bands?

I’ve gotten a lot more into electronic music in the last few years, and Greg was feeling the exact same. We wanted it to be prominently synths, but we like a lot of indie and rock music, so we wanted to bring that to it as well. It evolved into what it is now naturally – it wasn’t forced or pigeonholed.

How has the band and your creative process changed since your formation in lockdown?

When we first started, none of us could really play synths… like at all. The way we write music is quite odd anyway. We’ve never been in a room all together and wrote a song. We do it in twos. That idea started because it’d have been such a painful thing to listen to six people trying to play synths with a live drummer in a room when we’re not very good at playing synths. It’d probably have sent us all insane. Three of us have got little home studios and we go between them over the computer. It’s never six of us in a rehearsal room with everything set up. It meant that when we started playing live, it was sort of like doing karaoke.

Your lyrics come from an abstract and somewhat absurd place – tell us about how they come together…

I played in bands before where the music was quite shoegaze-y and I was listening to a lot of sad music. As I came out of that band, I was no longer an angsty teenager. I was like, ‘Oh, wow, there’s actually music that you can smile to’. I think because of that, I’m writing music that’s upbeat and gives people a good feeling. Because dance music has a lot of repetition and is music-driven, the lyrics [are] just a hook. It’s not actually about the lyrics. Because of that, we can be silly with it. As long as it’s a pounding drum beat and people can dance to it, we can just say the most ridiculous things, and people will probably never notice that. If you broke it down, you could easily be like, ‘What are these lot on about?’, but I kind of like that. That’s cool”.

Go and follow the remarkable Adult DVD. They are a truly phenomenal act that are going to have a wonderful year. Last year was one where they got more live experience and built their reputation. This year is ready for them to take their next steps. If you are unaware of this Leeds band, then make sure that you…

LISTEN to their music now.

____________

Follow Adult DVD

Official:

https://adultdvd.band/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/adultdvdmenu/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1lT3vDbjqz299SxePec6ZG?si=4oIngW3JQrObkY9qR9tV5w

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmGiw0z6dRClNlIFMCnS8Zw

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Adltdvd/

Bandcamp:

https://adultdvd.bandcamp.com/

FEATURE: Groovelines: Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Corinne Bailey Rae - Put Your Records On

__________

THE remarkable…

Corinne Bailey Rae’s eponymous debut album turns twenty on 24th February. Its standout second single, Put Your Records On, is twenty on 20th February. A song that is still widely played to this day, I wanted to spotlight this gem ahead of its anniversary. Reaching number two in the U.K., it was this instant hit. A song that still sounds wonderful twenty years later. Written by Bailey Rae, John Beck, and Steve Chrisanthou, it is a world away from her most recent work. If you listen to her 2023 album, Black Rainbows, it is quite a departure. However, it is natural for artists to evolve. I can remember there was a lot of excitement around. In 2006, Leeds artist Corinne Bailey Rae was tipped for big things. With the release of the instantly infectious Put Your Records On, there was a great deal of discussion around her sound. Maybe different to what was around in 2006, it was something much needed. The BBC spoke with this rising artist:

“Corinne's soulful voice has been compared to some of the great female singers of all time, including Billie Holiday and even Tina Turner!

She says: "I sometimes feel embarrassed because I wouldn't really associate myself with people who are as great as that. But I think it's nice to be compared to people who are successful and have individual-sounding voices and have a more intimate style which is a style I like to perform in.

"I guess you just hope that one day people will recognise your voice for just you."

Despite the fact that much of her work now takes her to London and travelling all over the world (the video for Put Your Records On was filmed in South Africa), Corinne is keen to remain based in her home town.

"I really feel part of a community here, especially a musical community. I've played at the Wardrobe and the HiFi Club so may times and so many of my friends are graduates of the music college and people who've come here to seek their fortune and work and write music and all that...

"So much of what I've done has been influenced by the people around me, so I want to stick around here."

Having such diverse and popular music acts like Corinne and the Kaiser Chiefs flying the flag for the Leeds can only be positive for already thriving live music scene.

Corinne agrees: "It's amazing to see bands like the Kaiser Chiefs do so well. No one could have predicted it. It's amazing to know that you could start off in your home town and become an international band and a household name in just a year's time.

"I think it gives a lot of hope to bands on the local scene to stay here and to put some time into the scene and develop their own sound."

The single is released on Monday 20 February and Corinne will be paying special attention to the following Sunday's chart. That Sunday is a special date in her calendar for more reasons than one - she'll be hoping for a high chart position as a birthday treat”.

With an amazing B-side in the form of Another Rainy Day, I think that Put Your Records On is a classic. One of those songs that seemed to define an age. Even if Corinne Bailey Rae might have put some distance between herself and that song, it is still a fan favourite. One that is very important. I will move to this review of Put Your Record On. I remember when it came out and I was instantly intrigued. I followed Bailey Rae and have been a fan ever since. Her eponymous album one of the standouts from 2006. Black Rainbows one of my favourites from 2023:

“As it opens, the guitar and bass parts through the first verse and pre-chorus seem almost insultingly simplistic. The trite lyric “The more things seem to change / The more they stay the same,” while applicable to the song, did little to encourage me. Though the doe-eyed delicateness of her delivery was oddly engaging, I was ready to switch it off, likely forever.

Then the first hook-laden chorus jumped out at me and, well, I was hooked. The production pops and soars, but still gently, with Bailey Rae’s voice finding fresh potency and an entirely different personality.

“Girl, put your records on / Tell me your favorite song”

…and then, reaching an unexpected new octave..

