FEATURE: I’m the Fear Addicted: The Prodigy's Firestarter at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

I’m the Fear Addicted

 

The Prodigy's Firestarter at Thirty

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ONE of the…

most important and highest singles of the 1990s was released on 18th March, 1996. The lead single from The Prodigy’s third studio album, The Fat of the Land, was like an explosion! A song that still resounds to this day. A song that has credited writers of Liam Howlett, Keith Flint, Kim Deal, Anne Dudley, Trevor Horn, Gary Langan, Jonathan Jeczalik and Paul Morley, Firestarter reached the top of the charts in the U.K. Because the song turns thirty soon, I am focusing on, for the most part, its creation and legacy. I will end with a 2020 feature from The Guardian. They placed it eighth in the list of the one-hundred greatest U.K. number one singles. A song that is defined by the electrifying and distinct vocals of the much missed Keith Flint, I remember when Firestarter came out. It was a revelation. This was the first timer Flint provided vocals for The Prodigy. More of a dancer with the group prior to that, he knew this was the song he had to sing on. Writing these incredible lyrics and so committed to working on the music video and making it as unforgettable as possible, Firestarter is one of the defining tracks of the 1990s. I want to highlight a 1997 Rolling Stone cover, which has this sub-headline: “How a faceless ass-rumbling hard rock techno band found a voice (and a haircut) and set the world on fire”. I wanted to highlight the sections below, as we learn how Keith Flint being from someone in the background for The Prodigy to being at the front. He would also sing on another The Fat of the Land single, Breathe, but Firestarter is his finest moment. The best song he ever put his vocals to:

“Before “Firestarter,” the only singing that anyone had heard Keith Flint do was the routine he and Thornhill would sometimes perform, bored, in the back of the tour van: crooning U2’s “One” as they waved their lighted-up mobile phones in the dark, pretending they were lighters. But Howlett had this instrumental, and Flint announced one day that he’d like to try doing something over the top. They wrote the lyrics together. Howlett thinks he came up with the “Firestarter” idea and masterminded the structure. The words are simply a picture of Flint. “He’s got not a cent of common sense, but he’s actually really intelligent,” says Howlett. ” ‘I’m the self-inflicted mind detonator’ — that’s him. He’ll build things up in his head until he’s on the edge of going mad. That lyric was spot-on.”

Flint highlights both the “self-inflicted” line and “I’m the bitch you hated.” They’re both ways that he thinks of himself. “It’s quite deep,” he mutters. “I don’t know if I want to say.” He eyes the tape recorder. “I could explain it to you, but I wouldn’t for the magazine.”

Listening to you spit out those words, I say, you get the feeling of energy and joy mixed up with self-hate.

“That’s absolutely spot-on. That’s absolutely spot-on.”

I’m the bitch you hated. That’s a very weird thing to say about yourself.

“Yeah. I don’t know that I’d want to describe it,” he says. “That is a very deep thing to me personally, and I can deliver that with far more power than the other lyrics.”

Why, suddenly, did you decide to write lyrics?

“That’s unexplainable,” he says. “Why does a river turn into an oxbow lake? I’ve spent six years expressing myself with my body, shouting with my body. It’s like a conductor of the music. From the party scene, when a tune came on and it was your tune, I wanted everyone to know it was my tune. Yes! Fuckin’ hell! Rockin’! Just yelling at each other, dancing away. This is just an extension of that. If I could get a mike and just go, ‘Fuckin’ hell! Fuckin’ hell!’ I would do it. That is the punk-attitude, DIY aspect of the Prodigy.” And this was an age of change for Flint. The nose bolt. The pierced tongue. The new hair. “Fuck it,” he reasons. “I’m in a band. I’ll do what I want.” He worries that it’s becoming too much. An image. He might dye his hair all black. (He wants to get his penis pierced, partly because that one will be just for him. That’s one that will not be on display.) He also got inflicted tattooed onto his stomach. He got Howlett to design the letters. Inflicted. It was saying what people were thinking when they looked at him.

The night that Flint and Howlett wrote “Firestarter,” they played it about 30 times in the car. “I don’t think either of us could quite believe it was me,” says Flint. “I’m not a singer. I love the fact that there’s people out there that have been trying since the age of 9 to sing and get the voice right — do, re, mi and all that — and I can roar in, not ever written anything or performed lyrically anything, and write a tune that’s so successful. I think that’s a brilliant piss take on a lot of people, and that gives me a buzz.”

It was the video that best communicated the hyperactive psychosis of “Firestarter”: Flint leaping and leering around in a disused London subway tunnel. It is said that when it aired on Top of the Pops, Britain’s most-watched music TV show got a record number of complaints, simply because Flint was so scary”.

The Fat of the Land received some huge reviews when it was released on 30th June, 1997. If there are problematic songs on it such as Smack My Bitch Up (which many saw as glorifying domestic abuse and being misogynistic), there are some underrated classics like Diesel Power. Breathe is the second single, and I always see it as too similar to Firestarter. A slightly inferior version. It is weird that Firestarter is track eight on The Fat of the Land and not nearer the top. It does sort of get buried towards the end when it should have been the lead track or the second one. However, it has this incredible legacy. It created shockwaves and tremors when it came out on 18th March, 1996. Over a year before the album arrived, fans of The Prodigy were realising why Keith Flint should be front and centre. His lyrics and incredible vocals, tied to his distinct look, huge energy and infectiousness – and some chaos into the mix! – helped bring the band to a new audience. I was one of those people who became a convert in 1996. There are two features I want to include before wrapping up. The Delete Bin reviewed Firestarter in 2015. They have some interesting takes. I forgot about the furore and controversy the song caused. Especially the video. It does seem insane that thee was this sensitivity around a song that was not exactly urging people to start fires or incite destruction and violence:

“The Prodigy were dogged with controversy over many aspects of their presentation and their content. With this song, maybe controversy was stirred up because of the video, and the meaning of what a “firestarter” really is, too.

Controversy aside for moment,  the reason I think that this song, and the album off of which it came, was so popular is because it provided a series of varied musical textures that Brit-pop guitar bands didn’t provide, while still managing to reflect the guts of rock music which so many guitar bands were trying to capture in a new paradigm. The first time I heard this, I didn’t really process it as dance music. To me, it was punk rock. Maybe this is because it sampled the Breeders. But, there was more to it than that.

Not too many dissenting critics took into consideration that “fire” as a concept isn’t necessarily about destruction, or pain, or murder, or hell, or whatever. Fire is about creativity, too. Think about Prometheus in Greek myth. And about “holy tongues of fire” in the book of Acts in the Bible. Fire is a classic double-edged sword in storytelling. It can be destructive. But, it can be used as a literary device, emblematic of a force that sweeps away the old to make way for something new. It can be about inspiration and about clean slates. That’s what I think the band were really driving at, and what really makes this song as punk rock as it is.

As Flint spits out “I’m the firestarter!” all punked up and full of feral and wide-eyed fervour as he is in the video, he seemed like some Anti-Christ figure to some, maybe. It followed that a lot of people just took it all at face value. But in the song, he also asserts “You’re the firestarter!” which seems to undercut all that, not that too many people noticed. As such, this tune is actually pretty empowering. It’s the dance-rock, punk rock expression of Ghandi’s “be the change”. Or at least that’s certainly one fair interpretation, and certainly an example that makes it important to always question the wisdom of most decisions that lead to bans on things in the name of public decency”.

I am going to visit NME’s 1996 article. They followed The Prodigy on the set of Firestarter. As they say in this revisit (published in 2019): sensitivity: “Please be aware that sensitivities may have changed since publication”. This unfiltered band that wanted to definitely shake things up and ruffle some feathers, it did seem like it was a handful being around them! However, by all accounts, the band were perfectly amiable. Especially Keith Flint. A lot different to the impression people had of him. Definitely after the Firestarter video:

“People say Keith looks insane these days,” shrugs Liam, during a break from overseeing the filming.

“But he’s been insane for five years! He was insane the day I met him dancing in The Barn in Braintree. People only started to notice when he dyed his hair. And obviously the press and the fans are going to latch onto him now. But it was always going to be like that. It’s a natural progression.”

His public profile is surely set to go ballistic in about two weeks, though, in the wake of his starring role on ‘Firestarter’. And Liam may not be responsible for the ensuing carnage.

“I recorded it as an instrumental,” recalls Liam.

“And as usual, all three of the others come round to have a listen. Keith happened to be the first, and I said to him, ‘We need one more element’. Now I’d have been happy with a good sample, but Keith says, I’d really like to try some vocals on that’. And I’m like, ‘Whaaaaaaat?!”

“We had no idea how it was gonna sound,” admits Keith, “because the only singing Liam’s ever heard from us is me and Leeroy singing U2 songs on the way home. We always harmonise on ‘One,’ and instead of lighters, we put up our mobile phones and wave ‘em in the air!

“It was so ridiculous because my English isn’t my strong point, by any stretch of the imagination. So I end up singing in this weird accent (puts on a daft yokel voice), ‘Oi’m a muckspreaderrrrr, twisted muckspreaderrrr’. But it ended up sounding quite… menacing.”

So are we to assume that ‘Firestarter’ is autobiographical, then? Have you burnt down any houses lately?

“Oh no, man!” counters Keith. It’s never that direct. It does make you think though. They played the white label at Stamford Bridge the other day, and I was thinking, ‘I hope it don’t start any Bradford fires!”

“Leeroy knows me inside out, though,” he concludes, “and when he heard it he said, ‘That tune sums you up, man’. So there you go.”

This is the second video The Prodigy have made for ‘Firestarter’. The first one was directed by the man responsible for a Mustang jeans ad the band liked. “It didn’t represent us properly,” according to Liam. Which roughly translates as, “We were barely even in it”. Presentation and representation are a high priority, some might say absurdly high, for The Prodigy, possibly the only successful band in Britain who refuse to appear on Top of the Pops or, indeed, most other TV programmes. It’s not a ‘real vibe’ is their usual argument. But Keith, inevitably, has something more to say. And there could be casualties.

“TV corrupts people, I think. A lot of acts get that little break and they change from T-shirt and shorts to designer stuff, swanning around like arseholes. I mean, to me Goldie and Björk are like that. Goldie’s coming on as the bad boy of the jungle scene — and then next thing you know he’s going on to give an award to his girlfriend at The Brit Awards. Now to me, that was as sickening as Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. I’m not dissing him, right, but if I watch that, it’s Bon Jovi. It’s Hollywood. You give ‘em a few front covers and they wanna play the pop-star game.”

“Nah, that’s bollocks, Keith,” Liam calmly corrects his colleague. I’ve got respect for Goldie, because all he’s doing is bringing a music that’s actually quite small – ’cos jungle’s not as big as the press make it out to be – to a new audience. He hasn’t commercialised his music. And he hasn’t sold out. It’s good stuff man.”

“Sure,” says Keith, slowly trying to dig himself out of the the hole his big mouth has created. “But I’m just saying, you put a camera in front of someone and they do something a little bit cheesy. It’s just the hypocrisy, man. If you slag off the mainstream when you’re small, you shouldn’t embrace it later.”

Never mind. I hear Goldie takes criticism with good grace.

Bit of a shame about Top Of The Pops, though. Just imagine the nationwide tea-choking that would doubtless be introduced by Keith Prodigy breaking and entering your living room at 7pm on a Thursday evening…”.

I know 18th March is a little way away, but I wanted to be the first to mark thirty years of Firestarter. There will be anniversary celebrations coming soon enough. It is bittersweet as we lost Keith Flint in 2019. He is not around to see those words published. How people are responding to the song today. Firestarter still sounds like nothing else! I think it is the best thing The Prodigy ever did. A Molotov cocktail of a song where Flint seems fevered, hallucinatory and raving, his lyrics are genius. His performance is iconic.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Prodigy’s Keith Flint performing at the Phoenix Festival in 1996/PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Hutson/Getty Images

I am ending with The Guardian and their article from 2020. When deciding the best one-hundred U.K. number ones in 2020, Firestarter was placed in eighth. A huge recognition of its legacy and importance. Revolutionary and still so powerful to this day:

“It starts with a riff: not a distorted guitar but a contorted squeal from a twisted fairground. It’s a riff nonetheless, the instantly sticky sign of an unstoppable hit single. Firestarter was one of the biggest pop-cultural events of 1996 and by the end of the year the Prodigy were one of the world’s biggest bands. The Essex four-piece’s first No 1 was a flashpoint of teen angst, TV infamy, moral panic and tabloid outrage, carried aloft by big-beat pyrotechnics and a lethal barrage of lyrical vitriol. “Ban This Sick Fire Record,” squawked the Mail on Sunday – but it was much too late.

The Prodigy were already a dominant force in pop. All but one of their singles since 1991 had made the Top 15, including 1991’s Charly, the cartoon-sampling hit that famously “killed rave”, according to clubbers’ bible Mixmag. Liam Howlett, the band’s musical engine, was bored with cranking out rave hits to a formula and started experimenting with elements of hip-hop and rock on their second album, Music for the Jilted Generation. Now the Prodigy were ready to reintroduce themselves as stadium-sized heroes with The Fat of the Land, taking dance music deep into the moshpit while promoting dancer-cum-hypeman Keith Flint to songwriter and vocalist. As an opening salvo, Firestarter was flamboyant, surreal, terrifying – and, like all the best pop songs, totally novel.

I have a faint recollection of watching Firestarter on Top of the Pops that week. The Prodigy didn’t want to perform, adamant that their anarchic live energy wouldn’t translate to the nation’s living rooms, so after Gina G and PJ & Duncan had done their thing, the BBC exposed millions of young minds to the video, depicting a diabolical figure in a reverse mohican twitching and gurning like a thing possessed. Too young to have any context for the music, I was transfixed but repelled, vaguely aware that this was something I probably shouldn’t be seeing.

That scuzzy black and white clip, filmed in a disused tube tunnel, was Firestarter’s second video, produced on a shoestring after the Prodigy had blown £100,000 on a hated first attempt. Flint flicks his pierced tongue at the camera, eyeballs glowing against his black eyeliner. The Prodigy came from the rave scene but this was more Marilyn Manson than Orbital, and Flint was a tortured rock god, snarling lyrics about mental anguish and self-harm: “I’m the self-inflicted mind detonator / I’m the bitch you hated, filth infatuated.”

The music press had been building them up as the “electronica” act that could finally crack the US, but the Prodigy didn’t see themselves in that lineage. They weren’t avant-garde like Aphex Twin and Autechre, and they weren’t purveyors of what rock writers liked to call “faceless techno bollocks”. Firestarter proved that the Prodigy was a squirming, sweating, fleshbound beast – the very opposite of the futuristic “braindance” coming from the electronic vanguard. It was pure boiling animus, doused in petrol and set off to ruin someone’s birthday party. “I have a philosophy that most of our music works on a really dumb level,” said Howlett, “which is the level most people understand.”

He imagined the Prodigy as a stadium-filling spectacle on a level with the rock bands such as Red Hot Chili Peppers and proto-nu-metallers Biohazard. “No glow sticks, no Vicks, people spitting everywhere – brilliant,” as Flint put it. They even brought in spiky-haired guitarist Gizz Butt, who’d played in early punk bands such as the Destructors and English Dogs. But where so many rock-historical references of the mid-90s felt like cosy nostalgia, Firestarter squeezed a final gob of spit from the spirit of 77 while becoming a legitimate stadium-sized alternative to Oasis. The Gallaghers so desperately wanted to be adored. The Prodigy didn’t give a toss. Howlett’s harsh sample collisions (a vocal scrap saying “hey”, from the Art of Noise’s Close to the Edit, and that squealing riff, pinched from the Breeders’ SOS) reflect his roots as a hip-hop DJ and breakdancer, but although he took production cues from righteous outfits including Rage Against the Machine and Public Enemy, he wasn’t interested in their message.

Firestarter doesn’t care about anything, nor does it contain a shred of self-regard. When Flint brought his “twisted” persona to life, he aligned himself with a 90s seam of edginess that brought us Fight Club, Tank Girl and Scream. It’s strange to imagine that we gawped and laughed. The decade’s flippant treatment of “insanity” is risible now, and especially tragic after Flint’s death in 2019. Journalists compared him to cartoon characters, but in those lyrics he is nothing but human. Firestarter is the worst of us, splattered on the kerb for all to see. “I wasn’t trying to say, ‘look at me, I’m Satan!’ But certainly I’m not nice,” Flint told Q magazine. “We’re everybody’s dark side”.

I was completely in awe of this song when it came out in 1996. I was twelve and had heard nothing quite like it. The extraordinary and seismic lead single from 1997’s The Fat of the Land, there is no doubt Firestarter is one of the most important and groundbreaking…

SINGLES of the '90s.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Faouzia

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Alanna Durkee

 

Faouzia

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I am spotlighting…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alejandra Hinojosa

Faouzia, as there is a lot of love and excitement around her. Many people are saying FILM NOIR is her debut album. I thought 2022’s CITIZENS was, though maybe that is classed as an E.P.? It is eight tracks, so I am a bit confused. In any case, I want to come to some interviews with Faouzia around this incredible artist. The first I want to bring in is from Riff, as we get some useful and interesting background. This Moroccan-born artist and her upbringing really fascinates me. I discovered her earlier in this year and instantly connected with FILM NOIR. Dreamy, cinematic, and fusing Pop, R&B, Jazz and other sounds, it is a wonderful and instantly appealing blend. Faouzia Arabic heritage is key to her music. She also sings in English, French and Arabic. There is so much depth and so many incredible layers and threads to her sound and artistry:

“Morocco-born, Manitoba, Canada-raised artist Faouzia Ouihya has been making music for the better part of a decade, racking up millions of streams alongside awards for her songwriting and her powerful mezzosoprano vocal range. But it took a split with her label to regain control of her vision for her sound and record a debut LP.

Faouiza’s parents moved her family from Casablanca to Montreal when the now-25-year-old was still a toddler. They quickly decided that big city life wasn’t for them, moving again to Winnipeg and then to the French-speaking small town of Carman, Manitoba, where her parents found work. Her younger sister, Kenza (her photographer and co-creative director), was born in Canada.

“My parents … restarted their lives completely from ground zero. They studied education and became teachers, and French was a much stronger language for them; they were still learning English from the ground up at that point,” she said.

The family never let go of its roots. The family home was decorated in Moroccan styles. They ate Moroccan food, wore Moroccan clothes, spoke Arabic at home and traveled back Morocco often.

“When I was at school, I was fully immersed in Canadian culture, but as soon as I stepped foot at home, which is where I spent most of my time, I was back in Morocco,” she said.

Faouiza grew up playing piano, violin and guitar, eventually starting a duo with her older sister, Samia (who’s now her manager). At home, she listened to a mix of Western pop, Arabic pop and classical composers like Chopin and Bach. All these influences appear in her own music.

She’d post original songs and covers on YouTube, which got the attention of many, including producer and DJ David Guetta, while she was still in high school. He asked her to sing on “Battle,” from his album 7.

Pursuing music in her spare time, she won first place at Nashville’s Unsigned Only music competition, and soon after, Canada’s International Songwriting Competition, beating about 16,000 entrants from 137 countries. She signed with her old label on her 18th birthday—not everything is meant to work out.

Still, she enrolled at the University of Manitoba, studying computer engineering, essentially learning to build computers from the ground up—hardware and all. At that point, the music began to take over.

“I did four years of it, and it got to a point where I was traveling too much,” she explained. “A lot of engineering is laboratories, and you have to be there in person. I pivoted to psychology because I wanted to do something that I could do by distance. Unfortunately, I actually did not finish. I just did a lot of it. I still wonder if it’s something that I will finish someday. I love school, and I think I will continue to pursue my education in other ways.”

In 2020, Kelly Clarkson asked Faouzia to remake “I Dare You” in Arabic, while Swedish duo Galantis featured her on “I Fly.” That same year, she recorded “Minefields” with John Legend. In 2022, she was nominated for a prestigious Juno Award for breakthrough artist in Canada. Since then, she released a couple of EPs and wrote a song (“Beg Forgiveness”) on Kanye West and Ty Dolla Sign’s album ¥$.

Then came last year, when her popularity exploded in the East after she appeared on a Chinese reality singing competition that pitted established artists from throughout the world (the U.S. was represented by soul singer Chanté Moore) against each other—and she made it all the way to the finals. There was even some controversy when many viewers expected her to win, but Chinese star Na Ying prevailed.

“I didn’t quite know what to expect other than it was fully live, and it was a show about showcasing your vocals,” she said. “Every week, you would sing a different song and prepare for it, but it was also like a reality TV show in the sense that there was a lot of interviews. Sometimes they would be so kind as to show you around different places in China and show you the culture, which was so beautiful. … Honestly, I’m happy that I made it this far. I’m happy that I made it to this point. As for the controversy, I really do think that it was a fair placement.”

This year has been all about getting to release her debut album for Faouzia, which includes singles “Peace & Violence,” “Unethical” and “Porcelain,” as well as nine more terrific songs, sung mostly in English but also in French and Arabic. While it’s definitely a pop album, Faouzia’s tonal inflections and musical choices, influenced by her family’s culture, make Film Noir—like much of her songbook so far—stand out.

“I don’t think about it at all. If those influences make their way into my music, it’s something that’s very natural, and I never want it to feel forced,” she said. “If it lends itself to the melody and the vibe of the song, then I think it’s important to have that in there. ‘Sweet Fever’ has hints and tastes of that, but it wasn’t something that was intentional. … That’s what I wanted for this album”.

Journalists have noted a duality to FILM NOIR. Soft, tender and velvet-like one moment, it is also guttural and explosive at times. Sung partly in French, it is an underrated masterpiece from last year. Stylish, cool, hugely accomplished and with a distinct and original sound that is rightly being heralded, FILM NOIR is such a phenomenal album. I want to move to The Honey Pot and their interview with Faouzia. This is an artist that every single music fan needs to listen to. You will be instantly struck by her music:

“Because the term film noir originally came from French critics dissecting American thrillers, the genre has this built-in idea of reflection and critique. After the three-year gap since CITIZENS and the global response to ‘MINEFIELDS,’ did you approach this record by “critiquing” what worked and what didn’t from the last era—or did you intentionally wipe the slate clean and start fresh?

After years of reflection and critique, I wiped the slate clean and started fresh. Almost in a “learn the rules to know how to break them” type of way. I followed my heart and wrote this album very instinctually. Every word stemmed from stories that were very personal to me, but crafted by skills that I learned along the way. I think my essence is present in this album because I led with my heart first, then my mind.

You speak English, Arabic, and French fluently—and we hear French spotlighted both in the voice-note outro and in ‘TOUS CES MOTS’—and you even wrote your first ever song in French at age six. What is it about French as a language that feels most creatively you?

French is my second language. I grew up speaking it at home and spent most of my education immersed in it, so many of my most formative memories live in French. It’s the language in which I first learned to express sorrow and depth, to give shape to feeling. There’s an inherent poetry in its softness and a quiet melancholy that made it the natural choice for the stories I needed to tell in this album.

Several tracks have that gorgeous cinematic build—the strings on ‘UNETHICAL’ feel like they’re doing the dramatic lighting. You’ve genre-blended before, but this time, working with Arthur Besna and F E R R O, how did you stay rooted in your sonic identity while leaning into those big, film-score moments?

A big part of my musical identity comes from big, dramatic instrumentals as well as classically-inspired pieces. It came very naturally to me to make this album in this world because it felt like “coming home” to what felt the most natural to me.

Finally, when listeners close the curtain on FILM NOIR for the first time, what do you hope they walk away feeling?

I hope they’ve connected to the music and can feel the depth and passion in it. I hope they can find solace in it”.

There are two more interviews I want to cover. EUPHORIA. spoke with Faouzia about FILM NOIR and the challenges she has had to overcome. I do really love her music and am looking forward to seeing what she does this year. FILM NOIR received so much attention. I am not sure if she is touring this year or what her next moves are. Faouzia is simply extraordinary:

“Your songs often blend emotional storytelling with powerful vocals — what’s your creative process like when you start a new song?

I have many ideas written down. Sometimes fully-fledged, and sometimes it’s just a line or even a title or word. I sit down at the piano or with an instrumental playing in the back and start to sing the first thing that comes out instinctually. I can normally tell what story these melodies beg to tell and start writing and re-writing the song from there.

Is there a particular song that feels the most personal or vulnerable to you on this album? And why?

I would say “UNETHICAL” or “PRETTY STRANGER.” Both are very vulnerable and personal in their own way, but feel tied to each other. “PRETTY STRANGER” is the bittersweet ending/response to “UNETHICAL.”

What was the most challenging song to write? And how did you overcome the challenge?

The most challenging song to write was technically “DON’T EVER LEAVE ME.” I have pages upon pages of rewrites for it, and came back to it months later after I abandoned it for a while. I just knew I had to finish it and that it had to be on this album, so I switched up the verse/pre melodies and tried over and over again until it was finished.

What has been the biggest challenge you’ve faced in your career so far?

Pushing through even when things don’t go as planned. Trying to stay true to myself with so many voices pulling me in different directions and not being able to release music the way that I wanted.

If you could go back and give advice to your younger self just starting out, what would you say?

I would tell her to trust her instincts and trust her vision because no one knows herself and her art like she does.

You often speak about empowerment and resilience — what inspires you to keep pushing forward?

Faith that what’s on the other side is always better than I could ever imagine”

I want to finish with an interview from The Luna Collective. They spoke with Faouzia around the release of the single, Hero. If you have not heard of Faouzia or are a bit sceptical of diving in, I can reassure you that her music is well worth investing in. With a lot of focus on mainstream Pop and a particular sound, maybe artists like Faouzia will go under the radar or be considered niche. However, she is so much more engaging and standout than so many other artists coming through. I feel we will see many more albums come from her:

“LUNA: What was your inspiration when it came to writing “Hero”? What was the creative process like?

FAOUZIA: I wrote “Hero” about setting healthy boundaries in your friendships and relationships. I have been in many situations where my friendships have felt very one-sided and it’s left me so drained. Over the past year I’ve learned to have people in my life that I know love will go both ways with.

LUNA: What do you hope listeners gain from “Hero”? Is there anything you are personally taking away from this single?

FAOUZIA: I hope listeners gain a sense of confidence in themselves and know that at the end of the day, they are their own hero. Self-love is so important, and I would say the most important. Once you love yourself, you can love someone else and accept the love that you deserve.

LUNA: What was your experience like with the choreography for the music video?

FAOUZIA: It was my first video doing a group choreo! I learned the dance in a few hours and the other dancers came by a little later. Once we started putting both parts together, I got so giddy since everyone flowed so beautifully. The dancers were so talented and kind and made the experience even more enjoyable. The choreographer definitely knew how to make me feel comfortable and worked around what looked best.

LUNA: In terms of who you are personally, if you could describe yourself in three words, what would they be?

FAOUZIA: Creative, passionate, loving”.

FILM NOIR was one of the greatest albums from last year. There is not much more that I can say, other than the fact you need to check out Faouzia. She has her own musical world that is so utterly engrossing. There is so much same-sounding music out there which means you get homogenisation. However, artists such as Faouzia are so much richer and more worthy I feel, as they offer the music world this much needed alternative. In a busy scene, there is nobody…

QUITE like her.

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Follow Faouzia

FEATURE: Spotlight: Sabina Beyli

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Sabina Beyli

__________

AN incredible artist…

who hails from Azerbaijan and has spent time living in the U.K. and U.S., there is something unique about Sabina Beyli. I don’t think I have ever featured an Azerbaijani artist before. I realise I have been focusing on a lot of solo female Pop artists recently in my Spotlight series, though they are very much standing out and the biggest and most sought-after commodity in modern music. Last year, Beyli put out the singles, Crave the Burn, and Bad Habits. Another artist who has been recorded music for a while, I do think that we can class her as a rising artist. Even though are awaiting a debut album, I think this will arrive soon enough. After putting out a string of incredible singles, Sabina Beyli’s name has spread and elevated. She is this artist primed for even greater prominence this year. I want to come to a few interviews with her from last year. I am going to end with a recent interview that reveals Sabina Beyli is planning to release a second E.P. and we will get some new singles very soon. It makes this feature very timely. A few interviews were published around the release of the single, Bad Habits. I will not include this feature, though their description of Sabina Beyli and her ethos/personality seems very true. A young woman, but someone who has seen and felt so much: “Let’s get one thing straight: Sabina Beyli is 22 and already writing like someone who’s seen way too much, healed from half of it, and refuses to pretend the other half doesn’t still haunt her. Her new single “Bad Habits” is the kind of alt-pop-rock confession that doesn’t bother dressing itself up for company. It walks in messy, overwhelmed, brutally self-aware, and absolutely unforgettable. Sabina has always written like she’s allergic to sugarcoating, but “Bad Habits” takes that unfiltered honesty and turns the volume all the way up. Edgier, more interesting and perhaps more relatable than a lot of her contemporaries, I do think there is something authentic about Sabina Beyli. That lack of sugarcoating and putting a shine on anything has really connected with her fans.

I want to come to a 2024 interview before moving to last year. I am publishing this before the first new singles of 2026, but I am really excited to see what comes from Sabina Beyli. I do think that this is going to be an astonishing year for her. I hope that she does play in the U.K. this year if she has any tour plans. Naluda Magazine spoke with an essential artist who is going to have a very long and massive career:

“Describe your sound in three words.

Alternative, dynamic, pop/rock

Who influenced you, and why did you choose to make music?

The very first artist who influenced me to start singing and making music was Christina Aguilera. I vividly remember when I was around 6, my dad played her song “hurt” and I instantly fell in love. She’s just incredible and I’d die to have her voice.

What is the most rewarding part of your work?

Literally all of it! Especially hearing the demo for the first time and falling in love with something you created. It’s truly an indescribable feeling. And of course the ability to help or inspire anyone who listens to my music. It means the absolute world to me.

What book should anyone interested in music read?

The music-business books. Those are crucial for artists, especially independent ones like me, there is always something new to be learnt!

What advice would you give to your younger self, and why?

To trust the universe and be patient. And most importantly to always be your authentic self.

How would your best friend describe you?

Loyal, supportive, adventurous.

If you could meet someone living or dead, who would it be and why?

Freddy Mercury and Amy Winehouse. Need I say more?

Where do you see yourself and your career in 5 years?

Having a few albums out, touring and adopting a bunch of dogs.

What do you think of social media?

I have a love hate relationship with social media because my job requires a high social media presence but at the same time it’s important to take necessary breaks for your mental health”.

I do hope there are more interviews with her soon. Whilst there are a lot of articles about Bad Habits, it would have been nice for people to interview Sabina Beyli and get her music spread that way. However, I feel this will be rectified this year. I will end with a great interview form Noctis. They ask a few questions around the subject of this year and what she has planned. It is evident that this ambitious and hugely talented artist is going to change the scene and release some fo the best music of her career:

“Being a female artist in the rock-pop space, she tells me she is drawn to its rawness and that it feels instinctive for her to make music in this genre for many reasons. “I’m drawn to the intensity of those genres, there’s this raw edge and emotional depth that really lets me express what I’m feeling. The dynamics, the tension, the atmosphere… It all gives my emotions a place to live.”

As both a writer and performer, this self-expression is also a form of catharsis for Beyli. “A lot of my music ends up being darker and raw because that’s where my emotions naturally go when I’m writing and I don’t ever try to censor that.” Getting up close and personal with her own emotions is something she hopes to evoke within her fans, allowing them to connect to the songs through these shared experiences. Her latest single ‘Bad Habits’ is an example of feelings on full display. “I wanted my listeners to know they’re not alone in those moments, that everyone has cycles they’re trying to break. Putting this song out felt like opening a door for people who might be going through something similar.”

Raised in Azerbaijan, Belyi has lived in both London and across the states, giving her a broadened perspective to write and express from. “Each place taught me something new, whether it was a mindset, a sound, or just the way people express emotion.” This follows her in her career mindset as she is focused on making music as well as growing “as a performer” to “get on more stages, and connect with audiences in a deeper, more personal way.” In all aspects, this connection is something she seeks out, from writing the songs to performing them.

Do you have themes that you’re drawn to as an artist? If so, how do you approach expressing certain themes in your music?

I’m definitely drawn to themes that come from very personal places. I tend to write about things I’m actually going through, issues that feel honest, uncomfortable, and completely real to me. A lot of my music ends up being darker and raw because that’s where my emotions naturally go when I’m writing and I don’t ever try to censor that. I just let myself sit in whatever feeling I’m having and translate it as truthfully as I can. I think that authenticity is what helps people connect to the songs.

You have a very distinctive and strong voice. Who are some vocalists who inspire you within your genre as well as in general?

Thank you! My favorite vocalists who’ve inspired me since I was a little girl are Christina Aguilera and Beyonce. I’m also very inspired by Hayley Williams.

I read that you are from Azerbaijan and have since been based in the states as well as London. How does that influence your writing and your point of view as an artist?

Growing up in Azerbaijan and then spending so much time in the States and London really broadened my whole perspective on life. Being surrounded by different cultures, people, and environments gave me so many layers to pull from creatively. Each place taught me something new, whether it was a mindset, a sound, or just the way people express emotion. All of that naturally finds its way into my writing. I think moving around so much made me more observant and more open, and it inspired me to write from a place that feels global, honest, and shaped by everything I’ve experienced.

So far we know that you’ll have two singles coming up in early 2026. What can listeners expect from those tracks?

My listeners can expect to relate to these tracks a lot. They’re full of authentic, raw emotion, the kind of feelings I was really sitting with when I wrote them. Sonically, there’s a lot of guitar and some experimental textures that honestly sound like what my mind felt like during that time. They’re personal, a little chaotic in the best way, and very true to who I am right now as an artist.

What does 2026 look like for you as an artist that fans can be excited for?

2026 is going to be such an exciting year! There’s so much new music coming, I’m already deep into working on my second EP, and it feels like my most personal project yet. I’m also hoping to perform a lot more shows, maybe even a small tour if everything aligns. And there will definitely be new merch and a few projects I can’t talk about just yet, but they’re really special. It’s going to be a year full of growth, creativity, and connecting with my listeners in bigger ways!

Where do you hope your progression as an artist and performer takes you in 2026?

In 2026, I hope my progression takes me toward expanding even more as an artist, releasing more music, experimenting with new sounds, and collaborating with new people who inspire me. I also really want to grow as a performer, get on more stages, and connect with audiences in a deeper, more personal way. This year is all about evolution for me”.

An artist who has this vulnerability and real punch that comes through in her lyrics and performances, I love the fact that she has lived in the U.S. and U.K. So young still, that experience and worldliness means she is more compelling than a lot of other Pop/Rock artists around her. I hope she also produces more music videos, as Bad Habits and Crave the Burn do not have ones. I love what she has produced so far, yet I feel this year is going to be the best one yet. This superstar is going to…

TAKE on the world.

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Follow Sabina Beyli

FEATURE: Spotlight: Sydney Rose

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Sofia Valladares

Sydney Rose

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THERE were quite a few…

interviews conducted with Sydney Rose last year. Even though she released a debut album, One Sided, in 2023, there has been singles since. I am not sure whether another album is due soon. However, she is not known to everyone and is being seen as an artist to watch out for this year. Prior to getting to some interviews, I want to source from the Songwriters Hall of Fame and their biography of a wonderful artist you need to connect with:

“Music will always be there for us—especially when we don’t have the words to express what we want to say. Georgia-born and Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Sydney Rose writes songs for those moments.

As she sings, it almost sounds like she’s whispering in your ear, giving you a boost of confidence, offering a little clarity, or just reminding you everything will be okay. The intimacy of her songcraft has resonated in the hearts and minds of countless fans worldwide, leading to billions of views on TikTok, hundreds of millions of streams, and critical acclaim. It also underscores her I Know What I Want EP [Mercury Records].

“Even if I can’t say how I feel with my own words, I know my favorite songs can,” she states. “When I listen to records or go to concerts, a song that speaks to me will be able to communicate what I’m going through. My goal has always been to relate to other people.”

It’s easy to relate to Sydney. Growing up in the suburbs of Atlanta, she cultivated a rich musical palette by listening to artists as diverse as Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver, Daughter, Conan Gray, and Cavetown. Along the way, she picked up ukulele, piano, and guitar. Building an audience organically on social media, she broke through with a viral take on “Turning Page” by Sleeping At Last. It gathered over 67 million Spotify streams, led to her first label deal at 18-years-old, and set the stage for 2022’s You Never Met Me EP. A year later, she unveiled her debut LP, One Sided, highlighted by “You’d Be Stars” [feat. Chloe Moriondo]. Along the way, she received co-signs courtesy of everyone from People to Olivia Rodrigo and Addison Grace who invited her on tour.

By the fall of 2024, she found herself now settled in Nashville without a label, yet undeniably inspired. So, she dropped the fan favorite voice notes EP.

“I wanted to return to my roots, which was recording a song as a voice memo on my phone and releasing it,” she says. “When I got dropped, I got back to who I am.”

In this creative space, she continued to write and record. While sitting at the piano one day, she crafted “We Hug Now.” Sparse chords shudder as raw emotion echoes through the cracks in her stark delivery, resembling the fracture of a formative friendship. Holding back tears, she muses, “I have a feeling you got everything you wanted and you’re not wasting time stuck here like me. You’re just thinkin’ it’s a small thing that happened. The world ended when it happened to me.”

“I was upset about this relationship I had with a friend,” she confesses. “I’d go to her Instagram and see her posts with other friends, and it seemed like she was having a great time. I know it’s not 100% true because of how people are perceived on the internet. I was feeling down though, and I know she wasn’t. I wrote about wanting to be friends again and go back to simpler times.”

A post of the tune’s bridge surged on TikTok, snowballing and eventually exploding on the platform. It inspired over 500K “creates” on Tik Tok, yielding 2 billion total views and reaching the Top 15 of the TikTok Top Songs Chart. It catapulted to the Top 3 of the Spotify US and Global Viral 50 Charts. Amassing 40 million streams and counting, “We Hug Now” notably cracked the Top 5 of the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 Chart as she vaulted to #22 on the Emerging Artists Chart. In the wake of this success, she inked a deal with Mercury Records and crafted what would become the I Know What I Want EP.

Among many highlights, “5 More Minutes” hinges on a murmuring piano melody. Her emotionally charged vocals practically melt into the keys as she notices, “I got so old so fast, and I cannot go back.” It illustrates Sydney’s keen perception, acute empathy, and wisdom beyond her years.

Elsewhere, softly strummed chords underline her delicate delivery on songs like “dogs I pass on the street.” Right out of the gate, she sets the scene, “When I call my mom, I just try to be discreet, crying over dogs I pass on the street.”

“Every once in a while, I’ll write a song, and I won’t understand the significance of it until later,” she reveals. “I was moving to Nashville, and I’d never lived away from my family. I was so terrified even though I came here to do music, which is what the song’s about.”

Then, there’s “thank you for trying.” Written in her closet, the vocals barely crack a whisper over the airy endless hum of feedback. Gentle acoustic guitar murmurs beneath an admission, “It’s the way you exist, the way that you kiss, makes me want to tell you I’m sorry.”

“I’m so scared that when someone comes into my life and tries to love me, I’m going to push them away and feel undeserving of their love,” she says.

Piano twinkles through guitar on “listen to the birds.” In a delicate exhale, she urges, “Go and change your perfume, you gotta let go of that version of you...listen to the birds.”

“It’s very straightforward,” she goes on. “I saw The Milk Carton Kids at the Ryman, and I was super inspired. I thought, ‘Yes, I moved to Nashville, but I’m feeling all types of sad’. I needed to be reminded of home by certain things like the birds. It’s an uplifting song about moving somewhere new”.

I am going to move to an interview from Atwood Magazine spoke with an artist who wants to be as open, real and vulnerable as possible with her music. They spoke with the fast-rising Sydney Rose about the new E.P., I Know What I Want. I do think that she is going to be among the artists to watch closely this year:

“After being dropped by her previous label, she could’ve easily stepped back from the spotlight. Instead, she leaned in – to stillness, to honesty, to herself. Out now, I Know What I Want isn’t just a sonic evolution; it’s an emotional one. With over 40 million streams on the viral hit “We Hug Now,” and a new home at Mercury Records, Sydney Rose proves that there is strength in softness – and power in staying true to your voice.

The title alone feels like a declaration. Was there a specific turning point where you realized you “knew what you wanted,” or was it more of a slow realization through writing and performing these tracks?

Sydney Rose: The first song I wrote for the EP was “Dogs I Pass On The Street.” It was also ironically written on the first day I moved to Nashville. The idea for the EP title came from that lyric because I moved to Nashville because I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

Your songs often capture universal feelings – heartbreak, longing, self-discovery – but they feel incredibly personal. How do you balance writing for yourself versus writing for others to see themselves in your music?

Sydney Rose: I try to write mostly for myself because I know there are people out there who are feeling the same way as I do. I want to try to be as real and as vulnerable as possible. It’s the only way I can really feel connected to my own music. I think the more honest I am with my music, the more people relate to it.

What did your songwriting process look like for I Know What I Want? Did these songs come together in one chapter of your life, or were they collected from different moments?

Sydney Rose: They were written over the first year of me moving to Nashville. They all came from different moments, but all from the same feelings. I didn’t rush the process. I let it come naturally.