“You go ahead, let your hair down”

Even once the song returns again to the comparatively smooth, peaceful verse, I remained sold for good.

As the second chorus nears I’m now anxiously awaiting it, and notice for the first time how it’s ushered in with the short snap of a snare drum fill and the gathering swell of horns and backing voices present to colorfully fill out the sound.

While the tune moves to a pretty, extended bridge, I could barely wait for one more chorus. And the third one delivers even more, beginning with an enticing two-beat mini breakdown, followed by the lovely reward of Bailey Rae’s multi-tracked vocal improvisations extending and ascending over the now fully enlivened mix.

When, finally, over chimes and tickled keyboard, she whispers the closing line – “Ooh, you’re gonna find yourself somewhere, somehow” – I’ve gotta say, I truly believed her”.

Put Your Records On earned a GRAMMY nomination for Song of the Year and Record of the Year in 2007. There have been occasions since when Put Your Records On has been mentioned and Corinne Bailey Rae has talked about its legacy. I want to quickly include a section from a Radio Utd and their chat with Bailey Rae around the release of Black Rainbows. Anyone who has not heard Put Your Records On needs to play it:

“Brie Haynes: So I do want to know what it was like writing an album that was so different from your previous works? Especially in the sense that it’s pro-Black.

Corinne Bailey Rae: It was really different. The main difference is obviously the subject matter and the sounds’ different. And the sound is in response to the subjects I guess. You know, with erasure, it just felt like an aggressive guitar song.  I wanted it to be like, 50s film soundtracks that then gets interrupted. Transit Queen really reminded me of those 90s Riot Grrrl posters when I saw her 50s photographs. But I thought it was a side project for all the time I was making it. So I felt really free. I thought, it doesn’t have to be like anything I’ve done before. It’s me and I’m spreading my wings. I’ll call it something—it won’t even have my name on. So that felt really good, and then I guess as it’s come out, I felt more responsibility to claim it as my own and show that this has been my interest and obsession for the last seven years. I think there’s a throughline between what I’ve done before and you know, even “Put Your Records On”, which is kind of my most popular and lightest song, still has that emphasis on self-acceptance and a Black self-acceptance. It’s kind of a big heart of the story. When I’m singing “plum red lipstick, Black hair kinking”, it links back to “gotta love that afro hair-do, go ahead let your hair down.” They link, they make sense to me. As well as, you know, I was in an indie band when I was a teen so that all makes sense to me”.

Put Your Records On has gained a whole new life. Its legacy is incredible. This article from 2024 highlights how this incredible song reached a new sales peak. It continues to reach new audiences. A magnificent song that still sounds uplifting, I wonder if anyone will write about it on its twentieth anniversary. Maybe Corinne Bailey Rae will write some words about it:

“Corinne Bailey Rae has achieved a new certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).

Her 2006 breakout single, “Put Your Records On,” has been upped to 3x multi-platinum by the RIAA, selling more than three million equivalent units.

The relaxing groove, produced by Steve Chrisanthou and Jimmy Hogarth, has more than 735 million streams on Spotify; it’s her most streamed song from its self-titled parent album (more on that later).

Bottom of Form

Meanwhile, the official video has surpassed 57 million views on YouTube.

“Put Your Records On” appears on the English singer/songwriter’s debut album, Corinne Bailey Rae, released June 20, 2006.

The acclaimed single achieved top 10 placements on Billboard charts, reaching No. 6 on Adult Contemporary and No. 8 on Smooth Jazz Airplay, respectively. It also peaked at No. 64 on the Billboard Hot 100.

In 2007, at the 49th Grammy Awards, “Put Your Records On” was nominated for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Bailey Rae was also among the Best New Artist nominees that year”.

In 2019, U.S. artist Madison Beer covered Put Your Records On. Putting her own spin on it, GRAMMY covered this as part of the Reimagined series. It is evident that Put Your Records On ahs reached a new generation. There is something in the lyrics and messages that seems to connect with people. The third song on her eponymous 2006 debut album, there is so much to admire and love about this track. I still hear it played on the radio all the time. Always popular with listeners:

“The next installment of ReImagined, featuring rising vocal powerhouse Madison Beer serving up a powerful cover of British R&B/neo-soul songstress Corinne Bailey Rae's "Put Your Records On," is officially here!

You can watch the L.A.-based, New York-born singer take on the GRAMMY-nominated 2006 feel-good bop. "Put Your Records On" was Bailey Rae's second single, which charted in both the U.K. and U.S., from her self-titled debut album. The uplifting track was nominated for Record Of The Year and Song Of The Year at the 49th GRAMMY Awards, where she also got a nod for Best New Artist.

Beer has a debut album of her own on the way this year to follow up her 2018 EP, As She Pleases. She released the LP's catchy lead single "Dear Society" in May. The 20-year-old is one to watch—back when she was just 13, Justin Bieber discovered her YouTube covers of icons like Etta James, tweeting about her to his huge fan base and helping connect her with a record deal”.

In March, Corinne Bailey Rae puts out her debut picture book that shares the same title as her most famous song. PUT YOUR RECORDS ON looks like it is the start of a new side of her career. I did not know about the picture book. We can learn more about the book on Bailey Rae’s official website. I know that it will be a big success:

“Corinne Bailey Rae, Grammy® Award-winning singer, songwriter and musician, will publish her debut children's picture book with Rocky Pond Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers. Inspired by her award-winning hit song and featuring magical illustrations by Gillian Eilidh O'Mara, PUT YOUR RECORDS ON celebrates the emotional resonance of music and the power of song to transform any moment-and to comfort, hold, and accompany us like a trusted friend.