Who are some artists, past or present, that have shaped your sound or your approach to storytelling?

Sydney Rose: I take a lot of inspiration from songwriters like Phoebe Bridgers, Lizzy McAlpine, and Gracie Abrams. I love the way they structure their sound. And I love the lyrics that just cut right through the heart”.

There are a couple more interviews I want to bring in before rounding off. Ones to Watch spent some time with Sydney Rose earlier last year around the release of her E.P. If anyone has not heard it then I would recommend that you do so, as it is fantastic. A truly great songwriter who is rightly being heralded as a major talent, I am interesting to see what this year holds in store. Ones to Watch observed how “On her latest EP, ‘I Know What I Want’ this young artist doses us in melodic melodrama, sentimental and ruggedly interesting, it is a dose of sonic sunshine to pair with a rainy day”:

“How do you go about songwriting? Do you start with lyrics, melody, colors, abstraction? If you have a process, some people go all over the place.

It kind of is all over the place. I kind of have to feel a feeling very strongly to write a song. Maybe I'll go through a friendship breakup and I won't write about it until a year afterwards. I mostly will sit down at my piano or my guitar and I'll write a melody first and whatever that melody feels like to me. I'll add the lyrics to it. It's like a therapy session. I kind of sit down and sing whatever I feel and that's how my music comes about most of the time. Other times it's like I have an idea and I'll specifically try to write to a specific line that I have in my notes, but mostly it's just me sitting on my bed and pretending I have my therapist in my room with me.

You know, some of the things that always come up, I think with younger artists is this sort of dialogue of loneliness, living inside a vessel, inside a bubble. I'm much older than you, so is it technology? Is there like a sort of dual, parallel reality where everyone feels like they're not actually themselves and they're just sort of whatever version of themselves they need to be? Why does that always come up so much?

I feel like that's a great question.

I'm in this weird generation, where I grew up without a phone until I was in middle school and I had unrestricted Internet access and that was not great. COVID definitely messed up our social interactions. Like, COVID happened in the middle of me being in high school and that definitely gave me more anxiety than I ever had in my life. Going out and trying to make more friends is definitely more difficult, I feel like, than ever”.

“Getting on to your current EP, also, congratulations on your label signing! Where did this EP start? Is this a collection of songs over the years, or a place in time: tell me the story?

It's funny because I moved to Nashville in October of 2023 and it was terrifying. It was horrible. I didn't go to college, so it was the first time I was going to move somewhere that wasn't living with my parents.

So you went from outside Atlanta living with your parents to Nashville by yourself?

Yes, but I have roommates with me, you know. The EP started with “Dogs I Pass On the Street.” The week that I moved here, I wrote that song with Hannah Cole and it was just about moving here and it's so scary but I know I wouldn't be doing anything else with my life. I want to make music and this is what I want to do. And so I feel like that was just the theme of the project from the beginning, the title in that song.

And all of the songs I wrote throughout all of 2024. It's just themes of like, yes, this all sucks. I'm growing up and I want to go back home but I need to work and be doing this and I'm 20 and I need to see the world even though I don't like going out and talking to people sometimes. That's just been the whole vibe of last year and what the EP is about.

So is I Know What I Want somewhat ironic or or is it more like you actually finding your footing and knowing what you want? Or both?

I think it's both. It's also funny, the timing, because I had this EP planned before I signed with Mercury and when I was independent and before “We Hug Now” had a moment and before all that. I still knew that I wanted to be doing this music stuff and continue writing songs and putting out projects. It's really cool that this is the project that I'm putting out where I get to do my first headline tour. Where I get to open up for my favorite artists and stuff and it is what I want to do.

How many shows have you done, like how comfortable are you performing live?

I did a two week tour with an artist named Addison Grace in 2022. It was really great. And in December 2023, I did an opening spot for Leanna Firestone. So I've done a couple shows, but I haven't done my own shows yet. I did a college show in October, but nothing where it was truly like, this is a Sydney Rose show. I feel like I'm very comfortable with live performances. It's one of my favorite things to do, even though it's so nerve wracking. I love singing live for people”.

CLASH interviewed Sydney Rose back in August. The interview focused mainly on live performances and how she went from these small venues to playing some huge locations and spots. Including Hyde Park in London, it has been a crazy past year or so for the Georgia-born artist. She could not have imagined how quickly her career would take off. In terms of the venues and cities she wants to play but has not done yet, I wonder what is in Sydney Rose’s mind:

“Signed to a new label, Rose has not only been touring for the first time, but experiencing new locations and sharing her music with new audiences, too. Through music, Rose has stayed centred.

“I don’t feel nervous when I’m on the stage. I know what it’s like to feel like one of those kids in the crowd when I’m seeing my favourite artist. And so when I’m on that stage, I have to remind myself that these people bought tickets for me and they know my songs and maybe there’s someone out there who has a favourite song and I’m going to sing it tonight,” she says. “I love my music very much… I think singing it live is my favourite thing. Because I make these songs in hopes for people to relate to them.”

Rose says she has learnt a lot from her favourite songwriters (she cites Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver, Daughter, Conan Gray, and Cavetown) and has recently been listening to lots of The 1975, Taylor Swift, Lorde and 21 Pilots. But when it comes to writing, drawing from her own experiences is a must.

“I don’t really feel connected to a song unless I’ve written about something that happened to me,” she says. “That’s kind of how a lot of people are relating to my songs – because I try to be as truthful as possible.”

Like a lot of other artists in her genre, Rose writes about intensely personal topics. With her rapidly evolving success, she is now sharing those very personal songs with much bigger IRL audiences. When we start talking about how that feels, Rose opens up.

“I think I’ve been recently putting up these mental walls in my head… Before this tour and ‘We Hug Now’ came out, I didn’t feel like I really had a lot of eyes on me,” she explains. “And now that I do, I definitely put pressure on myself. When I’m writing songs… it’s just a little bit harder to be vulnerable.”

“It’s sometimes pretty difficult when I have to sing about something that really upsets me. But a lot of the time I remind myself that I’m performing for these people, and I want to sound good and perform well… I think [with] a lot of the songs that I write, I process my emotions and then I write about it later.”

‘We Hug Now’ comes up many times during our chat – that song and what happened with it has had a big impact on Rose’s direction.

“I put out a song about a friendship breakup, not knowing that it would be my biggest song and it would go viral on TikTok and all this stuff,” says Rose. “But I still try to take my music seriously and write from the heart… But, you know, it takes time and I’ll figure it out.”

Figuring things out for Rose includes lots more writing, ultimately with an album in mind (although there’s no firm plan yet).

“It’s very much not anywhere even near ready!” she says. “I’m working on some songs that are going to come out soon, and also giving myself time to not rush these songs. I can never ever force myself to write a song… I’m very much seeing where the wind takes me”.

The Holiday is her most recent single. That was released in November. I am curious what will come this year and whether there will be an album or another E.P. There are so many eyes on this brilliant U.S. artist. In terms of dates, she has some Australian gigs in the diary for March. I guess there will be festival dates and others added soon enough. Of all the artists being tipped for success and visibility this year, Sydney Rose is definitely…

AMONG the very best.

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Follow Sydney Rose

FEATURE: Spotlight: Tash Blake

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

 

Tash Blake

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THIS is an artist I am…

really excited about and think is going to dominate in 2026. One of the most exciting artists I have heard in a long time, Tash Blake should be on your radar. Blake is a Los Angeles-born, N.Y.C.-based singer, dancer, and amazing artist who draws inspiration from artists such as Madonna, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga. Blake has released wonderful E.P.s including Poster Girl, and Atomic Blonde. The epic Poster Girl was released last year. I think 2025 was her most successful and notable year to date. Though I feel that this one is going to be even bigger and better. I am going to come to some interviews from last year with Tash Blake. However, I want to first head back to 2023. That was the year her Atomic Blonde E.P. was released. Featuring standout tracks Mannequin, and So Bad Together, I do feel that Tash Blake gravitates more towards Madonna. In terms of her style and sound, you think of the Queen of Pop. However, Tash Blake very much has her own sound and brilliance. It would be amazing if Blake and Madonna collaborated on something. I am starting out with Wonderland Magazine and their 2023 interview with Tash Blake:

“LA-based singer-songwriter Tash Blake grew up immersed in the world of music, dance, and musical theatre. Learning the power of stage presence from a young age and experimenting with writing songs from the age of eight years, she has honed her sound and created something truly magical. After releasing her debut single, “Mannequin”, in December, Tash has grown a substantial fanbase who connect with her honesty and powerful inspiration. With follow-up singles “So Bad Together” and “Inject Me”, it is clear that she knows who she is — and has the ability to help others feel the same through her music.

When did you start creating music?

I’ve been singing since I could talk. I started writing songs when I was 8 that I’d be embarrassed for anyone to hear now. When I was 15, I recorded my first song and I knew that I needed to be creating music forever.

How would you describe your sound?

Dance pop with a hint of darkness, grit, shimmer, and love!

Do you have a typical songwriting process?

My songwriting process definitely changes depending on the day. Half the time, a concept or a melody will come to me and I immediately have to voice memo it or write it down. Other times, in the studio, I love to just vibe with the producer and see where it takes us!

How did your debut single, “Mannequin”, — and its visuals — set the stage for what listeners can expect from you as an artist?

Dropping “Mannequin” first was important to me in multiple ways. I definitely had to get certain emotions off my chest in order to move forward, and I also wanted it to be known that I am not afraid of saying things others don’t necessarily feel comfortable to say out loud. Visually speaking, the goal was to represent myself in an equally raw and provocative way because that is who I am at my core. Because of this, I feel that I have the ability to express myself in many different directions — no limitations.

What are you most looking forward to in the near future?

I am putting out my debut EP later this year and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with everyone! I also am thrilled to be on stage and to be meeting people in person. I love that type of connection. Seeing their reactions will be everything to me! I’ll be performing this summer — definitely hitting New York, Chicago, and LA”.

This is another great artists that I have overlooked until this point. I do think that she is going to truly explode this year. In May, Tash Blake spoke with Naluda Magazine about her incredible E.P., Poster Girl, and the high price of fame. An artist who is going to connect with so many people, Blake also discussed “raw about fame, fantasy, and finding power in vulnerability“. I do think this year will be another defined by women in Pop. Tash Blake is someone who sits alongside the best Pop artists of today:

“You mentioned that navigating success and self-doubt feels like an emotional tug-of-war. How do you personally balance ambition with protecting your mental health?

Whenever I start to think about time passing by and “losing time,” I tend to go to a darker place. I typically turn to my family and friends and try to surround myself with people who have always been there for me to get my mind off of it and try to rewire my brain that way. Baking and binge watching classic horror movies like “The Shining” helps too. Protecting my mental health is still a process for me, but I am really working on creating boundaries for myself. I never want to get to a place where I don’t enjoy the work anymore, because music is my life, and I wouldn’t know who I was without it.

Your style blends vulnerability and power in a really striking way. How do you channel those emotions when you’re creating new music?

Thank you! I have always loved showing the dichotomy of humanity. I never want something to feel only “hard” or only “soft.” I am always feeling many emotions nearly simultaneously—confidence and self-doubting, assuredness and anxiety. Similarly, I love wearing oversized sweatshirts and tees with no makeup and also very stylized outfits with glam! There are no limits in any part of my life. Throughout the years, I have continued to understand myself better, and I feel that this past year, I have really dug deeper within myself so that I can be as honest as possible in my music.

You’re already working on your next project in Sweden — can you tease how your sound might evolve with these new influences?

Sweden is such an incredible place. It was so inspiring to work with such a talented group of writers and producers and I am incredibly proud of the music I have coming your way! It feels like the most “me” that I have ever been. I don’t want to spoil too much, but I will say that I’m definitely experimenting with sounds and structures of songs and using my voice in different ways! I’m so excited to share it with everyone!

What advice would you give to your younger self, and why?

I would tell myself to always trust your instincts because the gut feeling is always accurate, for better or worse.

If you could have coffee with any historical figure to discuss current events, who would it be and why?

Anne Frank, because I think she would offer a lot of perspective on many aspects of society and world events right now.

Best advice ever given?

To always be the biggest believer in yourself and others will start to believe too. Also, to always look someone in the eye when talking to them as a sign of respect”.

There are two features I want to end with that focus on the excellent single, Die in Your Arms. One of the best singles of last year in my view, Flaunt covered Die in Your Arms in their review. I think that it shows that Tash Blake has grown as an artist since 2023. Her work from last year is her most confident and memorable:

“In her new single, “Die In Your Arms,” Blake turns inward, and it carries power and intensity, a force that takes you on a wild ride. Blake’s voice, beautiful and commanding as ever, tells the story of being in a relationship you know isn’t good for you, yet you can’t walk away. It’s like a drug; you know what it will do to your body, but you just keep coming back.

Musically, “Die In Your Arms” is incredibly catchy. Blake’s influences shine through here; if you’re a fan of Lady Gaga, you’ll feel right at home. The high production quality is evident from the very first note, with every element meticulously crafted to create a polished and immersive sound. The combination of fantastic vocals, dynamic instrumentation, and intricate production techniques gives us a track full of spunk.

“‘Die In Your Arms’ is an electrifying and emotionally charged love song that is your best therapy session at 3 AM, when the only medicine is dancing through the tears. I wanted to write a song that captured the feeling of being in a relationship where you feel so bad, but it hurts so good. Think heartache wrapped in glitter; a cathartic release of emotion that makes you want to cry, dance, and scream all at once,” says Tash Blake.

“Die In Your Arms” is the kind of song you can listen to in the shower, on the bus ride home, or while walking alone in the middle of the night with your thoughts and the music. It feels like it’s tempting you to do something forbidden, and sometimes, it’s good to surrender to that feeling, let your lust win, and just enjoy yourself a little more”.

I will end with The Luna Collective and their interview with Tash Blake. A single that caught a lot of attention and resonated with her fans, Tash Blake selected her favourite lyrics from the song. Die in Your Arms is one of these songs that stays in your head. An instant gem that you will want to play again and again. A genius young artist with so many years ahead:

“LUNA: You’ve called it “heartache wrapped in glitter,” which feels so cinematic. How do you approach writing about pain in a way that still feels empowering and glamorous?

BLAKE: I think that I always start from a real place. The core has to be real. Then, fantasy or surrealism comes into play. I envision so many things in life like a movie, whether it may be a sad or happy scene, or anything in between. The drama is real, haha! Writing about heartache doesn’t have to be painful — it can actually take something traumatic and turn it into something beautiful.

LUNA: What is your favorite set of lyrics from this track?

BLAKE: My favorite set of lyrics would have to be: “You nail my heart to the wall / Hung me up like a piece of  art.” Those lyrics describe how someone can look at you and think you’re beautiful, but they still aren’t seeing you for the person you are inside. Similar to hanging art on your wall — you’re looking at it from a distance, not necessarily valuing the emotion, work, or effort that went into it. Basically, those lyrics are all about being undervalued.

LUNA: As a performer, dancer, and artist, movement clearly plays a huge role in your storytelling. How does choreography influence the way you write or experience your own music?

BLAKE: So much of my process when creating music is inspired by dance or being on stage. I’ll come up with a melody or hear a beat in the studio and immediately imagine how it would feel on stage — how it would feel in my language of choreography, and how the audience would respond. Dance helps me understand the emotion of a song on a deeper level, and for me, music and movement are inseparable.

LUNA: You’re inspired by icons like Madonna, Britney Spears, and Lady Gaga — artists who’ve built entire worlds through their visuals and sound. What lessons have you drawn from them in shaping your own universe?

BLAKE: Madonna taught me to never be afraid to reinvent yourself. Reinvention is authenticity at its finest. Every era of my music reflects who I am in that time of my life, and my audience knows that when I shift, it will always be genuine and intentional. Britney proves that pop music isn’t shallow — it is storytelling. She taught me that every performance, lyric, or even a personal life moment can be a part of the world you are building as an artist. I will never hide my imperfections; they just add to my world. The Pop Dungeon, where my fans, The Tashpit, and I co-exist, is a reflection of how pop music and life can be glamorous and chaotic, shiny and gritty all at the same time. Similarly to Gaga, I visualize the world in a theatrical and surreal way and have always related to darker themes. Some people think that’s strange, but to me, things are even more beautiful in the dark. Fashion is a huge part of who I am as a person and an artist, and expressing myself through what I wear is essential. Gaga is a huge fashion inspiration of mine. Lady Gaga has taught me to embrace the darkness and share it with my fans. She also taught me that it’s alright to use fantasy to express your own vulnerability”.

I can’t see any tour dates for this year listed yet, though you know Tash Blake will hit the road soon, and I hope that she comes to the U.K. It would be brilliant to see her. After a huge year, this one is going to be the best of her career. So much lies ahead for the N.Y.C.-based queen. If she is not currently in your sights, then make sure you correct this. Tash Blake is primed to be…

A future star.

____________

Follow Tash Blake

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Something Like a Song: Under the Ivy

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: Something Like a Song

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

 

Under the Ivy

__________

I am selecting a few songs…

from Best of the Other Sides for this series, as they are ones that may not be widely known. Kate Bush fans will recognise the tracks. However, there are some gems that do not get discussed enough. One example is a song I have covered a few times before but I want to return to. When Bush recently posted her Christmas message, she did reflect on that compilation and its success. Working on it, she listened to The Meteorological Mix of The Big Sky and marvelled. With the voices of her parents and brother, Paddy, in the mix, Bush was reflecting at Christmas about family. It is amazing that Best of the Other Sides came out and was so popular. We got to hear all of these rare tracks. The one I am spotlighting today is Under the Ivy. The B-side of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) in 1985, this is the undeniably queen of Kate Bush B-sides. Rather than repeat what I have done before, I am going to bring in something new. When describing some of the tracks from Best of the Other Sides, this is what Kate Bush says about Under the Ivy:

“I needed a track to put on the B-Side of the single Running Up That Hill so I wrote this song really quickly. As it was just a simple piano/vocal, it was easy to record.

I performed a version of the song that was filmed at Abbey Rd Studios for a TV show which was popular at the time, called The Tube. It was hosted by Jools Holland and Paula Yates. I find Paula’s introduction to the song very touching.

It was filmed in Studio One at Abbey Rd. An enormous room used for recording large orchestras, choirs, film scores, etc. It has a vertiginously high ceiling and sometimes when I was working in Studio Two,  a technician, who was a good friend, would take me up above the ceiling of Studio One. We had to climb through a hatch onto the catwalk where we would then crawl across and watch the orchestras working away, completely unaware of the couple of devils hovering in the clouds, way above their heads!  I used to love doing this - the acoustics were heavenly at that scary height. We used to toy with the idea of bungee jumping from the hatch”.

As the performance of Under the Ivy was broadcast for the 100th episode of The Tube on 19th March, 198i6, we mark its fortieth anniversary very soon. I do hope that people pick up on this song and listen to it. It was written too late to be considered for inclusion on Hounds of Love, though it did bolster the Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) single – not that it needed it! I do wonder whether Bush considered releasing a double A-side, as it would have been great to have a video for Under the Ivy. Like her version of The Beatles’ Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane, this was a monumental release. Under the Ivy too good to be a B-side. I think that it should have perhaps been a standalone single, as it would have done well on the charts. However, it is getting a new lease of life, in part thanks to the release of Best of the Other Sides. Before moving on, let’s bring in part of an interview form 1985 where Bush talked about Under the Ivy:

“It’s very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it’s secret, and it’s something they used to do and that they won’t be able to do again. It’s about a nostalgic, revisited moment. (…) I think it’s sad because it’s about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it’s something that they’re having to sneak away to do privately now as adults.

Doug Alan interview, 20 November 1985”.

It is no surprise that Under the Ivy has been covered quite a bit. It is this song that seems personal, yet it can really be interpreted by anyone. I do think that there is a little of Kate Bush reflecting on fame and pressure. Not being allowed space or privacy, that yearning to escape from it all and go somewhere secluded and safe: “It wouldn’t take me long/To tell you how to find it/To tell you where we’ll meet/This little girl inside me/Is retreating to her favourite place”. Bush singing “Away from the party/Go right to the rose/Go right to the white rose/(For me.)”. Less about love and more about embracing something peaceful and safe, there are some fascinating lines. That key use of the white rose. I think that is symbolic. Rather than the red rose of romance, Bush goes down the garden and under the ivy to the white rose. A white rose symbolises purity, innocence, new beginnings, and reverence. The lyrics talk about colour and nature. It is a song that you can vividly imagine and almost smell. There is this sense of being in a packed and adult environment and then running to a childhood spot. The family garden at East Wickham Farm perhaps. It is a very romantic song, yet I always feel Under the Ivy is more about going back to the past. Fame perhaps creeping in and Bush being in this situation that is dizzying and stressful. Breaking away, you can picture her opening the garden door and getting away from the party. Maybe raining outside, she seeks shelter under the ivy: “I sit here in the thunder/The green on the grey/I feel it all around me/And it’s not easy for me/To give away a secret/It’s not safe”. That clash of the brilliant and bold green against the dreary and wetness of the weather. I wondered what that secret is. Whether it is something personal she is telling a lover or something else, it is impossible not to scrutinise that line. It is all about coming to that particular point. A spot in the garden – “It wouldn’t take me long/To tell you how to find it” – where she can meet with someone.