In this story we watch a young Bea's world expand when her great aunt Portia introduces her to her cherished record collection, hidden away in the attic. Together, the two listen, dance, and laugh through a range of songs, leaving Bea excited to continue learning about herself and her world through music. The book is slated for release March 3, 2026 with an announced first printing of 150,000.

Corinne Bailey Rae said, "When I was a child, music helped me find myself. Through songs I discovered that others felt what I felt. Playing music grew my confidence and writing and performing my own music allowed me to fully express myself. I want every child to know that they have music in their heart and a voice that should be heard."

Lauri Hornik, President & Publisher, Rocky Pond Books added, "Corinne Bailey Rae is a singular talent, including now as a picture book author - her lovely story speaks volumes about the importance of both music and family to comfort and inspire”.

On 20th February, the gorgeous Put Your Records On turns twenty. Even though Corinne Bailey Rae has released four studio albums, and Black Rainbows is markedly different from her 2006 debut, there is still a lot of love for that album and its second single. Put Your Records On is one of the defining songs of the 2000s. It introduced Bailey Rae to the world. Still this divine record twenty years later. Corinne Bailey Rae’s Put Your Records On is…

A truly stunning song.

FEATURE: Life Thru a (Retro) Lens: Bringing a Different Side of the '90s to the Small Screen

FEATURE:

 

 

Life Thru a (Retro) Lens

PHOTO CREDIT: KoolShooters/Pexels

Bringing a Different Side of the '90s to the Small Screen

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I hope that she won’t mind me…

IN THIS PHOTO: A shot of Camden, North London PHOTO CREDIT: Artūras Kokorevas/Pexels

invoking her name, but there was an Instagram video posted by Elizabeth McCafferty, shot on a camcorder (see below) – shot around Hackney – of ordinary and everyday street scenes. If you look at her Instagram, there is this incredible blend. Personal photos that have a gloss and aesthetic that are wonderful of course. What one might associate with Instagram. However, there is something charmingly lo-fi or lower resolution that seems to be the antithesis of Instagram and social media. Look at big accounts of high-profile names and there is this emphasis on shine, filters and everything being very beautiful, idyllic and high-resolution. I have to do it to an extent as a music journalist, but I do not really post photos of myself too much, as I am pumping out so much work. As someone who I think will direct short films and bigger work in the future, McCafferty is a producer and journalist whose account is fascinating. In terms of what she films, the people she interviews and features. You can check out her published articles. She films and focuses on the more unconventional. Areas that the media does not really cover. I think, with her journalism, photos and videos, she wants people to connect more with those from different walks of life. Rather than just those that are popular, famous or more conventionally popular/appealing. I love her photography and her incredible recordings. I think that we will see her on the screen a lot more in the future in acting roles too. Go and check out her Paranormia podcast. I think what struck me most when it comes to applying to this to music is how, whether it is a magazine spread, interview, biopic or music film, everything is very bright and ‘perfect’. In terms of the quality of the picture/visual.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Elizabeth McCafferty (@elizabethmccaff)

Rather than it being anti-cinema or basic, what hit me about Elizabeth McCafferty videos – the one particular one I saw -, is that it took me back to my childhood in the 1990s. I live in Hackney myself, so I could relate to a lot of the scenes and what made the clip so relatable. I spend as much free time as possible in Camden. I shall come to that part of London soon and why it is relevant. When I was young, I was taking pictures from a disposable camera. I was listening to music through a Discman or a boom-box. I had a small camcorder at some point and would use that. Things were simpler and less technology-driven and, whilst it might seem primitive and flawed now, many people are actually going back to brick phones, cameras and things that we thought we had disposed of years ago. Rather than this being a rebellion against technology and the way we are obsessed with being online, there is something more physical and emotion-provoking when we take pictures through an actual camera. I can imagine this is a reason why McCafferty, and those like her (though there are not many), find beauty and something deeper in this than shooting in HD or making things very polished for social media. Even if she does blend styles and resolutions, it is the people she captured and speaks to and a more retro/older-fashioned aesthetic that is so distinct and appealing in this day and age. I was thinking about the new resurgence of 1990s music and culture. After Oasis’ reunion of last year and many other bands from that time getting back on stage, plus long-lasting bands from that time (like Suede) releasing career-best music, I do wonder whether this will be translated to the small screen. There aren’t many music-based shows. I waxed lyrical about Riot Women from last year. More about original music and the modern-day, it is about middle-aged women forming a band to get their voice heard. It is a brilliant Sally Wainwright-penned series. I also loved Mix Tape. “Years on from their teen romance in 80s Sheffield, music brings them back together - was this the love they were meant to have? Romance and heartbreak with a banging soundtrack”. Whilst both exceptional series’, they were rare in a schedule packed with reality shows and favourites. I do wonder whether anything ‘90s-based will surface this year.