There is a feature that I want to bring in that argues why we cannot sleep on Under the Ivy. Many people are discovering the song for the first time. Back in September, Music Radar wrote about a lost classic. At the time this was written – September 2025 -, Under the Ivy was not available on streaming. It is now. Even if Bush says the song is about meeting someone for a passionate moment, I never see the song like that. I see it more of breaking away from intrusion and suffocation. It is great that there are these different interpretations and possibilities:

“But - we’re going to go out on a limb here - and assert that it’s actually that song’s original B-side, oddly currently unavailable on most streaming platforms, that we’d boldly suggest is better than Running Up That Hill (gasp!).

Controversial words maybe, but Under the Ivy is a truly special song. It's not just a curate's egg, it's frequently cited by many a Bush aficionado as their top pick in the pantheon of Bush's highest tier of tracks.
Its delicately-performed evocation of lost childhood innocence, secret meetings and the alluring magic of a lush, otherworldly garden make it a comforting, richly rewarding listen. It’s the very definition of a lost gem.

Despite the song's popularity in Bush-geek circles, the song is unfortunately, (scandalously!) unavailable to stream on many of the major streaming platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music. Meaning if you want to hear Under the Ivy, you really have to look for it.

Its lyrical tone of child-like naivety and the ethereal, floating quality of its spacious production shared a spiritual through-line with The Man With the Child in His Eyes, that scintillating early example of her burgeoning brilliance, written when Bush was just 13 years old. Our piece on that song can be read here.

Like that foundational song, Bush kept things simple with Under the Ivy. Built around her intricate piano playing and a vocal performance that evolved gradually from tender and warmly nostalgic to more overtly emotive by the song's end.
It feels like this reminiscence is in some way difficult for Bush. A lost, timeless age of fairytale wonder that she is desperate to recapture.
Bush's lyrics paint, watercolour-like, a narrative of a besotted young girl, giving directions to her (what we can assume to be) lover, inviting him to meet her at an enchanting location. A secret spot for a secret liaison. Hidden deep within a verdant garden.

Go into the garden
Go under the ivy
Under the leaves
Away from the party
Go right to the rose
Go right to the white rose

“It’s very much a song about someone who is sneaking away from a party to meet someone elusively, secretly, and to possibly make love with them, or just to communicate, but it’s secret, and it’s something they used to do and that they won’t be able to do again,” Bush revealed to prominent fan and Gaffaweb Mailing List moderator, Doug Alan back in 1985.

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

“It’s about a nostalgic, revisited moment. I think it’s sad because it’s about someone who is recalling a moment when perhaps they used to do it when they were innocent and when they were children, and it’s something that they’re having to sneak away to do privately now as adults,” Bush further explained.

This melancholic subtext that Bush alludes to here is underscored on the track by her expressive vocal performance, which rises and falls with underlying anguish, before seemingly cracking with emotion near its end.
The chiming, stately piano movement frames the narrative with clock-like inevitability (particularly the emotive chorus in G minor). Another feature of the studio version is the vast natural reverb, spotlighting Bush as a lonely figure, lamenting the ghosts of yesterday.

It's an utterly sublime piece of work.

Under The Ivy, then, is THE lost Bush masterpiece. It’s a magic spell of a song, encapsulating Bush’s ability to blend wonder and innocence with adult feelings of longing, passion and regret.

The song's cherished status is further borne out by the aforementioned YouTube video of the song’s comments, which lay bare the level of adoration Under the Ivy has from Bush’s fans. The comments also reveals how new fans are continually bowled over upon first hearing it.

“I cannot believe that I have just heard this beautiful song for the first time,” wrote one user. “It has restored my faith that special music and honest songwriters are out there, even if they are seldom seen and heard.”

Another states, “The singularly most beautiful song ever written. I remember hearing this for the first time and knowing my life had changed in that moment. Exquisite.”

So, if you’ve not spent any time Under the Ivy before, then why not follow Kate out into the garden, and embrace your new favourite Kate Bush song”.

If you have not heard the song and are unfamiliar with it, then do go and listen to it. Though I don’t think it is better than Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), I can understand why some people would argue that it is. This beautiful and majestic song that transports you away from the party, down the garden and to the white rose, the gorgeous Under the Ivy is a masterpiece. Almost forty years since it was broadcast for The Tube, we now can stream this 1985-released track. It is clear that it will…

NEVER lose its brilliance.

FEATURE: Corridors That Lead to the World… Why Incredible Artists Mentioning Kate Bush in Interviews and Absorbing Her Music Is Especially Important

FEATURE:

 

 

Corridors That Lead to the World…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at her home in Eltham, London on 13th September, 1989/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Cummins/Getty Images

 

Why Incredible Artists Mentioning Kate Bush in Interviews and Absorbing Her Music Is Especially Important

__________

A couple of…

IN THIS PHOTO: PinkPantheress/PHOTO CREDIT: Charlie Engman

my recent Kate Bush features have discussed her influence and artists of last year that are definitely influenced by her. You could listen to the best songs and albums, especially from women, and many have cited Kate Bush as inspirational. I don’t think that I included all of the artists that helped define last year who you can draw a line to Kate Bush. In terms of the best songs, I did not mention PinkPantheress. Illegal has been voted as one of the best songs of last year by so many sites and publications. She (Bath-born Victoria Walker), to me, seems to incorporate the best aspects of Kate Bush. In terms of that sense of experimentation. Listen to Illegal and the beats and strings. Even the vocal from PinkPantheress sort of puts me in mind of Kate Bush. Perhaps a combination of 1982’s The Dreaming and 1985’s Hounds of Love. PinkPantheress has cited Kate Bush as an influence and she has compelled her fans to check her out. Check out the classics. I don’t think that it is the case of modern explosion and discussion informing and inspiring artists. Many discovered Kate Bush years ago. Even though you can feel Kate Bush has made an impression on PinkPantheress and she, consciously or not, has aspects of Bush in her music, I do also think there needs to be more mention of her in interviews. Artists are kind when they shout out someone like Kate Bush, as it means those who might not have discovered her then check her out.  Rather than this being about selecting artists have mentioned Kate Bush as an influence and perhaps urged their fans to check her out, maybe I should focus on those who you feel are working in a similar way. They share aspects of Kate Bush in terms of their work ethic, production and spirit. Last year, PinkPantheress spoke with MixMag and there was a particular section that caught my eye:

“A lot of her self-restriction comes from being bound and categorised by others - something that she has felt throughout her whole career, especially since breaking into the mainstream. “I think a lot of people also categorise me as just pop, but I think I’m fairly experimental and could go even further,” she reflects.

“If people listen to just my bigger songs and less of my deep cuts they think I’m less experimental than I actually am. However, on the other side, I never go too experimental. I’m very structured and I tend to stick to what I know a lot of the time. You know, for example, people tell me to make longer songs and I’m not against the idea but for me it’s about making it make sense for me. I go in with an idea of what I want. I’m someone that has OCD, and when I go against something that I have set in my brain on sometimes it feels like the world is going to end. It’s something I have to figure out as I make more music, because I struggle to break out of a vision”.

I do get a sense of Kate Bush from those words. Whilst PinkPantheress does definitely carry some Kate Bush in her own sounds, that discipline of keeping her songs short and not being pressured into making longer songs and perhaps compromise makes her quite distinct among modern artists. The main point of this article was to shout out artists who have cited Kate Bush as an influence and/or asked their fans to investigate her. Another reason for writing this is related to a something Sean Ono Lennon recently said. He is the son of Yoko Ono and the late John Lennon, and he is worried that young listeners might not discover the band and there is this generation gap. I think the proliferation of Beatles projects and ongoing discourse means they will be discovered. One reason why they found a lot of fans in the 1990s and 2000s is because a lot of artists in the ‘90s especially were inspired by The Beatles and you could feel them very much in the mix. Even if the band themselves were not in fashion, they were being represented by artists of the time. I am not only thinking about women, but I think more female artists embody or remind me of Kate Bush than male artists (or gender-neutral acts). This is what American Songwriter said about Chappell Roan last year. They observed how Kate Bush helped shaped four iconic artists (also included was Adele): “Good Luck, Babe!” shares its art-pop DNA with Kate Bush’s synthy melodrama. Chappell Roan’s ethereal anthems sound like a destination reached. A shared experience in a world that often resembles a Shakespearean comedy (or tragedy, depending on the day). Part escape, part destination, but the “pop” in pop music is just mass human connection. Maybe Bush’s (and Roan’s) bold music is a way to help make joy not feel so alien. That is quite comforting, actually”.

In the same way Sean Ono Lennon worries about The Beatles passing by younger listeners, I do share concerns when it comes to Kate Bush. However, whereas you do not see a lot of modern artists mention The Beatles as an influence, and you cannot feel their influence as much in the modern Pop mainstream as you’d like, I do feel like Kate Bush is being mentioned more and has more of a market share. Chappell Roan is a big fan and you can feel how Kate Bush shaped her music. Her image, her confidence, her sound and songwriting. Influencing PinkPantheress in different ways. Two disparate artists, you feel and hear different aspects of Kate Bush in their aesthetic and attitudes. How they approach music and different ways in which Kate Bush has made an impression. The same can be said of, say, Addison Rae and Lady Gaga. A new artist and a modern icon, both produced phenomenal albums last year. I have recently written about Addison Rae and highlighted her amazing debut, Addison. Rae has included Kate Bush in a personal playlist, and it is clear that she is a fan. Some have noted how a haunted quality in Addison Rae’s voice is reminiscent of Kate Bush. However, I think the synthesiser and bigger sounds of Hounds of Love is a bigger influence. A vocal sound and this rush and charge that you get from songs like Fame Is a Gun and Aquamarine. If some feel that is more inspired by Taylor Swift or someone like Charli xcx, I think that Kate Bush is more present. If Addison Rae did not explicitly shout out Kate Bush, the fact that she included Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) in a playlist from 2024 can be heard through Addison. An album very much connected with Bush’s 1985 masterpiece.

It does make me return to the subject of influence and modern artists who very much have Kate Bush to thank (in part). Perhaps Bush would not collaborate with these artists, though you know that younger listeners and those who may not have caught Kate Bush ‘the first time around’ will discover her music because modern artists either mention her. Or there is critical connection. I know some have even compared artists such as Katy Perry to Kate Bush. It is subjective when you consider which artists are similar to Kate Bush, though the fact that ones who created some of the best music of last year – Addison Rae, Lorde, Florence + The Machine, Lily Allen, CMAT, Charli xcx, ROSALÍA – wads released by artists who are fans of Kate Bush means that her own music will reach their fans through association and comparison. It might be a stretch bringing into the mix artists like Wet Leg, Perfume Genius and those that maybe have not mentioned Kate Bush as an influence. Lorde hasn’t, though you know her music is in Lorde’s orbit. Though I think Perfume Genius has. His album, Glory, is one of the best of the year. Taylor Swift too. Not someone who talks about Kate Bush, there are ways in which you know Bush is an influence on Swift. Same with Sabrina Carpenter. So, even though Bush has not released an album since 2011 and there are few documentaries and books coming out about her, so many awesome artists of today have either listed Bush as an influence, compelled their fans to listen to her or bring Kate Bush into their music. FKA twigs is someone who is very much a modern embodiment of Kate Bush oin so many ways. Vocal similarities and genre=-defying and experimental music. Creating these incredible worlds that are bold and sensual. Keep It, Hold It from EUSEXUA, another standout from last year, has major Kate Bush vibes. I said I would mention Lady Gaga. Mayhem (from last year) is among her best albums.

Before getting to her, I forgot to mention Blood Orange (Dev Hynes) and Essex Honey. He has shouted out Kate Bush and named her as one of his most important artists. Last year, when speaking with The Quietus about a dozen albums that mean a lot to him, he did name Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love as one. He also showed love for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. This observation means a lot of Blood Orange fans will check out Kate Bush: “Her use of piano on that record blew my mind, and it’s something I still carry into my own work. If I’m incorporating piano into a track, it’s essentially because of Kate Bush”. I do think that Lady Gaga is one of the biggest mainstream artists who has cited Kate Bush as a big influence and you can hear her right through the discography. Gaga’s latest album, Mayhem, very much seems like one Bush could or would have made in the past. One reviewer noted how a song or two had a “Kate Bush on the moors” quality to them”. Someone with that large a fanbase mentioning Kate Bush has a massive impact. Even reviews comparing Lady Gaga/Mayhem to Kate Bush will make its mark. If I fear the youngest generation might not latch onto Kate Bush or know her music because it is harder to discover than a prolific modern-day artist putting stuff out, there are so many modern artists – as I covered in a previous feature – who have an element or colour of Kate Bush. Whether it is citing her and talking about her music, reminding one of Bush’s production, experimental aspects or aesthetics, or something else, that will mean that people will be curious about Kate Bush and dig deeper. And we may get a new album from her this or next year. Huge British artists like RAYE and Olivia Dean are fans of Bush. That universe and tree with so many branches. Also, brilliant music from Halsey and MARINA have, I feel, got shades of Kate Bush in them. Same with Self Esteem, The Last Dinner Party, and and so many others! One of the most influential artists of the modern age, yet one not as discussed as she should be. Coming back to that tree analogy and thought. How far and wide it goes. In terms of genre, fanbase, demographic and age range, the modern artists talking about Kate Bush or carrying something of her in her music will result in a growth. In terms of those who dig her music. Going beyond Hounds of Love and the obvious. As each modern artist who loves Kate Bush admires a different album or side of her. Nearly thirty-eight years since Kate Bush’s debut single, Wuthering Heights, was released, it is so wonderful seeing how many amazing artists…

CITE her as an influence.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Dominique Fils-Aimé

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Jetro Emilcar

Dominique Fils-Aimé

__________

WITH a run of…

IN THIS PHOTO: Dominique Fils-Aimé at the Montréal International Jazz Festival in 2024/PHOTO CREDIT: Cecilia Baguerre Martinez

Canadian tour dates and some European shows after, it is a busy start to the year for Dominique Fils-Aimé. I am going to start out with some biography about this incredible Canadian songwriter and artist. Even though her debut album, Stay Tuned!, was released in 2019, I think of Fils-Aimé as rising or still coming through. In the sense that she is putting out her best music at the moment. Before getting to some interviews with Dominique Fils-Aimé, let’s discover more about her:

“Two-time JUNO Award-winning Montreal singer-songwriter Dominique Fils-Aimé has established herself as one of today’s leading voices in vocal jazz. Her latest album, Our Roots Run Deep (2023), earned the 2024 JUNO Award for Vocal Jazz Album of the Year as well as the 2024 Félix Award for Best Jazz Album at ADISQ, affirming the importance of her artistic vision at the crossroads of jazz, soul, and blues.

In February 2026, she will unveil the second chapter of her sophomore trilogy with a new studio album My World Is The Sun, preceded by the single Going Home, released on November 20, 2025. With this project, Fils-Aimé continues her exploration of sonic, creative, and spiritual freedom.

On stage, she offers an immersive performance that invites audiences to delve into the roots of their soul, guided by a profound quest for connection. Live at the Montreal International Jazz Festival (2025), her first live album, is a testament to the strength of her stage presence and her ability to forge an intimate bond with her audience.

In recent years, she has performed on prestigious stages including the Blue Note New York, Blue Note Los Angeles, and the Monterey Jazz Festival, as well as Jazz à Vienne (opening for Jamie Cullum) and the North Sea Jazz Festival.

In 2026, Dominique Fils-Aimé will bring her new album to the stage on a world tour, with concerts announced in Europe at La Maroquinerie (Paris) and Le Botanique (Brussels), in Canada at the Montreal International Jazz Festival, and across the United States”.

Prior to getting to some interviews from last year, I want to focus on one from 2023. Speaking with KLOF Mag around the release of the album, Our Roots Run Deep, the album has one of the most striking and beautiful covers of that year. I especially love the title track, as it is so atmospheric and immersive. In the sense you can step inside what Dominique Fils-Aimé is singing and walk alongside her:

“Born in Canada to Haitian parents, Dominique was meant to learn the piano from her sister. “But I didn’t practise and there was too much structure around my fingers; it was very technical,” she says. “So my sister retired from teaching very early on. My mum played music from everywhere – Haiti, Nigeria, Mexico, France. My sister had the biggest collection of CDs and I’d borrow one at a time for weeks, obsessing over it.” The adult Dominique worked in psychological support for employees in corporate life and turned quite late to making music. Then, a researcher from the TV talent show La Voix asked her to apply, and she ended up in the semifinals of the 2015 edition. Signing to Montreal label Ensoul Records, Dominique’s debut album Nameless came out in 2018, followed by Stay Tuned! and Three Little Words.

The trilogy was devised to trace African-American music from nineteenth-century slave songs to the birth of hip-hop. Composing orally, Dominque layered chords of vocables from invented sounds and syllables to form haunting modern parables. Into the mix came catchy tunes with sparse accompaniment from bass, percussion and Ensoul founder Kevin Annocque on didgeridoo. Each record’s artwork reflected its musical themes in colour and photography. Blue for the blues, water and the weight of history; red for jazz revolution, passion and liberation; yellow for heat, happiness and a sunny explosion of styles.

Dominque explains this further: “Each cover is planned from the beginning, so I know where each album is going and what it’s exploring. The designs are by Siou-Min Julien, a talented and sensitive artist. On the Nameless album there was a desire to hide part of my face, as my beginning. There’s also an association there with the moon’s different quarters. Then the half-turn on Stay Tuned! has an energy that’s defiant but not in a bad way, feeling proud as a woman and standing tall. Three Little Words looks like a face-to-face conversation, the journey to becoming more direct and vulnerable about my intentions. I started out wanting to be anonymous and debated this with my manager. He raised the point of how few black women are visual in the city’s landscape and how having posters of my albums might relate to someone who doesn’t feel represented. So displaying your face does matter.”

Our Roots Run Deep is an exuberant hymn to the natural world and personal growth, soaked in verdant grooves and ripe melodies. “We talk about going into nature as if we’re separate from it and not organic ourselves,” says Dominique. “We’ve recently discovered how much trees talk to each other and feed each other underground. Their roots were hidden from us for a long time, we didn’t know them or think of them. Forests were just seen as rows of trees next to each other, without connection. Humans are the same, we see them standing together in a crowd, but don’t see what connects us to our ancestors, everything they built for us to be in this modern world. A lot of my strengths and blessings are thanks to my mother and grandmother. Through talking or meditation they bring me great advice when I see challenges coming. I wanted this album to represent me as a plant from those bottom roots to the top branches, reaching towards the sun”.

There were some interviews published last year around the release of Live at the Montreal International Jazz Festival. I have never seen Dominique Fils-Aimé play live, though she is someone that I definitely watch to catch if she comes to the U.K. this year. All About Jazz spoke with Fils-Aimé about her music. Jazz gives her a real sense of healing and freedom. I have spotlighted a few artists recently who see their music as this form of release and something that they connect to in a very deep and healing sense:

“When asked what she hopes people hear when they call her music "jazz," she responds immediately: "Freedom." Shortly after, she emphasizes again: "Freedom. It's the number one... that's what I'm hoping listeners are inspired to seek for themselves. I believe jazz resonates with us in a way that reminds us to pursue freedom in all its forms."

Fils-Aimé did not come to music by following a technical checklist. Before pursuing music as a career, she worked in psychological support for families, and the idea of music as a form of care remains central. She describes her creative process as something that starts with an impulse and then transitions into a meditative state—repetition and breath opening a pathway to meaning. "There is definitely a meditative aspect to even the creation process... there's always this notion of repetition... similar to breathwork," she explains. "It always begins with just a random impulse... and then from that point, it's as if I begin a meditative process that can last for hours."

Two recent touchstones exemplify that blend of rigor and receptivity. Our Roots Run Deep (Ensoul Records, 2023) portrays growth through an ecological perspective. "The whole album itself and this song specifically were inspired by nature... the color green is associated with the heart chakra... I'm being a little more open with my heart and sharing the messages and the lessons that I keep learning from my plants," she says. From there, she extends the metaphor below ground: "All the roots are actually connected... with the older ones feeding the younger ones. This felt like a clear metaphor... our ancestors are also feeding us... We are all connected, even if we can't see it with our eyes the same way." The takeaway is patient and practical: "Even if there is a tiny little leaf, we cannot expect to be a tree tomorrow."