In my last mention of Elizabeth McAferty, I have been thinking of that slightly grainer or lo-fi lens. The people, sides of life and culture that are not really explored and seen as media-worthy or desirable. In terms of music of the ‘90s, I feel there has been a re-focus on Britpop and a particular scene and time. The title of this feature refers to Robbie Williams’s debut album, Life Thru a Lens, that was released in 1997. I recently wrote about The Prodigy’s Firestarter, which was released as a single in 1996. Maybe that side of things is what I am thinking about. Tying into Camden and a slightly scuzzier or more authentic look at life in the 1990s – maybe 1996, 1997 or 1998 -, it would be great to have a series or one-off programme that might mix elements of Mix Tape and Riot Women, that is based in Camden and follows the lives of a group of friends trying to make their way and find success/realise their dreams. Maybe comedic in tone, it would also have some darker or edgier moments (violence, drug references and sex). However, the way it looks and is filmed would be the focus. I am not sure what cameras are used to shoot most modern shows. That look that is very glossy/polished. Not to suggest the thing would be shot on camcorder or something as expensive or trickly as Super-8, but it would be great to see the slightly dirtier, odder, wilder or less-discussed areas and sides of 1990s music and culture shot authentically. There are articles that chart the evolution of camcorders, and others that tell us not to bemoan its death. If the nostalgic charm of camcorders is enticing more and more couples getting married, could its appeals sustain to a longer-form film? In a recent episode of Miranda Sawyer’s Talk '90s to Me podcast, Adam Buxton discussed the use of handheld cameras during The Adam and Joe Show (a 1990s sketch series with Joe Cornish that was homemade and quite D.I.Y.) and some of the downsides, in terms of the visuals. However, the revival of digital cameras and handheld options has been happening for a few years. That aesthetic and feel that is warmer and maybe a little less ultra-bright in a modern online age that is so intensely bright, polished and blemish-free. It makes me yearn for a show where the modern and slightly older can coexist. With an amazing soundtrack, there are actors that I have in mind who would be brilliant. I do think that music is generally under-represented on screen. Maybe the expense of clearing songs or a perceived lack of demand. There would be a reservoir of possibilities when it comes to modern artists and documentaries/films where they are united or an original film featuring music from wonderful artists of today.

 

However, as last year especially was a big one for reviving the' ‘90s, I do fear that there will be very little translated to the screen. There have been podcasts and books, yet no new drama or comedy where we can see those iconic or rarer tracks brought to life. For me, there are many reasons for wanting to have a project like this realised. Not only to show a different side to the decade with a soundtrack that is not all Oasis, Blur, Pulp – featuring more women in the mix for a start! -, and also doing something different in terms of the storyline. Tackling issues and prejudice that exist today that are not often tackled on screen. More than anything, it is the aesthetic and look of things. I do love shows with a particular definition. It is what we are used to and what is seen as preferable. However, even if it was a small part of the show/series, getting a genuine feel of the handheld or nostalgic. No longer obsolete, many people are picking up camcorders and older kit when filming, as it does look amazing and has this feel that is hard to put into words. A lot of what was once current or normal was discarded and replaced in the rush of technology and modern evolution. However, with vinyl being huge and older phones, cameras etc being picked up again – and not to be seen as cool or following a trend -, this is not really represented on the screen. Not in the U.S. either. It is strange. Two of my favourite series from last year had music at their hearts, but the 1990s and a different side to it is long overdue some appreciation and oxygen. It does make me emotional looking at older photos and seeing footage on a camcorder. There is this strange romance and something so evocative about it that seems to be the opposite of what we see on social media and the media at large. Featuring some brilliant tracks from 1996, 1997 and 1998 perhaps, set in North London and really thinking about the look and visual feel of the series/show, I think it could prove popular.  It is a shot and slice of '90s life…

THROUGH a different lens.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Jennifer Lopez

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

Jennifer Lopez

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PERHAPS the biggest reason…

IN THIS PHOTO: Jennifer Lopez (J.Lo) in a publicity photo for SNL in 2001

I am including Jennifer Lopez in this The Great American Songbook is that one of her best albums, J.Lo, turns twenty-five on 16th January. I was seventeen when the album came out and was aware of Jennifer Lopez following her incredible 1999 debut, On the 6. Singles like Love Don’t Cost a Thing and Ain’t It Funny are among my favourite songs from her. Although there is a slightly blackmark against the album, in that Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs is a producer and is currently (and fortunately) in prison – and I am not including any tracks he has a writing credit on -, I think it is one of the most underrated albums of the early-2000s. Many critics a bit lukewarm and sometimes critical. Given the power and popularity of the singles, tied to some great deeper cuts, we should nark twenty-five years of this gem of an album. I wonder whether Lopez will. Even though Jennifer Lopez’s 2024 album, This Is Me... Now, celebrated as rekindled romance that unfortunately ended in divorce – from one of her previous loves, Ben Affleck -, it is a remarkable album, so I hope she will not mind me including music from it in this mix. Entering a new phase of her career and personal life, I do hope we get a tenth studio album from her. What form will it take? A liberation or independent woman looking for love or someone reflecting on the politics of the U.S. under Donald Trump? Maybe a more reflective album following her divorce? Or something that nods back to her earliest days? Maybe more of the latter. I think we will hear a revitalised and energised Jennifer Lopez put out an album that is heartfelt and personal, though one that sits alongside the sound, confidence, sexiness and brilliance of modern day Pop queens.

Between 6th and 28th March, the icon is performing the second leg of Jennifer Lopez: Up All Night Live in Las Vegas in The Colosseum at Caesars Palace. The residency looks phenomenal! Kicking off an amazing opening show on 30th December, Lopez joked about her divorce history, but she also told the audience what she has learned and how she is in her ‘happy era’. Of course, Lopez faced ageism and misogyny when she was criticised for her choice of outfits and showcasing her stunning physique. Sexy, confident and dazzling, she hit back and dropped mic on those who dared t criticise her! Even as one of the most successful artists ever, she still has to face criticism, ageism and sexism. I do wonder if we will ever reach a moment when women over the age of forty will be respected and not constantly exposed to scrutiny about their age and whether they are dressed appropriately. The Bronx-born artist is one of the most influential of her generation. Inspiring the trajectory of music in the 2000s and being cited as an influence (or being seen as impacting) artists like Selena Gomez, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Ricky Martin, ROSALÍA, and so many more, Lopez helped bring about a Latin music explosion to the mainstream. I remember when she came through in the late-1990s and all the excitement round her music and promise. She did really make an instant impact on music. Something that was hugely important and different. Adding much needed dynamics and sounds to the scene.