For readers discovering Fils-Aimé at a concert or years before the next one, the live album Live at the Montreal International Jazz Festival (Ensoul Records, 2025) functions as a compass, not a summary. It is a record of a moment that "will never be the same again," a sketch of how she treats presence as the point and "imperfections" as the human fingerprint that lets a song breathe.

And for anyone who approaches jazz with equal parts curiosity and care, Fils-Aimé offers a compelling vision of what the music can be today. Freedom, in her hands, is not just a slogan; it is clearly built into her approach—using audience loops that democratize the texture, trusting improvisation to reveal what truly matters, and crafting strong songs that move like mantras through the body. If you heard her live, you likely felt it in the room; if you are listening at home, you can still sense it in her choices. Either way, the invitation remains: "Freedom”.

I am going to wrap up with an interview from SPIN. Dominique Fils-Aimé discusses, among other things, why love is the cure/answer for everything. She also talks about being her true self and creating without limitations. Such a staggering and original musical talent, though I only found her music last year, I am instantly hooked. I do hope I get the chance to see her perform one day. Everyone needs to make sure Dominique Fils-Aimé is on your radar:

“What can you tell us about the new album you’ve just finished?

It’s the second album of my second trilogy, and it’s a continuation. I’m trying to reconnect and explore the depth of personal freedom through creation.

What does that mean to you?

To me, it means reconnecting to the inner child that creates without any limitations or without having the outside world. This is how I started, then I started putting some map in my head of where I wanted to go, what I wanted to explore, which area, and perhaps at some point letting go of that part allows me to be even freer. I was free, but within a context I had established before. Now I just want to seek freedom where it is less the cerebral aspect and more in the feeling and intuition, letting it guide me from that instinctual place.

What brought you to jazz?

Freedom. When I understood jazz is not about the way people academized it or made it into academia. The music was there before the books. When people are reproducing sounds in a very academic way, like unlearning the structure of jazz in a way that is cerebral, I feel like this is a big misconception. Jazz was about the quest for freedom, the desire to break out of a specific way of doing things. This is the legacy and the type of jazz I received. This is what I want to protect and cater to as my definition of jazz and as the type of art I want to make. That’s what jazz is. It’s the freedom of transcending every box and doing what is authentic to you and what is part of your quest to create as freely as possible with what you are and who you are.

The live album feels incredibly intimate, almost like there’s no barrier between you and the listener. How did you achieve that?

I felt a comfort there. There was so much love. I didn’t know it would be an album. They were recording it anyway. We record every show. We have hundreds of shows recorded. Especially big ones like that, we make sure we have it, at least for the memory of it. Vocally, there’s a lot of things that did not go as I usually would. I didn’t hear myself as well as I would have liked. There were all these technical elements. But they did not matter, because of the feeling. That’s why I was able to welcome that idea, although there was a little perfectionist voice behind being like, “It was not your ultimate performance, vocally. But emotionally, you were there 1000%.” And the people were there with us. There was an energy, a chemistry going on. It felt a fluid space between the musicians. Everyone on stage and everyone in the crowd, there was a connection, something special happening. I’m happy we kept it as an album. It needed to happen.

Are you hoping to capture the spirit of that Jazz Festival performance on your upcoming tour?

It’s a little different because the new album, the fourth album, the first of the second trilogy, Our Roots Run Deep, is different. It’s one single story. The songs are synced, one into the other, and they’re also mingled with little interludes that are poems that help me ground the people into which stage of the journey we are. It’s meant to be more of an immersive, meditative experience where I ask people to sink into their seats. There’s two or three times where people have space for applause. Your presence is already the loudest applause an artist can wish for. I want them to close their eyes and come on a journey with us throughout the show, which is easier to do in smaller spaces. Jazz Fest was a huge show, but I enjoy the intimacy of taking people on a journey on a more peaceful little river, on a little boat, where we’re going from point A to point B together. Take this moment to let go of everything outside this room and be in the moment with us.

Does singing in French make it easier or harder to express your true self?

It’s as if it’s another part of me. You know how they say you have two parts of the brain? Left and right, even when you look at it, they’re literally separate. They have different priorities, different interests. You have the left side that is more about here today in the real, physical world and the emotions and the need to see me as a person. Then you have the right side that is more connected to everything around us. The energies in things and colors and shapes. Usually for me, art is about tapping into that more connected place. Because I wish to create things that will connect with people, and connect people between themselves and with their emotions. There’s a universal aspect on that side of the brain, and it’s as if singing in French is the other part of my brain, the right brain. This part is more about my personal experiences, my very intimate, personal emotions. But also, there is a desire or pressure to be somewhat more poetic or precise with the word, because the French language can be a little more picky on the right word. That’s a form of pressure I didn’t want in my art. That’s why I stayed away from it for so long. But then I realized I need to also make sure that whenever a song comes in another language, I need to follow that intuition too, because that means something in me needs to express something from that place. Allowing it to come as it comes, turns out that eventually some of it came out in French, so I welcomed it, and discovered a new part of me”.

I am going to leave things here. Anyone who has not heard Dominique Fils-Aimé needs to check out her music. There are a lot of fascinating artists to keep an eye out for this year. Some will get missed, or they will not receive as much attention as they should. Dominique Fils-Aimé is someone to behold and cherish, as she is such an immense talent. Do go and listen to her music, as My World Is The Sun is out on 20th February. I am really looking forward. This brilliant Canadian artist is someone that you…

CAN’T afford to miss out.

___________

Follow Dominique Fils-Aimé

FEATURE: Spotlight: KSMBA

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Rob Tennet for 10

 

KSMBA

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I want to shine a light…

PHOTO CREDIT: Rob Tennet for 10

on the amazing KSMBA. They are an incredible artist that I am fairly new to. They had an amazing 2025. I think that this year will be a truly huge one for them. Prior to getting to some interviews with the Naarm/Melbourne-based producer, singer and songwriter, there is a little bit of biography here that provided some background about KSMBA:

“No stranger to the transformative power of music, KSMBA is a rising force in Australia’s underground techno scene. They’ve graced the decks across Australia’s leading clubs and festivals; from Sub Club, to PICA, Miscellania, The Timber Yards, Club 77 and recent editions of Pitch Music and Arts, A3 Festival, Daybreak Festival and Let Them Eat Cake. Their journey has seen them championed by luminaries like Effy, Mall Grab, Sim0ne , Samba Boys and STÜM.

KSMBA’s artistry is a fusion of music, culture, and identity, a deeply personal yet universally resonant expression of self. Their music isn’t just sound, it’s a statement. A resistance to the heaviness, a space for vulnerability and connection in a world that often demands the opposite”.

Ever since discovering KSMBA, I am compelled to follow them. I think that this year will be see a lot of travel and some incredible new music. I am excited to see where they go. Last year, we got singles like Everything, and Eyes. The Eyes – EP came out in the summer. It would be great to see an E.P. from KSMBA that features a selection of original tracks. Maybe this will come later in the year when KMBRA puts out some more singles.

I am going to start out with a triple j interview from March last year. There are some interesting chats from last year. I think that KSMBA will come to the U.K. at some point in the year. This underground talent in the Australian Techno scene, I do think that there should be more airplay here for KSMBA. They are an artist I am excited to see bloom and grow in 2026:

“Finding solace in a “push and pull” and “give and take” nature of a live crowd, this energy exchange acts as the fuel that powers KSMBA’s output.

“There’s something in things that are a little more collaborative, that are a little more engaged with the current social and cultural context”

As an individual who identifies as “Ugandan, settler Australian, queer, non-binary, a classical musician,  someone who loves cats” (the list goes on), their multifaceted nature is embodied in every speckle of what they create.

“When I first started producing music, I felt like those things had to come across in an obvious way. But as time’s gone on, I feel more comfortable in my identity and know that it’s inherently a part of whatever I do.”

Priding themself in honesty and authenticity, this transparency paves the way for their creation processes.

They’re a person who’s so clear in their vision and are no stranger to the transformative power of music, crazy to believe that they’ve been producing this type of music for only two years (!!).

So what is the origin story of KSMBA?

Great question!

Formally trained as a classical musician… more specifically a saxophonist, music has always been a part of KSMBA’s world.

As a self-proclaimed ‘party goer’, this project was brought to life after years of being involved in the dance scene. KSMBA felt so much freedom and euphoria in these spaces but never felt fully quite like they were getting what they wanted.

“So I decided to do it myself”

They jumped on the decks and learnt all there is to know about DJing.

Embracing the art form to its fullest, it wasn’t long before they furthered their skills and discovered their love for producing. It was at this point that they “unlocked a whole new world and depth of love for dance music”.

“Literally the first time I touched DJ equipment for the first time, there was this feeling of love at first sight that I’ve never experienced with anything else in my life”

And just like that, KSMBA was born!

When you hit the floor for a KSMBA set, you can expect plenty of grooves, deep techno and boundary pushing. Their intention is to always push the limits and invert the listener’s expectation. Plus, they’re forever chasing that golden feeling…

“I played my single, ‘Everything’ to the crowd at Let them eat cake on new years day, for the first time. There's eight bars before the drop that’s quite lush and synthy and I felt tangibly the energy change in the crowd. This collective “woahhh” made me choke up, even talking about it now, it makes me emotional.

Probably one of the most wild experiences of my life.”

“The next stuff is probably even more emotional, I’m honestly feeling quite nervous to release it, but very excited because it’s very vulnerable”.

The terrific Bella Kasimba created this incredible original and impactful music as KSMBA. 10 interviewed them earlier in the year. An artist that they note is moving the needle, their music is free and unfiltered – just like them. I love the fact they have this incredible background that includes Classical music and time in London. I wonder whether KSMBA will relocate to London a bit again or whether there is going to be more Classical elements brought into their sets:

“Roxy: Was there a shift that made you consciously realise that you wanted to be more honest in your music?

KSMBA: I think my life has been a series of reckonings. I started out as a classical musician from a young age. I pursued that so doggedly, totally fixated, and I loved it. I still love it but classical music never quite sat right in my body. There was always a feeling of constriction or slight unease with it. So I studied overseas and came back to Australia during Covid. I was about to move overseas [again] to do my master’s degree when lockdown happened. I asked myself if this was really the right thing for me. It was also at that point that I came out as gay and then a little after that I came out as non-binary. All this truthfulness in my personal life meant I was able to translate that into my music. About two years ago I switched to electronic music and last winter I had to face up to some things that had happened in my life. I also had a great new psychologist.

Roxy: That’ll do it.

KSMBA: I acknowledge the privilege I have to be able to take up even a small amount of space in the industry. I feel like coming from a community that isn’t often heard or given a seat at the table has made me realise my intention with music is to show up in these opportunities I get as honest. I realised that there was a lot I could be doing to a greater depth. It can be scary to be straightforward.

Roxy: Do you feel the pressure of commercial success?

KSMBA: I think about it a lot, yeah. People say, “Well, this is the way you have to do it.” But they don’t have life experience like mine. I think it’s vastly misunderstood that even if I took the exact same steps and did the exact same thing as, say, my white counterparts, I’m not going to have the same response. It gives me an opportunity because I know that even if I play by the rules, those rules aren’t going to work for me. It gives me a bit more freedom to just decide I’m just going to do what I want to do anyway. I think there can be pressure as a DJ or as an electronic act that you need to be making music that other DJs will play or that’s for partying, but I have to believe for my own sake that the possibilities are broader. That there’s more scope for different kinds of expression. It’s easy to classify people if you stick to one thing.

Roxy: How did you learn to produce?

KSMBA: I just downloaded Ableton. In the beginning, honestly, it was hours and hours of sitting at my computer. I’d say I’m still only just learning how to use it.

Roxy: Do you think classical music has helped you to produce and DJ? I also studied classical when I was younger and always felt that’s how I could understand production and DJing.

KSMBA: One hundred per cent. I’m so thankful for my previous life in music. The technical skills of learning to produce and write dance music is obviously different to how classical music is structured. The emotions and storytelling are different, but in terms of building a sense of musicality and even a musical identity, it has helped. I feel very lucky that I’m coming from a place where I have very clear ideas. The only growing pains are in the sense of trying to understand the software and translate what I want into a keyboard. It’s immensely satisfying.

Roxy: It’s very cool that you went to the Royal College of Music in London. I know you call it a past life but what was that experience like? What have you taken from it?

KSMBA: I look back and I actually don’t know how I did it. I was 18 when I got a scholarship to go study there and travelled across the world. I was the biggest nerd you can possibly imagine. I love that I just went and lived in this huge city on my own with no life skills. My degree was four years and it was amazing. There’s a lot of pressure there to keep performing and achieving. It was extremely difficult and I don’t know how I got through it, but it was unbelievably rewarding. I was extremely driven back then and I’m very emotionally greedy. I like to pursue things intensely and see how far my brain can take it. I’ve taken that with me. I’m still extremely close with my saxophone professor”.

Whether you see KSMBA primarily as a D.J. or artist, you can’t ignore the fact that they are getting so much buzz and love in Australia. I think some sites in the U.K. are getting behind KSMBA, but they are better known in Australia. I think that this will shift. I am ending with Mixmag and their interview from last summer. Even though KSMBA is a new talent, they have this experience that is not that common with artists we see as ‘rising’. I think that this year is going to be the biggest one yet for them:

“Unrestrained isn’t only a musical commitment when it comes to KSMBA’s relationship with electronic music. Becoming intertwined with Naarm’s queer culture and its music resulted in them dealing with a great deal of introspection. “When I left classical music, I was straight, aka in the closet, pursuing something that didn’t feel quite right. I hadn’t unpacked myself. I hadn’t come out as non-binary then. So it’s interesting to me, because my relationship with dance music has become so intertwined with me becoming more myself, more who I am. It’s letting myself just ‘be’, and exist with more ease.”

Music isn’t always the sole catalyst for change within a person however. It’s the sum of all of KSMBA’s experiences that made them open to the idea of change in the first place, and to be ready to adopt an entirely new way of thinking about their own relationship with music up until that point.

“If I had left it up to chance or luck completely, I would be where I was five years ago, which was in the closet and not a DJ,” they laughed. “It's like I finally found the right language for me, so how can I resist not doing that, you know, with every spare moment in my life?”

Drive, desire and determination have been the calling cards of hustle culture. It might be easy to assume that someone so clearly wanting to do or make something of themselves is ‘on that grindset’. Dance music has, to many, become another playground for metrics, trends, insights, data and business. Social feeds are littered with tips, tricks and courses designed to lure people into the idea of ‘hacking’ gigs and nailing transitions between some old R&B song and the latest hardgroove banger.

This idea couldn’t be further from it KSMBA’s idea of luck or chance. To them, dance music exists as complimentary to their changing outlook on life and the world around them.

“There are such limitless possibilities in electronic music,” they shared. “DJing is kind of like jazz. It’s a conversation, an improvisation, a push-pull relationship with the crowd or whoever’s experiencing it. To me, that just feels so limitless and free, and that’s why it’s probably going to take me ten, maybe fifteen years to be half decent at this thing.”

It may be somewhat ironic, then, to consider KSMBA’s genre of choice, techno.

Techno has, in many ways, just become a word. It’s become interchangeable with ‘EDM’ to refer to dance music by those who aren’t familiar, and even to those within dance music it’s become a word to simply define hard, four-four music. For KSMBA, the definition of techno is flexible. Not in the sense that each time they use it it changes, but in the sense that it refers to music of different levels of harshness and emotion.

KSMBA is not one to mince words. In the modern day, artists have had to learn to become everything. Some might benefit from the presence of dedicated videographers, photographers and PR teams, but for the most part, the modern artist is expected to do this all themselves, to a point. The involvement of morally dubious global brands in more ‘underground’ dance scenes has forced an entirely new skillset for artists, one arguably ignored by the optimistic masses dominating more commercially successful lineups: politics.

KSMBA is not afraid to talk politics. Within modern dance music, and even on a broader political spectrum, the idea of being a ‘diversity’ inclusion is a conversation that still gets a lot of airtime. They’re under no illusion that, often, they are the only member of a lineup who is black, queer and gender diverse. They have, like so many others, been forced into political engagement due to who they are, and how hugely it differs from who most of the scene are: white men.

But KSMBA hasn’t shied away from what being in this position means, instead, they appear to relish the opportunity it provides to mix things up. This isn’t just on an industry level, but to them, on a broader cultural level too.

“In our culture at the moment a lot of people are asking ‘what can I take from this? What can I get from this? What can this give me?’ Something I’ve tried to reframe my thinking around is actually: ‘What can I give? What can I contribute? How can I make this better off than when I entered?’ People coming into any kind of relationship with the outlook of what can i take from this; that relationship is understandably going to become strained”.

Let’s end there. Such an amazing multitalented artist and D.J., I am glad to have discovered KSMBA. I do think that they are going to go a very long way. Last year was such a busy one for them. You know that things are going to go from strength to strength. This is a hugely impressive force in modern music that is…

FLYING high and free.

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Follow KSMBA

FEATURE: Groovelines: New Order – Blue Monday

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

 

New Order – Blue Monday

__________

BECAUSE the superb Bernard Sumner…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bernard Sumner

turns seventy on 4th January, I am featuring a classic New Order song in this Groovelines. Released as a single on 8th March, 1983, Blue Monday is viewed as one of the greatest songs ever released. So instantly recognizable and timeless, it has spanned the generations and it is amazing that it was not originally an album track. Blue Monday featured on certain CD and cassette versions of New Order’s second studio album, Power, Corruption & Lies. That came out in 1983. The track was written by Gillian Gilbert, Peter Hook, Stephen Morris and the legendary Bernard Sumner. Sumner is the lead of New Order. The band’s most recent album is 2015’s Music Complete. I am going to come to some features and reviews about Blue Monday in honour of the upcoming seventieth birthday of Bernard Sumner. Whenever looking out for features about Blue Monday, many of them talk about how the song changed music forever. Such was the impact of this track. I want to start out with a 2024 feature from Music Radar, where they discuss the kit and technology that helped when it came to the creation of this classic. New Order were perhaps a bit naïve in terms of how easily the song could be made and what they would have to do. As it turned out, it was a pretty complex and difficult thing to pull together. However, the fact that it is so revolutionary and influential makes it all worth it:

“It seems the track was a practical solution to a gigging problem. "We didn't play encores," recalled New Order's Bernard Sumner in 2012, "and we were getting into a lot of trouble over it. 

"Rather naively, we thought we'd write a song that could be played by machines and all we'd have to do was press the button. They'd get what they wanted and we'd get what we wanted.

"It was an exploration into pure electronic music, so we took the machines to the limit to see what we could do with them. What we could do with them was very basic at the time, so it was making the most out of what little gear we had.

While we respectfully disagree, Sumner puts the track's longevity down to subsonic, rather than songwriting: "It's not really a song. It's more of a machine that sounds good on club systems.

Sumner was assigned vocal duties on the basis that he could comfortably alternate between singing and playing his guitar.

There are a couple of other features that I want to cover off. Produce Like a Pro highlight how Blue Monday helped reinvent and re-establish New Order. Perhaps people had a perception of them before that. Even though this was their second album, Blue Monday was like nothing that they had produced before. New Order emerged from the dissolution of Joy Division. A massive step away from anything Joy Division produced:

“On March 7, 1983, New Order released the single “Blue Monday.” In addition to its massive commercial success, charting in the top 10 in several different countries, the single established New Order’s reimagined voice, distinct from the raw emotions and haunting melodies of Joy Division, and launching the world of dance music into a whole new era. As John Bush declared: “‘Blue Monday’ cemented New Order’s transition from post-punk to alternative dance with vivid sequencers and a set of distant, chilling lyrics by Bernard Sumner”

At first, in the time between Curtis’ death, and “Blue Monday”, New Order struggled to find their identity as a band. Their first single” (“Ceremony” with “In a Lonely Place”) were tracks they had written with Curtis before his passing, and their first album (Movement, 1981) followed in the same vein of dark, haunting ytacks, as their work in Joy Division. What “Blue Monday” offered, instead, was a startling break away from that emotionality and into the mechanized sound of drum machines and synthesizers. As Sumner reflected in 2015: “I think ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ connects with people because of the emotional content within the song, and I think ‘Blue Monday’ connects with people because of the startling lack of emotional content within the song. It’s kind of contradictory, really.”