A hugely successful artist whose albums have sold millions and her fanbase has grown with each album release, there are few artists are important and influential as Jennifer Lopez, in my humble opinion. For this The Great American Songbook, I am collating a twenty-song mix of Lopez’s best songs. Some deep cuts too. Showing how consistent she is. Although she has never gained the critical kudos and respect she deserves and is long overdue, her success and the quality of her music will remain and endure for decades. Before getting to that mix, I want to include biography from AllMusic:

“Jennifer Lopez has seamlessly transitioned from actress to pop singer and back again repeatedly over a long career that has seen her flourishing in both of her chosen fields. She launched her music career with On the 6, a 1999 album that featured the number one single "If You Had My Love." The first in a string of successful neo-disco singles that kept her at the top of the charts throughout the 2000s, a period of time where she racked up such achievements as being the first woman to simultaneously claim the number one album and number one film in the U.S. when her second album, J.Lo, appeared the same week as The Wedding Planner. As she maintained a presence on the silver screen, Lopez branched out into other ventures, such as fragrances and clothing, while also spending a good portion of the 2010s as a judge on American Idol. All this activity pushed her recording to the background, but she resumed her pop career with great fanfare in 2024 with the release of This Is Me…Now, a sequel to her 2002 hit album This Is Me…Then. Along with a tour and the single "Birthday," 2025 saw Lopez star in the big-screen adaptation of the musical Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Jennifer Lynn Lopez was born in the Bronx, New York, on July 24, 1969. After starting out in musical theater as a child, she made her film debut at age 16 in the little-seen My Little Girl, but she was later tapped to become one of the dancing "Fly Girls" on the television sketch comedy series In Living Color. A recurring role on the TV drama Second Chances followed before Lopez was thrust into the limelight co-starring with Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson in the 1995 feature film Money Train. Smaller roles in pictures including My Family/Mi Familia, Jack, and Blood and Wine followed before she landed the title role in 1997's Selena, portraying the slain Tejano singer. The resulting acclaim for Selena included a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. Co-starring opposite George Clooney in 1998's acclaimed Out of Sight, Lopez became the highest-paid Latina actress in Hollywood history. The following summer, she returned to her musical roots with her debut pop album, On the 6, scoring a major hit with the single "If You Had My Love."

Lopez didn't waste time perfecting a sophomore effort, the appropriately titled J.Lo, which was issued in early 2001. The following year, Lopez released J to tha L-O!: The Remixes and This Is Me...Then, which spawned another hit single, "Jenny from the Block." The album reached number two on the Billboard 200. Although her high-profile romance with Ben Affleck created more headlines than her recording career, her follow-up, 2005's Rebirth -- released just after she married singer Marc Anthony -- debuted at number two on U.S. album chart. The Spanish-language album Como Ama una Mujer followed in 2007, peaking at number ten on the Billboard 200 while remaining at the top of the Latin chart for seven consecutive weeks. In October of that same year, Lopez put out a more "traditional" pop album, Brave, followed by an accompanying tour. It peaked at number 12. Love?, another pop album, was released in April 2011, a few months after Lopez debuted alongside Randy Jackson and Aerosmith's Steven Tyler as one of the judges on American Idol.

Love? proved Lopez's biggest hit in years, no doubt benefiting from her role as an Idol judge. Lopez stayed for two seasons. Just as the news of her 2012 departure arrived, so too did news of her divorce from Marc Anthony. Her first hits collection, Dance Again...The Hits, appeared in July 2012 and entered the Billboard album chart at number 20.

Lopez returned to American Idol for its 13th season in January 2014. During its run, she started to tease her new album, releasing its first single, "I Luh Ya Papi," in March; it peaked at 77 on the Hot 100 and seven on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart. After the season wrapped, she released her eighth album, A.K.A., which was also her first record for the Capitol label. In 2015, she voiced a character in the animated feature film Home, and also contributed the single "Feel the Light" to the movie's soundtrack. Lopez kicked off an extended live concert residency at the AXIS at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas in January of 2016. That same month, she premiered in the role of NYPD detective Harlee Santos on the NBC series Shades of Blue.

Several months later, she made a return to Epic Records after a six-year absence from the label with the release of the single "Ain't Your Mama." Lopez also premiered the song with a live performance on the finale of the 15th season of American Idol. In July 2017, she released the single "Ni Tú Ni Yo," which was co-written and executive-produced by ex-husband Marc Anthony. "Amor, Amor, Amor," featuring Wisin, followed that November, and a bilingual single titled "Dinero," featuring DJ Khaled and Cardi B, arrived in May 2018. Shades of Blue aired its final episode that August. "Limitless," her contribution to the soundtrack of romantic comedy Second Act, followed later in the year. She also co-produced and starred in the film.

In 2019, Lopez appeared in the independent crime-comedy Hustlers, portraying strip-club dancer Ramona. It led to best-supporting actress nominations at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild, and the Independent Spirit Awards. Alongside Shakira, Jennifer Lopez co-headlined the Halftime Show at Superbowl LIV in 2020, an event she later chronicled in the 2022 documentary Jennifer Lopez: Halftime. That September, she released two songs with Colombian singer Maluma, "Pa' Ti" and "Lonely," both of which were later included on the soundtrack to Lopez's 2021 romantic-comedy film Marry Me. She also released the solo track "On My Way" as a single from the film. Later that year, she teamed up with rising Puerto Rican star Rauw Alejandro for the single "Cambia el Paso."

After releasing a pair of films in 2023 -- Shotgun Wedding arrived in January, The Mother appeared in May -- Lopez revived her recording career as part of an ambitious project called This Is Me…Now. Conceived as a sequel to 2002's This Is Me…Then, the album was inspired by her reunion with Ben Affleck, whom she married in 2022, roughly 18 years after they called off their first engagement; the couple divorced in 2025. Accompanied by a full-length film and featuring the lead single "Can't Get Enough," This Is Me…Now appeared in February 2024, cracking the Top 40 of the Billboard 200. In July 2025, on her actual 56th birthday and while still headlining her Up All Night: Live in 2025 tour, Lopez delivered the swaggering and club-ready single "Birthday." Also in 2025, she returned to acting, starring in director Bill Condon's big-screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Kiss of the Spider Woman”.

If On the 6 was this amazing actor moving into music in 1999 with a confident and wonderful debut, she adopted something different with its 2001 follow-up, J.Lo. This moniker and name that many would refer to her for years – I am referring to her as Jennifer Lopez -, was a breakthrough. In spite of the multiple studios, raft of studio and songwriters, the album is very much powered and defined by Jennifer Lopez’s incredible performances and distinct sound. The album was certified quadruple platinum in the United States, making it her highest-selling to date, and became the sixth most successful album of the year worldwide. On 16th January, J.Lo turns twenty-five. I wanted to celebrate that by including songs from that album and other Jennifer Lopez albums for this amazing mix. A salute and celebration of this…

MUSIC goddess.

FEATURE: Top of the City: The Spine-Tingling Power of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn Live Album

FEATURE:

 

 

Top of the City

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush during the shooting of the video for And Dream of Sheep, a track that forms part of her suite, The Ninth Wave, which is performed during Act II of 2014’s Before the Dawn. The live album was released in 2016/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

The Spine-Tingling Power of Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn Live Album

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THERE are not many…

big Kate Bush anniversaries this year. A couple of singles are celebrating big birthdays, though nothing in the way of albums. However, on 25th November, it will be ten years since Bush released the live album of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. I was one of the unlucky ones who was not there to see her perform. However, I did get the vinyl of Before the Dawn when it came out in 2016. I have also got the C.D. version and am listening to it at the moment. I wanted to revisit and re-examine the album as it has had this effect on me. I am not sure why Kate Bush does not want to make Before the Dawn available on Spotify. It is on Apple, and people have uploaded tracks from the album onto YouTube. It is a shame that we cannot enjoy this live album on Spotify. Also, in terms of its availability, getting the vinyl new is a challenge. You can see more about Before the Dawn on Kate Bush’s website, though when you follow the link to buy the four-vinyl set, it is extortionately expensive. It begs the question, when she has remastered her studio albums and even brought out Best of the Other Sides, why her stunning live album has not been brought back onto vinyl? Maybe it would be expensive to do so though, for those who could not see Before the Dawn, hearing it and getting a sense of what it was like relies on physical and digital formats. Few will buy the C..D or buy it from Apple, so you do really need that vinyl option available. I shall come to a review for the live album, as it is clear how much hard work Bush put into it. In terms of producing and mixing, it was something that dominated a lot of her time and focus. Matt Everitt of BBC Radio 6 Music spoke with Kate Bush in 2016 around the release of the album. Since then, she has done quite a lot. Reissued and remastered her albums. Aerial was reissued and she has released her book of lyrics. The whole Stranger Things sensation – twice, in fact – and that 2024 hint that she is ready to work on a new album. Two years after that seismic residency and everything associated with that, she released the live album through her Fish People album. Aside from the inclusion of Never Be Mine – a track rehearsed but not included in the setlist -, it was short on surprise inclusions. Instead, a pure and captivating replication of what thousands flocked to see in Hammersmith in 2014. Before the Dawn stunned me when I first heard it. I had the house to myself and played the vinyl through and lay on the floor with my eyes closed and tried to imagine I was there. I think the first time around, I was trying to project myself into the crowd and immerse myself in the whole thing. The fact I am revisiting it is because I am viewing the album in a new way and focusing on Kate Bush’s vocals.

Before I get there, a bit of background and detail about the album. In the linear notes for Before the Dawn, this is what Kate Bush observed about an experience that must have ranked alongside the most important, memorable and happiest (and nerve-wracking) of her career. I do wonder if she will ever perform live again:

“It was an extraordinary experience putting the show together. It was a huge amount of work, a lot of fun and an enormous privilege to work with such an incredibly talented team. This is the audio document. I hope that this can stand alone as a piece of music in its own right and that it can be enjoyed by people who knew nothing about the shows as well as those who were there.

I never expected the overwhelming response of the audiences, every night filling the show with life and excitement. They are there in every beat of the recorded music. Even when you can’t hear them, you can feel them. Nothing at all has been re-recorded or overdubbed on this live album, just two or three sound FX added to help with the atmosphere.