While the sonic shift seemed to be a drastic change, there are several lines of influence that can be drawn between the track and the band’s earlier work. The impact of a band like Kraftwerk on New Order should come as no surprise; however, it was actually Ian Curtis who introduced the electronic music pioneers to his bandmates. As Hook explained:

“My earliest memory of Kraftwerk was being given an LP by Ian Curtis. He gave me ‘Autobahn’ and then later ‘Trans Europe Express’. I was absolutely mesmerised by both. Ian suggested that every time Joy Division go on stage, we should do so to ‘Trans Europe Express’. We did that from our first show, until nearly our last […] Joy Division were very tied to Kraftwerk, but it wasn’t until we got to New Order and were able to afford the toys that our primary source of inspiration became, ‘Let’s rip off Kraftwerk’. Their music was beguilingly simple, but impossible to replicate.”

Other influences on the song include the pulsating bass line of Donna Summer’s “Our Love” and the rhythm of “Dirty Talk” by Klein & M.B.O.. Hook’s bassline even pulls its melody from the legendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone and his soundtrack to the Clint Eastwood movie, “For a Few Dollars More”

Bringing all of these influences together was the band’s comfort with the recording studio and production technology, which they had picked up during their time working on their first album. Some of the track’s brilliance comes from carefully calculated creative choices, while others were a little more unexpected. The timing of the synthesizer, for example, came out of a mistake that Gilbert had made when programming the part. She explained:

“The synthesizer melody is slightly out of sync with the rhythm, […] This was an accident. It was my job to program the entire song from beginning to end, which had to be done manually, by inputting every note. I had the sequence all written down on loads of A4 paper Sellotaped together the length of the recording studio, like a huge knitting pattern. But I accidentally left a note out, which skewed the melody.”

As Gilbert points out, this was a time of manual programming and emerging technology. Sumner also reflected on this exciting time, saying: I remember just being turned on by the latest technology that was becoming available. It was pre-computers, pre-MIDI, and I’d built this sequencer from an electronics kit. We programmed everything in step-time using binary code digital readouts. It was… complicated. […] Rob [Gretton, New Order manager] thought it was witchcraft. He really did! That sounds weird now in the age of the internet, but he really thought it worked by magic.”

In addition to the “magic” of the song’s cutting edge production, its release has also become a source of what sounds like legend. Despite its massive popularity and success, the label actually lost money on the single at first. This was due to the cost of production for the album sleeve. Hook told NME in 2015: “…it’s absolutely true. Factory sold it for £1, and it cost £1.10 to make because of the sleeve – which had to have three die-cuts, all individually – the cost price to make it actually cost more than that. […] Tony ended up having those wonderful brass awards cut for us to celebrate 500,000 sales, when what we were actually celebrating was a loss of £50,000. […] They did rectify it later by having a normal sleeve, but that only came after a massive amount of copies had been sold.” The track has since gone on to become the best selling 12” record of all time”.

The Guardian marked forty years of New Order for a great future in 2023. They looked at the songs and artists that were inspired by it. However, they also spotlighted the music that you can feel helped to shape one of the most important songs ever. Blue Monday still sounds radical to this day. It has this incredible power that I don’t think will ever dim. This is a song that will be talked about for generations more:

“Ennio Morricone – For a Few Dollars More (1965)

Peter Hook had pioneered his bass-as-lead-instrument approach while in Joy Division but New Order’s increased use of sequenced bass lines caused him to refine his methods further: he claimed the sparse riffs of Blue Monday were inspired by the twanging lead guitar in the score for Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti western after watching it in the studio.

Kraftwerk – Uranium (1975)

Given Blue Monday’s sample from one of its interstitial tracks and OMD’s evident obsession with its Orchestron-heavy sound, Radio-Activity – the least commercially successful album of Kraftwerk’s imperial phase – wielded a striking influence over British pop in the early 80s. Gillian Gilbert claimed New Order had previously tested their sampler by recording their own farts.

Sylvester – You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) (1978)

Whenever influences on Blue Monday are discussed, someone will mention the synthesised riff of Gerry and the Holograms’ supremely irritating post-punk novelty track Gerry and the Holograms. Bernard Sumner has denied ever hearing it – in fairness, New Order have hardly been coy about the song’s other steals – suggesting it instead rooted in the octave-leaping bass line of Mighty Real.

Donna Summer – Our Love (1979)

The most famous aspect of Blue Monday is probably its stuttering rhythm track, borrowed wholesale from Our Love – also surely an influence on Temptation – from Donna Summer and producer Giorgio Moroder’s 1979 masterpiece Bad Girls. Intriguingly, that album’s final two tracks, Lucky and Sunset People, carry something of Blue Monday’s atmosphere – dancefloor-focused electronics topped with distant-sounding melancholy vocals.

Klein & MBO – Dirty Talk (1982)

Sumner has said that New Order were lifted out of their despondency following Ian Curtis’s death by listening to tapes a friend had compiled of Italo disco. By the time of Blue Monday, its sound had seeped into New Order’s own: listen to the chattering synths of Italian/US duo Klein & MBO’s biggest hit, a favourite of Sumner’s”.

The final piece I am bringing in is from NME. The original article they published came out in 2013. Thirty years after its release, they discuss how Blue Monday changed music forever. It really did! If New Order didn’t realise at the time, they had recoded a piece of music history. I am not sure when I first heard it. Perhaps in the 1990s.

“It might just be the happy conjunction of timing and opportunity, but Blue Monday’ feels like a fulcrum. Take that ‘Our Love’ loan – the last days of disco are fading into this dour, rainy Manchester funk and what’s emerging on the other side is something entirely alien. Bernard Sumner cites Sylvester’s immense disco classic ‘You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)’ as a touchstone too, another slice of joy going into the machine and coming out blank. Blankness is ‘Blue Monday”s overwhelming quality, from Sumner’s pale, robotic vocal to Peter Hook’s desolate bass melody, and it’s the merest flick of the pencil to draw a line from this to forbidding early techno, or Phuture’s ‘Acid Tracks’. The disco loop keeps going around too – five years later Quincy Jones was releasing the ‘Blue Monday’ reissue on his own Qwest label.

In the pop world, the 12″ single was all about zero imagination. The average extended mix consisted of the 7″ with an extra minute of drum fills stuffed in the middle or the intro played twice over or – if the boat was really being pushed out – a spoken-word interlude. ‘Blue Monday’ realised the possibilities of the form: you could bankrupt yourself with a die-cut sleeve! But you could also write a song fit for purpose, a sprawling monster that could only be accommodated on a massive slab of vinyl. Yep, Flowered Up’s ‘Weekender’ could never have existed without ‘Blue Monday’. New Order took a practical clubber’s format and turned it into an artistic statement.

Even the gloomiest overcoat-sporting rockist could cut a rug to ‘Blue Monday’ without risking indie points – and that might be its greatest achievement. It took one hell of a long time to filter through though.

Indie-dance, baggy, whatever, it’s entirely in hock to New Order’s game-changer. ‘Blue Monday’ set the parameters and its Manchester scions filled the space, welcoming sequenced beats into their repertoire and getting sexy. As sexy as the Happy Mondays could ever be, that is. Spreading further afield, crossover artists Primal Scream, The Prodigy, LCD Soundsystem and The Chemical Brothers all benefit from ‘Blue Monday”s visionary fusion as its tendrils continue to spider across the pop landscape”.

There have been remixes of the song. Some interesting adaptations. However, the 1983 I feel remains the most powerful and pure. As Wikipedia state: “its total sales stand at 1.16 million in the United Kingdom alone, and "Blue Monday" came 69th in the all-time UK best-selling singles chart published in November 2012. As of March 2023 total consumed units across all formats have reached 2 million units sold in United Kingdom”. The wonderful Bernard Sumner is seventy on 4th January. To commemorate and celebrate that fact, I wanted to shine a new light on a titanic track that revolutionised music. Blue Monday remains this work of genius…

NEARLY forty-three years later.

FEATURE: Needle Drops and Scores to Settle: Scene Six: Magnet & Steel: Boogie Nights (1997)

FEATURE:

 

 

Needle Drops and Scores to Settle

  

Scene Six: Magnet & Steel: Boogie Nights (1997)

__________

I am going back to the 1990s again…

N THIS PHOTO: Director Paul Thomas Anderson on the set of Boogie Nights with one of its stars, Heather Graham/PHOTO CREDIT: Cinephilia Beyond

and diving into a classic film soundtrack. Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the most acclaimed and successful directors ever. 1997’s Boogie Nights is one of his most loved films. The soundtrack is exceptional. There was a second instalment of the soundtrack that came out in 1998, though I am including the 1997 first edition in this feature. In terms of the all-time best soundtracks, Boogie Nights is often voted among the best. There are some articles that I will not get opportunity to bring in, including this from The New York Times, where they spotlight eleven classic Paul Thomas Anderson needle drops. They put KC and the Sunshine Band’s Boogie Shoes at number one. In 2019, The New Yorker spent some time with an iconic scene from Boogie Nights where music plays a big part. I would also urge you to read this, as the feature goes song-by-song and argues why Boogie Nights has the best soundtrack ever. In this short feature, Albumism included Boogie Nights’ soundtrack in their top one-hundred. One of their contributors wrote why it means a lot to them:

“I first heard the soundtrack in the car when I was being driven to a piano lesson. Too young to see the movie, or even to be told what it was about, I fell in love with the sound of Boogie Nights. It’s full of ‘70s hits from almost every year of the decade including Chakachas’ “Jungle Fever” from 1970, “Machine Gun” by The Commodores from 1974, Marvin Gaye’s “Got To Give It Up - Pt. 1” from 1977. The music follows the story into the ‘80s as the characters fall from grace, landing on Night Ranger’s “Sister Christian” from 1983.

Boogie Nights captures the culture of disco—the dancing, the clothes, the cars, the parties, the cocaine—and the soundtrack echoes these images. The opening long shot is synched to The Emotions’ “Best of My Love” (from 1977) as we enter and twist around a nightclub meeting the characters. Eric Burdon & War’s “Spill the Wine” (1970) plays endlessly as the camera leads us through a pool party in the Hollywood Hills.

Paul Thomas Anderson is a unique filmmaker and has a specific touch of marrying story and sound. The soundtrack is bright and bouncy, but the story of Boogie Nights is dark and commands your attention. As a snapshot of the 1970s, the soundtrack is a perfect match”.

For a Cinema Sounds edition in 2009, Consequence explored the brilliance of the Boogie Nights soundtrack. I know there was a second volume, though I think that the first release has the best music on it. However, it shows how spoilt for choice people were when it came to this film. Paul Thomas Anderson and his use of music in his films is up there with the best directors. Many argue what his greatest soundtrack is. To me (and so many others) it is Boogie Nights:

“The film’s score is the most sincere in the first half. Despite all of the sleaze, Anderson shows us that the adult film industry truly did thrive in the ’70s, poised to be considered an art form by some, and he does this by using joyful tracks of the era to express… well, joy, something that is virtually absent from the latter half of the film. After a mournful pipe organ circus intro “The Big Top (Theme From Boogie Nights)” from the criminally underrated baroque pop mastermind Michael Penn over a black screen (a foreshadowing of things to come), the film assaults us with an opening shot of a neon pink movie theatre (cheekily displaying the title of the film) set to The Emotions’ “Best Of My Love”. How could that wall of horns and plucky disco guitar not make you feel good? In one swooping long shot (another nod to Scorsese), Anderson takes us across the street through Maurice “T.T.” Rodriguez’s (Luis Guzman) nightclub, introducing us to his desperately colorful cast of characters before the storm hits, including the surrogate erotica nuclear family of filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), and starlets Amber Waves and Roller Girl (Julianne Moore and Heather Graham).

Here we see the audiovisual dynamic at its most straightforward.  When the characters are happy, the songs are happy (think disco jewels like The Commodores’ “Machine Gun”, and K.C. And The Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes”), cycling us through montages of the aforementioned characters enjoying drugs, sex, and indulgent consumerism.  At the film’s center is well endowed busboy Eddie Adams turned porn megastar Dirk Diggler (Mark Wahlberg), as we follow his ascent to fame.

On the flip side, when the characters are down, the songs are down — nothing’s more depressing than watching hangdog Assistant Stag Film Director Little Bill (William H. Macy at his loneliest) come home to see his porn star wife unabashedly banging a young stud.  And nothing accentuates this depression like Chico Hamilton’s haunting cello piece, “The Sage”.

You can find pretty much everything on both volumes of the soundtrack with the exception of “The Sage”, “99 Luft Balloons”, and a couple of other background gems from earlier in the film (Andrew Gold’s “Lonely Boy” is sorely missed), but you can always take a lesson from Rahad Jackson and add these missing tunes to your playlist for your own “Awesome Mixtape”.

I am ending with this feature from LA Weekly from 2017. They revisit the soundtrack twenty years after its release and select its best moments. I could not find any interviews with Paul Thomas Anderson about the Boogie Nights soundtrack, though I hope that these features have given you some insight and background to this revered and phenomenal collection of music. Some truly outstanding moments where the music and action blends perfectly:

“To speak of Boogie Nights, a saga based around the porn industry of the San Fernando Valley in the late '70s and early '80s, without speaking of the music accompanying the story is like talking about Star Wars with no mention of the droids. Released in October of 1997, it was the perfect throwback to help shake off all the moody brooding that defined a decade of grunge and gloom. Its soundtrack was filled with perfect, era-appropriate songs often used in highly unconventional contexts — most memorably, the scene in which Dirk (played by Mark Wahlberg, then still mostly famous as a rapper and underwear model) finds himself in the mansion of a gun-happy coke dealer that his buddy (played by a young Thomas Jane) wants to scam. The tense, crazy situation, made even more nervous by a little kid throwing firecrackers, takes place as Night Ranger's power ballad “Sister Christian” blasts out of the dealer's expensive hi-fi.

“We said

“What killed us was that ‘Sister Christian’ is about this young girl — [drummer/singer Kelly Keagy's] little sister, actually — coming of age,” says Night Ranger bassist/vocalist Jack Blades, when asked by L.A. Weekly about the inclusion of the band’s hit power ballad in the movie’s frenetic climax. “And the juxtaposition of how Anderson took this song into the scene depicting Dirk Diggler bottoming out and at the lowest point in his life was just brilliant. His attention to detail in the placement of all those songs he used for the movie captured exactly what was going down at the time.”

By putting the song in a darker context, he helped a lot of people finally admit their love for it without pretense. In fact, the same could be said about many of the songs that were featured on the Boogie Nights soundtrack (though others were beloved evergreens by the likes of Marvin Gaye, War and The Beach Boys).

Here are five particular highlights from the soundtrack to Boogie Nights that epitomize the distinct relationship between sound and celluloid P.T. Anderson established with a film that's still as revered today as it was 20 years ago.

“Best of My Love” by The Emotions

“I think if you’re dealing with this many characters, I think you just gotta fuckin’ jump in and get it out of the way. I’m gonna introduce you to all of these people in two minutes,” explains Paul Thomas Anderson of the opening scene to Boogie Nights in his commentary on the two-disc “Platinum Series” edition DVD. “I think part of the reason why I did this is because my first movie, Sydney [later renamed Hard Eight], was very, very slow. Very deliberate pacing. And I wanted to go 180 degrees and start this one off loud and immediately. It was like this mash of sound, like the Phil Spector ‘Wall of Sound’ [laughs] with dialogue and people screaming and it’s not important to hear every single word.” After a brief original orchestral composition from Anderson's longtime friend and collaborator Michael Penn, the film dives into the Maurice White-penned hit single for The Emotions, which debuted at radio in June of ’77. So in the film, this was literally the newest, hottest tune in the clubs at the time.

“Machine Gun” by The Commodores

Beastie Boys fans already knew the groove to “Hey Ladies” was hoisted from this instrumental Commodores funk classic. But it was an extra kick for Paul's Boutique fans to hear the original placed in its proper era as accompaniment to a split-screen montage chronicling Dirk’s rise to fame that Anderson said was inspired by something he saw in a John Holmes film. The disco dance sequence, timed perfectly to the funky instrumental, made the joy shared between Dirk and his BFF and co-star Reed Rothchild (a never-better or more quotable John C. Reilly) exponentially more gleeful.

“The Touch” by Stan Bush

If you were in elementary and middle school in the mid-'80s, you probably watched the scene in which Dirk Diggler cuts a vanity single in the studio and thought, “Where have I heard that tune before?” Then the next time you played your beloved VHS copy of the 1986 animated feature Transformers: The Movie, it hit you like a ton of Energon cubes — that's where it's from! Mark Wahlberg has not done much press around the 20th anniversary of his breakout role, but when he posted video of himself singing “The Touch” with Stan Bush at this year’s Hasbro Convention, it was the best homage to Dirk he could have paid.

“Sister Christian” by Night Ranger

“He was a big fan of Night Ranger and the song,” Jack Blades explains about how his band’s biggest hit, written and sung by the band's drummer, Kelly Keagy, wound up in Boogie Nights. “And he told us he wanted to put it in one of the film’s pivotal moments. And he seemed to us like a hip, edgy dude who was making a cool film. So we said, ‘Just put it in a good spot.’ And he was like, ‘Oh, don’t worry about that!’ So we didn’t know where it was going to be used when me and Kelly and my wife went to see the premiere. And when that scene went down, we’re sitting there watching it and all three of us, sweat broke out on our foreheads, and me and Kelly look at each other like, ‘We’ve been to this guy’s house in 1983!’” He laughs. “This was way too close for comfort. I remember how much we partied in the Hollywood Hills when Night Ranger first came out and all the insanity that was going on. Everywhere we went, we were hanging out with porn stars at the Rainbow or at shows. We’d cut our records in L.A. and bring 20 or 30 people from the Rainbow down to the studio afterwards and we’d be up all night. He captured that moment in time unbelievably perfect.”

“Livin’ Thing” by Electric Light Orchestra

“I always planned to end the movie with ‘Livin’ Thing,’” revealed Anderson in the DVD commentary for Boogie Nights. “Always.” In the end, he used The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds hosanna “God Only Knows” to signify better days ahead for the strangely endearing, dysfunctional family Jack Horner and Amber Waves made out of their group of misfit adult film performers. But once ELO's strings kicked as the credits rolled, Boogie Nights left you with the same sense of elation you experienced at the film's beginning, when The Emotions burst through the theater speakers and that neon purple lighting exclaiming the title of the movie hit the screen. They are perfect bookends of positivity for the frenetic tunnel of love Anderson takes you through for the two-and-a-half hours in between”.

If you have not heard the Boogie Nights soundtrack then I would urge you to listen to it. Few soundtracks since 1997 have been able to match Boogie Nights. I have not seen the film for a while, so I do need to revisit it. This soundtrack remains one of the best in all of cinema…

NEARLY thirty years later.

FEATURE: The Great American Songbook: Cher

FEATURE:

 

 

The Great American Songbook

PHOTO CREDIT: Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock

Cher

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THE brilliant Cher…

turns eighty later this year. A hugely successful and influential artist, she is going to be honoured at this year’s GRAMMYS next month NME are among those that have written about it. I am a big fan of Cher and have loved her music since I was a child. It is great that she is being given this incredible accolade. This is why I wanted to highlight her for this The Great American Songbook:

“Paul Simon, Cher and Chaka Khan are among the artists set to receive a Lifetime Achievement award at this year’s Grammys.

The Recording Academy have announced that Latin rock guitar legend Carlos Santana will also pick up the honour, while Whitney Houston and Afrobeat legend Fela Kuti will be posthumously recognised.

Lyricist Bernie Taupin, record executive Sylvia Rhone and Latin jazz musician Eddie Palmieri – who passed away in August – will also be honoured with the Trustees Award, while classical composer John Chowning will receive the Technical Grammy Award.

The awards will be presented at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles on January 31, the night before the main ceremony at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 1.

The Lifetime Achievement award is presented to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made “creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the field of recording”. It was first awarded to Bing Crosby in 1963, while recent recipients have included The Clash, Prince, N.W.A., Donna Summer and Nirvana”.

I am going to end this feature with a twenty-song mix of the essential Cher. One or two tracks with Sonny Bono, but mostly her solo stuff. Before I get to that, I want to bring in detailed biography from AllMusic about the iconic Cher. Someone who inspired a score of artists (from  Beyoncé, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Adele to Saweetie), her most recent (non-Christmas) album was 2018’s Dancing Queen. I hope that we get more material from this incredible artist:

“Possessor of an instantly recognizable voice that has powered numerous hits, both as half of Sonny & Cher and as a solo artist seemingly able to transcend any genre, Cher is a musical legend and a pop culture icon. After the smash success of Sonny & Cher's folk/rock and pop recordings of the '60s and the duo's hit TV show, she scored hits on her own, such as "Half Breed" and "Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves" in the '70s before switching into disco mode for "Take Me Home." In the '80s, she became an esteemed actress, with lead roles in the highly acclaimed films Mask and Moonstruck (the latter earned her an Oscar). She followed that by returning to the pop charts in the late '80s with "If I Could Turn Back Time" and, ten years later, becoming a Madonna-like dance-pop diva with the megahit "Believe." The new millennium saw her upheld this latest reinvention with hit releases like 2018's Dancing Queen (a set of ABBA covers) and 2023's Christmas, while also being honored as a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2024.

Cherilyn Sarkisian was born in California in 1946; she was 17 when she first met Salvatore "Sonny" Bono, a songwriter and protégé of producer Phil Spector. Sonny brought her to Spector, who used her as a backup singer and produced one single by her, a novelty Beatles tribute record called "Ringo I Love You" issued under the name Bonnie Jo Mason. It disappeared without a trace, but the couple were undaunted -- they emerged as a duo, initially called Caesar & Cleo, and cut "The Letter," "Do You Wanna Dance," and "Love Is Strange."

Caesar & Cleo didn't trouble the chart compilers with any degree of success, but late in 1964, Cher (then known as Cherilyn) was signed to Liberty Records' Imperial imprint, and Sonny came along as producer. A Spector-ish version of "Dream Baby" managed to get airplay in Los Angeles, becoming a local hit, and they suspected they were onto something. That same month, Sonny & Cher, as they were now known, signed to Reprise Records and released their first single, "Baby Don't Go." The song became a major local hit in Los Angeles, after which the duo jumped from Reprise to the Atco label, a division of Atlantic Records. In April 1965 their first single, "Just You" was released and rose to number 20 on the charts. The duo was on its way, and Imperial Records wanted Cher back for a second single. The couple had seen the Byrds pioneer commercial folk-rock with Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man" and had witnessed them performing another Dylan number, "All I Really Want to Do" at a club in Los Angeles. The group intended to issue their own recording of "All I Really Want to Do," but Cher, with Sonny producing, beat them to the punch with her own recording of the song.

She pursued a dual career for the next two years, cutting solo recordings under Sonny's guidance that regularly charted, and duets with her husband for Atco. A month after "All I Really Want to Do," they released "I Got You Babe," which was one of the biggest-selling and most beloved pop/rock hits of the mid-'60s, and the couple's signature tune across two eras of success. Cher's solo career ended up slightly overshadowed by her work with Sonny & Cher, but at the time she was fully competitive on her own terms -- her first LP reached the Billboard Top 20 and was on the albums charts for six months. "Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)" was another hit, a million-seller that made number three in America and England, and she made the Top Ten once more with her 1967 single "You Better Sit Down Kids." The latter song, written by Sonny (and which was also a hit for Glen Campbell), dealt with divorce, an unusual subject for a '60s pop record, and was one of a series of releases on which Cher's music broached difficult areas -- others were "I Feel Something's in the Air," which dealt with unwanted pregnancy, and "Mama (When My Dollies Have Babies)."

Cher's solo career at Imperial ended when her contract lapsed in 1967, and she moved to Atlantic. Ironically, it was this move that contributed to the unhappy reversal of the couple's fortunes at the end of the decade. By the end of the '60s, Sonny & Cher were no longer selling records. A series of commercial missteps, coupled with a change in public taste, had sharply curtailed their sales, and a pair of movies (Good Times, Chastity) had lost millions. Additionally, they were no longer recording for Atlantic -- though they were still under contract -- owing to the label's decision to take Cher's solo recordings out of Sonny's hands and assign a new producer to her.

Coupled with the presentation of a bill from the Internal Revenue Service for $200,000 in back taxes, these events left the couple in dire financial straits at the end of the '60s. They were forced to play club dates opening for artists like Pat Boone, and it was there that their second career, and a second career for Cher, took shape. A new contract with Decca Records in 1971, coupled with a chance on a summer replacement gig on the CBS television network, brought them another chance.

The tryout on television was indeed a success, as the couple proved to be as funny as they were musically diverse. It took a little longer to find a new formula for Cher's music -- her initial single on Decca's Kapp label, "Classified 1A," was a failure; a serious song dealing with a girl's feelings for a boyfriend killed in Vietnam, it was topical in a way inconducive to pop chart success. Producer Snuff Garrett was recruited to work with her, and he found a series of songs that were perfect for Cher's maturing talent.

"Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves," a conscious attempt to emulate Springfield's "Son of a Preacher Man" (which also recalled Cher's own "Bang Bang") was released late in 1971 and became a number one hit and a million-seller. The song's subject matter, unusual tempo changes, and an incredibly memorable chorus-hook became a vehicle for a transcendent performance by the singer, marking Cher's maturation as an artist. A follow-up album, featuring her covers of contemporary hits such as "Fire and Rain," also sold well, and her next single, "The Way of Love," a revival of a mid-'60s Kathy Kirby hit, solidified the image of a new, more confident and powerful Cher. The debut of the couple's regular network variety series on CBS in January 1972 brought them back to the center of American and international popular culture in a more mature, wittier guise, and one that concentrated much more on Cher as a personality.

In 1974, it was revealed that the couple's marriage was coming to an end. Ironically, Cher came out of this split more secure than her husband, despite his having guided her career for a decade and having all of the real training in the entertainment business. She embarked on an acting career, even as she continued to make headlines for her romantic exploits, including two marriages to Gregg Allman. She found her footing more easily as an actress, as first revealed in Mike Nichols' Silkwood (1983) and then in Peter Bogdanovich's Mask (1985) and George Miller's The Witches of Eastwick (1987). She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Norman Jewison's 1987 romantic comedy Moonstruck.

In 1987, Cher also hit the Billboard 200 for the first time since the '70s with the platinum-selling Cher, which arrived on Geffen in November 1987. A combination of power balladry, rock-leaning anthems, and a surprise club hit in "Skin Deep," it peaked at number 32 with help from her Top Ten-charting cover of Michael Bolton's "I Found Someone." She had an even bigger hit LP with the follow-up, 1989's Heart of Stone, which landed in the Top Ten in the U.S. (number ten), U.K. (number seven), New Zealand (seven), and Australia, where it went to number one. Heart of Stone produced three U.S. Top Ten singles in all: "If I Could Turn Back Time," "Just Like Jesse James," and the Peter Cetera duet "After All." Her starring role in the 1990 comedy-drama Mermaids was accompanied by a soundtrack album that featured her Hot 100 Top 40 cover of "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)." Her version topped the singles chart in the U.K. and Ireland. Over the next five years, Cher charted outside the Top 40 with two more studio albums, 1991's Love Hurts and 1995's It's a Man's World, while appearing on the big screen as herself in Robert Altman 's The Player (1992) and Prêt-à-Porter (1994). A lead role in director Paul Mazursky's Faithful followed in 1996, the year she appeared in the Emmy-nominated TV drama If These Walls Could Talk, which took on the topic of abortion.

In 1998, Cher officially redefined herself as a club diva with the international chart-topping smash "Believe." The accompanying album, also called Believe, went to number four on the Billboard 200 and achieved gold, platinum, or multi-platinum status in dozens of countries around the world. The song also earned Cher her first Grammy Award, in the category of Best Dance Recording. It was additionally nominated for Record of the Year, and the album was nominated for Best Pop Vocal Album. She followed that huge success with the darker, independently released Not.Com.mercial (2000), which was recorded with members of David Letterman's CBS Orchestra. It was available exclusively on her website. She soon re-entered the Top Ten of the Billboard 200 with 2001's Living Proof, which included two dance number ones, "Song for the Lonely" and "A Different Kind of Love Song." After appearing as herself on a pair of episodes of TV's Will & Grace, she duetted with Rod Stewart on "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" from his As Time Goes By: The Great American Songbook, Vol. 2 (2003). 2003 also saw the release of the U.S. Top Five-charting compilation The Very Best of Cher, which also charted well worldwide. By 2005, she had completed the three-year, high-grossing Farewell Tour ahead of a lucrative Las Vegas residency.

Cher made her return to the studio with two appearances on the soundtrack to the 2010 film Burlesque, in which she co-starred with Christina Aguilera (who took the lead on the rest of the album). One of the Cher songs, the Diane Warren-penned "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me," won the Golden Globe for Best Original Song. Her next solo album, Closer to the Truth, appeared on Warner Bros. in 2013 and, split between dance tracks and adult contemporary entries, became her highest-charting solo outing yet in the U.S., where it reached the Top Three. Highlighted by the dance chart-topping "Woman's World," it did nearly as well in Canada and the U.K., where it went to number four. Cher returned to the silver screen in a musical capacity in the mid-2018 sequel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, playing Ruby, mother to Meryl Streep's Donna, in flashbacks. She appeared on two of the ABBA covers that comprised the movie musical's soundtrack, which went to number three on the Billboard 200 and topped several of the international charts. She followed its lead on September 2018's Dancing Queen, a full set of ABBA covers by Cher -- co-produced by the band's Benny Andersson -- that matched the chart success of the soundtrack. Still going strong and riding the rhythms of the dancefloor, she returned in October 2023 with the original song "DJ Play a Christmas Song," the lead single from her first Christmas album. Simply titled Christmas, it was released before the end of the month. Cher was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in early 2024 and later that year, she released a greatest-hits package titled FOREVER”.

With a GRAMMY honour about to come away and her eightieth birthday in May, this innovator and queen is still so relevant and adored. Her songbook is among the best in music. Spanning seven decades, there are so many standout tracks. I have assembled twenty songs that I feel do justice to Cher’s amazing talent. Whilst the GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award might seem like something given to retired artist or a sign that you are honouring what came before, it is not that at all. It is recognition of artist who are still important and relevant today. In the case of Cher, this award recognises…

ALL she has given to the music world.

FEATURE: No Man’s Land: Thinking About a Vital Documentary on Misogyny, Sexual Violence and Reform

FEATURE:

 

 

No Man’s Land

PHOTO CREDIT: Mikhail Nilov/Pexels

 

Thinking About a Vital Documentary on Misogyny, Sexual Violence and Reform

__________

I have been thinking…

about some of my favourite books this year and the ones that made the biggest impression. Laura Bates’s The New Age of Sexism: AI Revolution & Misogyny and Jess Davies’s No One Wants to See Your D*ck: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World are two that made a huge impression on me. Tackling masculinity, misogyny and sexual abuse and exploitation in the digital world and how there is new threat to women and girls’ safety online, they are shocking reads. These powerful and thought-provoking books that are so timely and important. Talking about the rise of toxic masculinity and influencers like Andrew Tate, it is a terrifying and horrible time. Violence against women and girls is at an alarming level, and you do hope that this year is one where there is real change. What is evident is that misogyny, sexism, sexual abuse and violence is rising. Women online feeling more unsafe and exposed as they have ever been. It is an epidemic and an issue that is leading to the government attempting to tackle this at school level. School-age boys being sent on courses as part of their efforts to tackle misogyny:

“Teachers will be given training to spot and tackle misogyny in the classroom, while high-risk pupils could be sent on behavioural courses as part of the government's long-awaited strategy to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) in the next decade.

The plans for schools in England - which focus on preventing the radicalisation of young men - have been unveiled as part of a wider strategy which had been delayed three times.

Teachers will get specialist training around issues such as consent and the dangers of sharing intimate images.

Responding to the announcement, the domestic abuse commissioner for England and Wales, Dame Nicole Jacobs, said the commitments did "not go far enough".

She said while the strategy recognised the scale of the challenge, the level of investment "falls seriously short".

The £20m package will also see teachers get training around how to identify positive role models, and how to challenge unhealthy myths about women and relationships.

It will include a new helpline for teenagers to get support for concerns about abuse in their own relationships.

The government hopes that by tackling the early roots of misogyny, it will prevent young men from becoming violent abusers.

Under the new plans, schools will send high-risk students to get extra care and support, including behavioural courses to tackle their prejudice against women and girls”.

It is a long-overdue measure that you hope will lead to some sense of progress when it comes to misogyny and violence against women and girls. It is an issue that we need to address among boys rather than teens and adults, as young boys are online and exposed to influencers, sites and videos that can lead to sexual violence, threats and misogyny. The issue around online porn and boys being exposed to this. Feeling that is what sex is, this then shapes how they think about girls and how they should be treated. I don’t think there will be instant changes. It will take a long time before things really improve, as there is such a wide-ranging and large-scale problem. I have mentioned a couple of brilliant authors who are also campaigners. Jess Davies is on Instagram, and her content is always so important and illuminating. Highlighting gender inequality, digital abuse and discrimination against women and girls, I can see another book arriving from her. Maybe a documentary. This is something that I want to explore more in a minute. Laura Bates is also on Instagram. She is this feminist activist and prolific author. There are many other brilliant women raising awareness and discussing the growing issue of online abuse and violence. Sexploitation, sexual images being sent to girls. Even if you feel there will be progress in years to come, the truth is that, in the short-term at least, the reality for girls and women is bleak. Both online and on the streets (and in homes), it is hugely distrusting and upsetting. I am a member of The Trouble Club, and they have hosted brilliant women who have talked about issues around misogyny, online abuse and many of the most pressing issues facing girls and women. Led by CEO and owner Elle Newton, being a member and going to these events has inspired me to become more activated and engaged with some truly shocking statics and stories.

There were some documentaries from last year that revolved around the rise in male violence against women and girls and the tidal wave of sexually explicit and abusive photos and videos that women are girls are inundated with. Threats of violence and rape. It has made me think about a documentary and something that could come this year. There might already be something in the works at the moment. Bringing together women like Jess Davies and Laura Bates. Other campaigners and activists who could contribute to a one-hour/ninety-minute documentary for the BBC. I have been thinking about Zara McDermott and her documentary work. I have written about her before for a similar piece. I know there are a lot of great female documentary makers, but McDermott is one of the prominent. Also, her5 most recent documentaries, To Catch a Stalker, finds her meeting women who have been stalked in person and subjected to online stalking. As reviews have highlighted McDermott’s empathy and presenting, but maybe there are still questions unanswered. Powerful viewing at least. I do think that the fact McDermott has recently presented documentaries about rape culture and revenge porn make her more than qualified and experienced enough to tackle a documentary that would highlight the rising tide of toxic masculinity, online abuse and whether the government making schoolboys take courses to help tackle misogyny. McDermott has shared her experiences of revenge porn, and revealing her own stories. She is an amazing documentary maker and presenter, and I think that her best work lies ahead. Maybe not for BBC Three, I do think there is a demand for a documentary that spoke to women like McDermott, Laura Bates and Jess Davies. I also heard Caitlin Moran speak for The Trouble Club last year about toxic masculinity and misogyny and her hopes for the next wave of feminism.

Of course, it will take more than a documentary to truly cover such a wide-ranging, complex and epidemic issue that we have. However, whilst many documentaries fall down for some reason or the other, I do think that a new one, if judged and balanced right, could make a big impact. Zara McDermott is a compassionate and intrepid interviewer, and I have been thinking about her 2021 documentary. How relevant it is now. A documentary that also talks to those who follow online influencers like Andrew Tate and why that is. There is also a rise in domestic abuse, so that is also something that needs to be covered. Maybe ending with an optimistic note. In terms of activism and how the young generation are doing so much to highlight the issues through social media; share their stories and call for change. Artists who are covering subjects like misogyny and sexual violence through their songs. Campaigners and books that are opening people’s eyes to the true scale of the issues affecting women and girls, not just in the U.K., but around the world. I do feel this year will see some depressing and appalling statics released around online abuse, revenge porn, misogyny and violence against women and girls. The ongoing fourth wave of feminism (that started in 2012) is about digital activism, tackling sexual harassment, rape culture, body shaming, and using social media (#MeToo, #TimesUp) to demand justice and challenge patriarchal norms with an emphasis on intersectionality, inclusivity for all women (including trans women), and confronting online misogyny. It has definitely helped make a difference, though you feel more allyship is needed. Men getting more involved. Until that happens, it is women on their own fighting for their own protection and safety. Documentaries can go a long way to raising this question and providing answers and possible ways forward. I think that this sort of documentary is needed…

MORE than anything else.

FEATURE: From the West End to the World: What Next for Lily Allen?

FEATURE:

 

 

From the West End to the World

PHOTO CREDIT: Jon Gorrigan for The Observer

 

What Next for Lily Allen?

__________

WHEN looking to last year…

and the biggest and most important moments, there are plenty of choices. I think that the most impactful was when Lily Allen released her album, West End Girl. It was available for streaming in October. It will be released physically on 30th January. Before looking to see what this year might hold in store for Lily Allen, I wanted to highlight a recent interview with The Observer. She was asked about West End Girl and its aftermath. An album that appeared in most of the best of 2025 lists (even topping a few), it is a frank brutal, funny and hugely inventive album from one of our best artists:

“The response to Allen’s record appears to have been almost entirely and rabidly positive, which in itself feels somehow remarkable. Though she is cautious about naming Harbour or pointing to which aspects of her lyrics relate directly to him (for reasons, I presume, of dignity, legalities and money), typically when women in the public eye speak out about famous men, crisis lawyers and their various automated bots kick in to silence her. When I brought this up, Allen sighed. “I can see when comments are being left and it’s clearly bots and you know someone or something is behind that,” she told me. “But again, it’s not really something I have any control over. People will believe what they want to believe, there’s no amount of protest that you can do that will change their minds. And it’s not really my business, you know?”

When Allen started to become successful, people would reassure her that however bad that day’s story was, it would be forgotten by tomorrow. A few years into her career, though, that ceased to be true. “It stays there and it lives on forever,” she told me. “And it’s difficult to reconcile with that, but also, it’s something new that we’re dealing with as human beings.” She added loftily, “I think that it leads to self-censorship, and ultimately allows fascism to happen.” She stubbed out a cigarette and began to pull delicately on a matcha vape. “We’re all massive walking contradictions, right? That’s what makes us human beings. You can think one thing one day, and then you grow, and you think something else – that’s life. I’m a different person than I was 20 years ago because I’ve lived 20 years of my life and I’ve had two children and two marriages and I’ve learned a lot.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Jon Gorrigan 

This is what she has learned: that child-rearing is hard; harder, it seems, than when she was growing up. She’s learned to look after herself, by returning in therapy to childhood events during which she felt unsafe. She’s learned to save money, she’s learned to ask for help. She’s learned, she told me, there are no “baddies and goodies in a marriage but, having done things that were not very nice in my first marriage, I have a better idea now of the pain I may have inflicted. I’ve learned how horrible it is to be on the receiving end of that.” She’s learned a lot about marriage. “I’d like to say I’d never do it again, but I do like it. Everything but the institution of it, you know? I like being chosen. I like jewellery. I like getting dressed up. I like celebrating. I don’t like talking about money. I like my independence. But I don’t like divorce.”

What has she learned about divorce? “It’s just sort of devastating, really. It keeps you up at night and costs a huge amount of money and just goes on and on and on. And I hate feeling like I can’t trust anyone. But there’s something about dealing with an ex-partner and lawyers that creates an environment of feeling like you can’t trust anybody or anything.”

What has she learned about men?

“I think that they’re having a tricky time at the moment. But – that’s not really my problem. Good luck to them. They can sort themselves out from now on.”

Allen’s career has been littered with apologies: for accusations of racism (after a 2013 music video featured Black women dancing in their underwear while she remained clothed) and more recently for “being mean” to Katy Perry after her Blue Origin flight to space. In 2016, she apologised, in tears, on behalf of her country, to an unaccompanied child migrant living in a makeshift camp in Calais, an apology that brought new waves of abuse. In the past, Allen has been a vocal Labour supporter, though recently she decided she didn’t want to talk about politics any more. “I’m just very disappointed in everything,” she told me. “But I’m also not as active, vocally. Not because I don’t care. I really do. But because of the voice or the character that has been assigned to me.”

How would she describe that character?

“Like an idiot that speaks out of turn and doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

As her career unfolded, Allen began to feel as though when she spoke up, her words were twisted. “And I think it does more damage to the causes that I believe in than help them.” Her focus has turned to her local community, rather than the wider world. Last year she became an ambassador for the addiction charity Forward Trust. Elsewhere, women in their 40s are enjoying her activism around being an extremely hot single mother in see-through dresses, embracing an elegantly curated slagginess. Alongside the album promo, she’s been on a successful tour of her own perimenopausal sexuality.

She has been asked to write another book and there are plans underway to adapt her record for film, or stage, or both – her mother, Owen, is advising on meetings, which adds to Allen’s excitement and relief. “I don’t know if I want anything other than to just enjoy the moment, and not feel scared of losing it. I spent a lot of time in my 20s being so fearful of having to hold on to this thing” – the money, the attention, these parcels of purses arriving at her door – “that it actually stopped me from enjoying what was happening.”