On the first disc the track, Never Be Mine, is the only take that exists, and was recorded when the show was being filmed without an audience. It was cut because the show was too long but is now back in its original position. Everything else runs as was, with only a few edits to help the flow of the music.
On stage, the main feature of The Ninth Wave was a woman lost at sea, floating in the water, projected onto a large oval screen – the idea being that this pre-recorded film was reality. The lead vocals for these sequences were sung live at the time of filming in a deep water tank at Pinewood. A lot of research went into how to mic this vocal. As far as we know it had never been done before. I hoped that the vocals would sound more realistic and emotive by being sung in this difficult environment. (You can see the boom mic in the photo on the back of the booklet. This had to be painted out of every shot in post-production although very little of the boom mic recording was used. The main mic was on the life jacket disguised as an inflator tube!) The rest of the lead vocals on this disc were sung live on stage as part of the dream sequences. The only way to make this story work as an audio piece was to present it more like a radio play and subdue the applause until the last track when the story is over and we are all back in the theatre again with the audience response.

Unlike The Ninth Wave which was about the struggle to stay alive in a dark, terrifying ocean, A Sky Of Honey is about the passing of a summer’s day. The original idea behind this piece was to explore the connection between birdsong and light, and why the light triggers the birds to sing. It begins with a lovely afternoon in golden sunlight, surrounded by birdsong. As night falls, the music slowly builds until the break of dawn.
This show was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever been involved in. Thank you to everyone who made it happen and who embraced the process of allowing it to continually evolve”.

What makes the residency/live album so fascinating is how Bush mounts Hounds of Love’s The Ninth Wave. The conceptual side of the 1985 masterpiece is epic and must have been exhausting to rehearse and put together. So much about its drama and this story of a woman lost of sea that gets rescued, its dynamic, look and energy is very different to the second disco of 2005’s Aerial, A Sky of Honey, which is about the course of a summer’s day. In terms of pairing these and Bush having the skill, stamina and vision to realise these sites perfectly and nail the performances every night is testament to her undiminished brilliance! Maybe taking her back to 1979 and The Tour of Life, the demands on her to deliver these high-concept shows and sings as she is also acting out these incredible visions and scenes, I feel, inspired directly huge live shows that would follow. You could argue that some of the highest-grossing and grand-spectacle extravaganza from the likes of Taylor Swift, Kylie Minogue and Beyoncé can be tied back to Kate Bush. Some might say Madonna got there first, though remember The Tour of Life was before any Madonna tour, so you can say Bush influenced that and, by extension Madonna’s live shows throughout her career. Act II was Hounds of Love and The Ninth Wave. Act II is Aerial and A Sky of Honey. The encore of Before the Dawn is 50 Words for Snow’s Among Angels and a Hounds of Love classic, Cloudbusting. Two very different songs to end the set. Act I was dedicated to songs from different albums. Lily (The Red Shoes) opens things. That leads to Hounds of Love (Hounds of Love), Joanni (Aerial), Top of the City (The Red Shoes) – Never Be Mine from The Sensual World is on the album but not in the set -, Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and closing with King of the Mountain (Aerial).

That final Act I song, about Elvis Presley, fame and I think Kate Bush and the media speculation around her and calling her a recluse, seems like the perfect song that then leads us back twenty years before that song came out to The Ninth Wave. Astronomer’s Call, Watching Them Without Her (dialogue) and Little Light are all newly-written pieces. For Aerial’s suite, there is actually a new song. One suspects it was for Albert McIntosh. Or Bertie. Someone who helped convince her back onto the stage, I suspect this was written to give him a singing part. He does appear during A Sky of Honey, including The Painter’s Link, but this is a fascinating new song for him. In terms of chronology, Tawny Moon is after the dusk. Seeing the moon rising and being able to represent that through song. There were some interviews from 2016, where Kate Bush discussed her thoughts on those live shows two years before. Plus the live album that she was putting out. This FADER interview is one I would recommend. I wanted to draw in some extracts from this interview from The New York Times:

“The “Before the Dawn” shows were phantasmagoric spectacles, involving video, choreography, lighting and puppetry. They were filmed, but early ideas about releasing both audio and video of the concert gave way to the current audio-only release. At the moment, Ms. Bush said, there are “no plans” to release the film.

“It was designed as a live piece of theater,” Ms. Bush said, “and I think that film is such a different medium from being in the presence of people onstage and among an audience. It’s such a completely different experience. I think in a lot of ways that a live album is more representative of what we’ve done.”

Ms. Bush became a hitmaker in Britain when she emerged in 1978, still a teenager, with the single “Wuthering Heights.” At the height of British punk, the song retold the Emily Brontë novel in an odd, arresting tour-de-force of piano filigree, continually unfolding melody and stratospheric vocals.

That introduced a career of constant transformations. “I do want to push,” Ms. Bush said. “I want to push the people that work with me, and I want to try and push the music somewhere. Each time I start a new album, I want it to be different from what I’ve done before.”

In Britain, Ms. Bush’s songs have reached the Top 10 from 1978 to 2012. In the United States, she’s best known for the 1985 single “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” and her radiant guest vocal on Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up,” but she has a devoted following that includes many songwriters, among them Tori Amos and Maxwell. Through the years, Ms. Bush’s music has encompassed operatic agility, folky delicacy, hard-rock power, cabaret guile and global rhythms, while her lyrics have featured or alluded to characters from history and literature (Joan of Arc, Molly Bloom from “Ulysses,” Peter Pan) as well as anonymous but affecting archetypes: parents, children, dreamers, mystics.

Among them, who is she? “I can’t say that I can think of any of my songs that are really at all autobiographical,” she said, “and yet at the same time, they have to be personal, because you’re throwing yourself into them. I guess it’s the same for any artist: It’s not necessarily them, but it’s got them in it.”

She added: “It’s a bit like when you’re reading a story out loud and you have to put on the voices for the different characters. I don’t know if I really identify with them, but you have to find out who’s telling the story.”

She opened the “Before the Dawn” shows with “Lily,” which invokes the protection of angels. “It starts with a prayer,” Ms. Bush said. “I wanted the whole room to be with this prayer that would protect us all throughout the journey.”

Returning to live performance was “very scary,” Ms. Bush said. “I didn’t know if I would be any good. That was really the fear factor. The thing of putting the show together, though it was daunting and challenging, it was something that I felt I could do. Whether it would be any good or not was another story. But stepping into it as a performer was really pretty terrifying.”

She had been thinking about performing again after making her 2011 album, “50 Words for Snow.” She also wanted to work with her son, Bertie McIntosh, then 16, who urged her to “push the ‘go’ button,” she said.

Once she got started, “there was a real sense of it wanting to happen,” she said. “Sometimes when I’ve started projects, from everywhere you get obstacles flying in. But with this, people that I wanted to get on the team, who’d said ‘I’d love to do it but I can’t,’ would suddenly get a project canceled — and they could.”

There were other coincidences. Ms. Bush had decided to perform “Joanni,” her song about Joan of Arc, in the opening section of the show — a concert presentation before the dreamlike theatrical experience to follow. Her keyboardist had recently recorded cathedral bells in Rouen, France, where Joan was burned, and he played them at rehearsal. Ms. Bush had changed the key to accommodate her aging voice, and “the first thing we all said was, ‘My God, they’re in tune!’” she recalled. “If we hadn’t taken the song down in pitch, they wouldn’t have been in tune”.

All of this gives more context to Before the Dawn. It also makes me wonder why the vinyl is not available and whether it will ever come to streaming. However, over Christmas, I was listening to the album on C..D. in my car. Whilst perhaps not as idyllic as listening to the vinyl in a warm room, I experienced it from a new perspective. Rather than closing my eyes and imagining myself at the Evetim Apollo in 2014 – not advisable if you are driving! -, I was concentrating directly on Kate Bush and her vocals. Many people have criticised Kate Bush’s vocals on later albums like 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. It is an ageism that so many artists have to face. I actually think that Before the Dawn features Bush’s voice at its best. Though deeper and rawer, I think it is more powerful and evocative than ever. I also see Before the Dawn like a second instalment of Director’s Cut. That is where Bush re-recorded songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. Many critics did not like the album because of the vocals. I do think that Before the Dawn’s vocals are extraordinary and we get to hear some well-known songs in a new context. Tracks such as Top of the City especially stirring and emotional. Nearly ten years after the live album was released, it is still affecting me. I am not sure how people who did see her perform and listen to the album compare the experiences. For me, I am perhaps less disappointed that I was not there, as I get so much from the album. Bush is not only in tune throughout. She is at the top of her game throughout. At the top in the city of London. At a venue where she both saw the final Ziggy Stardust concert in 1973, and ended her run of The Tour of Life in 1979.

“Of course, raw is an adjective one uses relatively, when considering an album that features a band of blue-chip sessioneers, celebrated jazz-fusion musicians and former Miles Davis sidemen: you’re not going to mistake the contents of Before the Dawn for those of, say, Conflict’s Live Woolwich Poly ’86. But, unlike most latterday live albums, it actually sounds like a band playing live. There’s a sibilance about the vocals, a sort of echoey, booming quality to the sound, the occasional hint of unevenness: it doesn’t feel like a recording that’s been overdubbed and Auto-Tuned into sterility. Given their pedigree, you’d expect the musicians involved to be incredibly nimble and adept, but more startling is how propulsive and exciting they sound, even when dealing with Bush’s more hazy and dreamlike material. It’s a state of affairs amplified by Bush’s voice, which is in fantastic shape. On King of the Mountain or Hounds of Love, she has a way of suddenly shifting into a primal, throaty roar – not the vocal style you’d most closely associate with Kate Bush – that sounds all the more effective for clearly being recorded live. Furthermore, there’s a vividness about the emotional twists and turns of A Sea of Honey, A Sky of Honey – from the beatific, sun-dappled contentment associated with Balearic music to brooding sadness and back again – that just isn’t there on the studio version, great though that is.

PHOTO CREDIT: Ken McKay/Rex Features

That answers the question about what the point of Before the Dawn is: like 2011’s Director’s Cut, it’s an album that shows Bush’s back catalogue off in a different light. And perhaps it’s better, or at least more fitting, that her 2014 shows are commemorated with an album rather than a film or a Blu-ray or whatever it is that you play inside those virtual reality headsets people are getting so excited about. They were a huge pop cultural event, as the first gigs in four decades by one of rock’s tiny handful of real elusive geniuses were always bound to be, but they were shrouded in a sense of enigma: almost uniquely, hardly anyone who attended the first night had any real idea what was going to happen. Even more unusually, that air of mystery clung to the shows after the 22-date run ended: virtually everyone present complied with Bush’s request not to film anything on their phones, and the handful that didn’t saw their footage quickly removed from YouTube. Before the Dawn provides a memento for those who were there and a vague indication of what went on for those who weren’t, without compromising the shows’ appealingly mysterious air: a quality you suspect the woman behind it realises is in very short supply in rock music these days”.

Let’s hope that the vinyl is reissued and we can buy that (affordably). Maybe it will never come to Spotify, though its tenth anniversary on 25th November may move Kate Bush to reconsider. The incredible voice that runs from Lily – this mantra and prayer that guides the audience on the quest they are about to have – to the final notes of Cloudbusting are so extraordinary. I have been moved by other live albums and artists’ vocal performances, but Kate Bush’s Before the Dawn set hits me in a way…

THAT no other does.