Allen wanted to go to the gym before her evening event, where Valentino would dress her in a custom golden silk gown (styled by Leith Clark, who previously persuaded Allen to dress like a kinky nun for videos promoting the album, and as children’s book character Madeline for Halloween), so as midday approached she offered to give me a lift into town. We hurried across the road to where her new Porsche hummed, very low against the inky tarmac. Inside, Jade Thirlwall’s album played cheerfully, and Allen sighed with pleasure as she sunk into the driver’s seat. “Now I’m able to understand that nothing is permanent and that these things happen in waves. They come and go, and that’s fine,” she said. “So I’m just very committed to enjoying what’s happening right now, not spreading myself too thin. And I’ll do that until I can’t.” This time round, fame has felt different, “even though I’m limited in what I can discuss.”

When I asked her what that felt like for someone so “outspoken”, she thought for a moment, her head resting briefly to the side.

“Actually?” she said. “It’s kind of a blessing”.

I do think that Lily Allen will be picking up awards this year. West End Girl should be shortlisted for the Mercury prize. Even through Lily Allen’s No Shame made the shortlist in 2018 – but lost out to Visions of a Life -, you feel West End Girl is going to be on this year’s list, and it will be a favourite. Allen has said she would be open to the album being adapted into a play. West End Girl playing in London’s West End, would Allen play the starring role? She is a fine actor, though maybe they would cast someone else to play Allen. The play might look inside the writing of the album and the traumatic events that inspired its songs; I do feel like this will be something that will come to life – and the stage – later in the year. Such is the power of this album, I do think that it would be a magnificent, funny and memorable play. Maybe with aspects of a musical, this could be a project that will occupy Allen. In interviews around West End Girl, Allen did sort of seem to suggest she might be looking for a quieter year or is not looking to follow this album. However, given the huge reaction to it and the demand, I feel like she will be thinking of songs. One of the most pleasing things of this year is that Allen will tour the album. As Glastonbury is in a fallow year, she will not get the chance to headline this year. However, she is on tour from March and starts out in the U.K. All the dates are sold out. She will be back in the U.K. from May and is busy until later in the summer. Having not toured for a while, it will be quite intimidating. I am curious what the set will consist of. In terms of the theatrics and setlist. There will be so much love for her. I do think that we might get a documentary around the tour. Capturing Lily Allen backstage and preparing for these dates. What life is like on the road and how the audience react.

Allen will be busy for most of the year. At least until August. However, I do think there will be acting demands. Film and T.V. roles. An amazing actor, you can see film producers coming her way with offers. It may be impossible to find the time to do this. However, when the tour wraps up in the summer, Allen might want to take on a project like this. I am writing this head of the BRITs announcing its nominees. I would expect West End Girl to be included in the British album category. I also think that there will be collaborations happening. Lily Allen lending her voice and appearing with another artist. However, she is going to be consumed by tour preparation. What I also predict is that the vinyl of West End Girl will be among the best-selling of this year. It is definitely going to sell huge amounts! In personal terms, you can see Allen looking ahead. Maybe a new relationship. However, after such a turbulent time in the past year or two, she may want some independence and space for a while. It is great that Lily Allen and West End Girl has received such love! Announcing an album and it being released days later took people by surprise. The reception was overwhelmingly positive, and West End Girl was rightly ranked alongside the best of 2025. Now, as we are in a new year, we will find Allen’s brilliant album played in the U.S. I would expect some chat show appearances (she was in the U.S. recently promoting the album) and maybe chance to do some other stuff whilst she is there. Awards will come and I do think the live shows will be extraordinary. Perhaps some festival headline slots if she can sot it in between tour dates. On 3rd July, her debut single, Smile, turns twenty. The album it is from, Alright, Still, is twenty on 13th July. I am sure Allen will look back fondly at that time, but it is clear she has come a long way. Enjoying some ups and downs, last year was a huge one for her. That being said, I do think that this one is going to be the…

BIGGEST year of her career.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: 1996: Rest, Rebuild…and the Start of a New Chapter

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1995/PHOTO CREDIT: Shutterstock

 

1996: Rest, Rebuild…and the Start of a New Chapter

__________

I could not find…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993

a clear photo of Kate Bush from 1996, so I have had to make do with what is out there. Kate Bush’s 1990s is a fascinating chapter. I will explore this more for a future feature. It is one that was marked by a sad loss two years into the decade, when her mother died. A birth two years from the end, when her son, Bertie, was born. 1993’s The Red Shoes is her only album from the decade. One cannot really imagine Bush as a '90s artist. It is common with a lot of legends who started out in the 1960s or 1970s. Maybe not really slotting into the decade. David Bowie as a classic example. Not really producing a truly great album during the 1990s. The Red Shoes is brilliant, though it is considered one of her weaker albums. The short film she wrote, directed and pretty much did everything for, The Line, the Cross and the Curve seemed like a struggle. Frequently getting headaches and not balancing things well, it was a lot to take on at this period in her life. The decade did begin promisingly enough. After releasing The Sensual World in 1989, there was curiosity as to how Bush would adapt or blend into this exciting new decade. Releasing a cover of Elton John’s Rocket Man for a tribute compilation in 1991 – and it was also released as a single; Bush directed the video -, she did see to be pretty active in the first half of the 1990s. In 1994, even when she was exhausted and there was this need for a break, we got her phenomenal cover of George and Ira Gershwin’s The Man I Love for another tribute album. Curious how she provided a song for two albums celebrating songwriting duos. Elton John and Bernie Taupin in 1991 and George and Ira Gershwin in 1994. Clear that Bush wanted to do other projects. The Man I Love showcased this side of her voice that was not really explored more. As I have written before, that is a Hughe shame.

Even so, there was not a huge amount of career activity from 1994 until the end of the decade. She was writing for 2005’s Aerial later in the 1990s. However, 1996 was a year when she started writing for it. I believe that is when the album’s sole single, King of the Mountain, was written. Amazing that it did not appear on an album until nine years later! I am not sure whether Kate Bush wanted to release it as a standalone single or an album was going to come sooner. Perhaps the idea of a single album, I do think that 1996 was an interesting year. Thirty years ago, the music scene had moved on a lot, even since Kate Bush’s last album. Beck’s Odelay and Manic Street Preachers’ Everything Must Go among the biggest albums of that year. Britpop perhaps was past its peak. However, bands like Suede, Blur and Oasis were still active. The latter two would release albums a year later. Both were very different. This peak of Britpop had past and you could feel a transition. Maybe American influences coming more to the fore. Alternative and Rock a bigger influence than 1960s Pop and what was ruling a year previous. Kate Bush must have been looking out and wondering what was going on. It was a fascinating time. I am curious if she was tempted to release anything that year. After the mixed reception to The Red Shoes and how exhausted she was by 1994 especially, it was too soon to come back and do anything. Instead, there was some curious movements from her. As I say, the early seeds of Aerial were being planted. I think that Nocturn was written in 1996 or shortly after. Appearing on BBC Radio 2 in July 1996, songwriter Don Black recalled a recent meeting with Kate Bush, where he asked her what her favourite singers were. She said it was the blackbird and thrush. This year was about transformation and rebuild. It is clear that home and nature was influencing her a lot. Natural sounds. One thing that marks out The Red Shoes is it that it feels a little tinny and plastic. In terms of the production, maybe a bit too 1990s – in a bad way.

Aerial was marked by this cinematic, warm and natural sound. Beautifully produced and immersive, Bush was weaving the fabric as early as 1996. No surprise she was being influenced by the garden and its inhabitants. Bush had purchased a house in Theale near Reading. Whereas the press might have perceived this as Bush retreating into reclusiveness and misery, it was her essentially thinking more about future family and getting away from the buzz and busyness of the city. However, this being Kate Bush, she modified it and spent money installing a studio and there was this fantastic garden. Bush was living a home life. It was a crucial year that would be the start of this new chapter. I forgot to mention that 1994 was a year when she was commissioned to write some short instrumental pieces for a new Coca-Cola drink, Fruitopia. As I have mentioned in a feature about 1994, that year and 1995 was a period of isolation and depression. It did seem to be brief. 1996 was less about recovery and hiding. It was Bush thinking about her next moves. 1996 is fascinating because it was one where Bush blended the professional and personal in a really interesting way. King of the Mountain was put down in 1996. Ad Graeme Thomson notes in his book, Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush, Bush was not writing in this pressured and frantic way. There was a more leisurely pace. Writing when an idea struck, it was a more natural and less forced process. In terms of the chronology, King of the Mountain came in 1996. 1997 is when she wrote Sunset and An Architect’s Dream, That was the year when she feel pregnant. So 1996 sort of was this vital year. Making sure home and hearth were set up. Starting work on what would be a new album. There was this brilliant interruption for a bit that added new layers to Aerial’s songs. Bush becoming a mother. Not long after losing her own mother, she would welcome a new son.

Fantastically, Bush spend some time in 1996 sculpting an artist who was very special to her. That was Billie Holiday. Making this sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London, she called it Strange Fruit, and donated it to War Child. Another occasion – and not the last – when Bush would donate work and time to raise funds for this charity. Even though it is not the most splendid thing, it is interesting that Bush did that. I was not aware. On 23rd May, 1996, Common Ground: Voices of Modern Irish Music was released. Kate Bush contributed to that. A third occasion in the ‘90s where Bush recorded a song for an album other than hers. Recording Mná na hÉireann, Dónal Lunny, who collaborated with Kate Bush (most notably on 1985’s Hounds of Love), recalled approaching her to contribute for a very special album:

“1995 found Kate taking a year off from work, something that she had mentioned in an interview in Q magazine in November 1993: “…..there’s a few things I’d like to be doing with my life. I’ve spent a lot of time working and I’d like to catch up. Over the next few years I’d like to take some time off” At that time Kate was approached by Donal Lunny to take part in an album of Irish music and to record a song with Irish lyrics, Mná na hÉireann. In a May 1996 interview with Donal in the Irish music paper Hot Press, the writer Liam Fay comments that; “for Lunny, the agreement of Kate Bush, with whom he had laboured before (most notably on her Hounds Of Love album), to come aboard was crucial to the realisation of the whole undertaking”. In the interview Donal recalls how Kate got involved;

“Kate had, via Bill Whelan, assembled a group of Irish musicians to play on a number of her albums. I know Bill developed a close friendship with her which is more than I’ve had time or opportunity to do. But Kate and I did have a couple of very nice phonecalls since we last worked together. When I rang her up about this, her interest was immediate. That was very gratifying. She had taken a year off from work of any kind and this was bang in the middle of it. She opened herself to several weeks work by taking it on, maybe more than she bargained for. I knew she’d be good and she didn’t give up until it was right. She’s a real joy to work with. She is exceptionally considerate and thoughtful with people. Add to that how much she cares about what she does and the fact that she will not do something unless she feels she can give of her best. Hats off. She’s a wonderful woman.

She was very excited with the idea of singing the Irish in a way that Irish speakers would understand, and of conveying the meaning of the song through the sounds of the words. I helped as much as I could. She had Seán Ó Sé’s recording of Mná na hÉireann as reference. She was as faithful to the pronunciations as she could possibly be. It was with characteristic care and attention that she approached it. She did not stint one bit. Of course you’ll get people saying, `Oh, you’d know she doesn’t talk Irish straight off’. You wouldn’t know it straight off. I would defend her efforts as being totally sincere. No matter how perfect she gets it, she’s not an Irish speaker. This may rankle with some people.”

Kate commented in the December 1995 Kate Bush Club mailout: “It was fun and very challenging …..I will eagerly await comments from all Irish-speaking listeners in particular. I’m sure Ma gave me a helping hand !” (“Ma” refers to Kate’s mother Hannah, who very sadly died in 1992. Hannah Bush (née Daly) came originally from Co. Waterford in Ireland.)”.

Busier and more active than many might think, 1996 was an important years. Three decades ago, when there was so much change happening in music, Kate Bush was enjoying not being at the forefront. From sculpting to appearing on a compilation album to working on material for Aerial, it was a time when she was also in this new home. Not long until she would become a mother and there would be this further huge shift. I am still intrigued what could have come from Kate Bush in 1996 if she put out another album. I guess a scaled-back version of Aerial or a bridge between The Red Shoes and Aerial. I guess she did need time to recuperate and rebuild. 1993, 1994 and 1995 were especially challenging. 1996 was the first year arguably in her entire career when she could take things easier and was not subject to label demands and writing a lot of new music. Whilst many might think Bush was relatively quiet in the 1990s, she was still busy in private. 1996 is a really interesting year of…

HER remarkable life.

FEATURE: Remembering the Great David Bowie: Humming: How the Icon Influenced Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

Remembering the Great David Bowie

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

 

Humming: How the Icon Influenced Kate Bush

__________

ON 10th January…

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 193/PHOTO CREDIT: Mick Rock

it is ten years since we lost David Bowie. The shock of his death really was savage. Nobody could see it coming. A decade since he died, he is still being talked about as one of the most influential artists ever. She even wrote a song, Humming about him: “‘Humming’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was recorded as a demo, presumably in 1973. Also known as ‘Maybe’, the song was not released officially, but part of it was played during a radio interview in 1979 with Kate present. In 2018, the track was finally released as part of the Remastered box set, on the album The Other Side 2. The song has been interpreted to be a tribute to David Bowie, after he abruptly announced the ‘retirement’ of his alter ego Ziggy Stardust at the Hammersmith Odeon on 3 July 1973”. At the age of twelve, Bush witnessed one of the most iconic live performances ever. In a future feature, I might discuss Humming and dissect it for my character-led series. The fascination lasted until Bowie’s death in 2016. It is a shame that the two never worked together. There was interaction and this feeling they were on each other’s radars. In a recent feature, I mentioned how David Bowie was on breakfast T.V. in the 1990s admiring some artwork from Kate Bush that was being auctioned off for War Child. Kate Bush lost two music heroes in 2016. Prince died in April. They worked together more than once. However, you can feel David Bowie’s influence. The musical changes and fearlessness. Listening to his music when she was a child, and no doubt owning albums of his and playing them in a music nook and immersing herself in the notes, you can feel Bowie’s impact through Bush’s earliest albums. Many have compared moments on Lodger (1979) to The Dreaming of 1982.

The way Bowie could adopt these alter egos and do something fresh with each album. Step into different genres and create these strange cinematic worlds. This is something that Bush was definitely affected by. In January 2016, Kate Bush and a number of artists reacted to David Bowie’s death. This is what she wrote: “David Bowie had everything. He was intelligent, imaginative, brave, charismatic, cool, sexy and truly inspirational both visually and musically. He created such staggeringly brilliant work, yes, but so much of it and it was so good. There are great people who make great work but who else has left a mark like his? No one like him. I’m struck by how the whole country has been flung into mourning and shock. Shock, because someone who had already transcended into immortality could actually die. He was ours. Wonderfully eccentric in a way that only an Englishman could be. Whatever journey his beautiful soul is now on, I hope he can somehow feel how much we all miss him”. As Far Out Magazine wrote in 2007, David Bowie fascinated Kate Bush very early in her life. One particular song that impacted her heavily:

“Bush opened up about Bowie’s impact on her in a 2007 interview. Recounting her experience as one of the fervent, screaming fans at Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’ legendary last performance on July 3rd, 1973, she vividly reminisced about that iconic moment while emphasising that her initial encounter with Bowie’s music was truly transformative, on both her personal and professional endeavours

I was sitting in my bath, submerged in bubbles, listening to Radio Luxembourg when I heard David Bowie for the first time,” she said. “‘There’s a starman waiting in the sky’. I thought it was such an interesting song and that he had a really unusual voice. Soon, I was to hear that track everywhere, and Bowie’s music became a part of my life.”

She continued: “Was it Bo-Wie, Bowie or B’wee? Everything about him was intriguing. When I saw him on Top Of The Pops, he was almost insect-like; his clothing was theatrical and bizarre; was that a dress? No one was sure, but my conclusion was that he was quite beautiful. His picture found itself on my bedroom wall next to the sacred space reserved solely for my greatest love — Elton John.”

Adding: “A fantastic songwriter with a voice to match, Bowie had everything. He was just the right amount of weird, obviously intelligent and, of course, very sexy. Ziggy played guitar. And I was there to see his last show as Ziggy Stardust with The Spiders From Mars. The atmosphere was just so charged that at the end when he cried, we all cried with him”.

Another connection that Kate Bush and David Bowie have is that they were mentored by Lindsay Kemp. Bush studied dance and mime under him. Someone who was definitely influential in terms of Bush’s love of dance and movement, Kemp died in 2018. David Bowie also studied under Kemp. So it is clear that Bush and Bowie has this unknown relationship when she was attending dance classes as a teenager. Even though both artists were individual and innovators in their own way, you know that there was a part of Kate Bush that wanted to work with David Bowie. I wonder if that was ever discussed. You could only imagine what they could have come up with. Though Bush did work with a music idol of hers, Elton John, there are others that have not appeared on her albums. Even Peter Gabriel – who has appeared on his albums – has not been on one of hers. Or Paul McCartney. If Kate Bush does release another album, you would hope that there’d be a collaboration or two. I’d love to hear Bush and McCartney work together. Maybe it would have been difficult coming up with a song for David Bowie. However, that admiration that she had for him was life-long. I’d love to explore more the particular David Bowie albums and songs that you can feel in Kate Bush’s work. Shew showed her admiration for his final album, 2016’s Blackstar. Noting it was one of the best things he has ever done, I do feel like Young Americans might be the one for her. That album was released in 1975, when Bush was sixteen. It was an age when music was particularly impressionable. I feel like this year was important in terms of the artists and sounds that would soon impact her own music. Het first professional recording session was in 1975. David Gilmour paying for her to record at AIR Studios. Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here came out in September 1975. It was a massive year.

I sort of look for clues of David Bowie in Kate Bush’s music. I feel like The Saxophone Song (originally called Berlin) from 1978’s The Kick Inside alludes to Bowie. Although it was recorded in 1975, it refers to Berlin and Kate Bush’s heroine being in a Berlin bar. David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy was released between 1977 and 1979. Influencing Bush later in life, I do think a couple of The Kick Inside songs channel David Bowie or nod to him. Maybe the pressure of his legacy and genius would have been too much for Kate Bush. Going back to that 2007 interview with MOJO, when they were celebrating sixty years of David Bowie, she did recall meeting him:

“Working at Abbey Road studios some years later, I popped in to see a friend on another session….I was stopped in my tracks. Standing elegantly poised behind the console was David Bowie. He was lit from above and smoking a cigarette. He said, “Hello Kate.” I froze on the spot and said, “Er…Hello,” and then left the room, caught my breath outside the door and didn’t dare to go back in again. We’ve met many times since then and I don’t have to leave the room any more….or do I?
He’s made all the right moves, each album exploring a new sound, a new way of looking at things, experimental and brave. Starring in The Man Who Fell To Earth made him a successful actor as well. His introduction to The Snowman animation, although brief, made the film more poignant, as if the whole thing somehow belonged to him. I just loved his hilarious Extras cameo, and the quirky Tesla in The Prestige. He is the quintessential artist, always different and ever surprising, an inspiration for us all”.

His theatricality and bravery definitely affected Kate Bush. Making each album very different and itas own thing. You can feel that with Kate Bush. Even though he died a decade ago, that is not to say he is no longer in Kate Bush’s life. His importance will remain with her for the rest of her life. From photoshoots through to various music videos and sounds through some of her albums, you can feel David Bowie in there. There were rumours he was in attendance for her residency, Before the Dawn in 2014, but I don’t think he was. However, you could tell Bowie respected Kate Bush a lot and would have followed her career. From childhood onwards, Kate Bush definitely looked up to…

THE Starman.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Addison Rae

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti for W Magazine

 

Addison Rae

__________

ONE of the…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ellen Von Unwerth for ELLE

biggest and most talented Pop artists of her generation, Addison Rae, released Addison, back in June. A sensational debut, I am going to finish with a review for the album. However, before getting there., as this is Modern-Day Queens, I am dropping in some interviews. There are a few that I want to tick off. I am going to lead to an article from The Guardian, who named Addison Rae as their artist of 2025. As it is the first day of 2026, it is a perfect moment to celebrate an artist who released this masterpiece debut. One of the most complete debuts of the decade. Before her semi-eponymous debut album came out in June, Rae was perhaps best known for her work on TikTok and her acting. I am going to start with an interview from ELLE, and their interview from early last year. This TikTok sensation was in the process of becoming a Pop star:

“Rae was born in Lafayette, Louisiana, the first of three children to Sheri Nicole Easterling and Monty Lopez. Easterling worked as a makeup artist and Lopez in real estate. Rae’s parents divorced not long after she was born and later reunited, marrying in 2017 and then divorcing again in 2022. Rae lived with her mom growing up, moving between towns and cities in Louisiana, and also for a spell in Houston, Texas. She attended private religious schools and began taking dance classes at the age of six, setting the stage for her passion early on. “My family sacrificed a lot to get me in dance classes and to put me in a nice school,” Rae says. “It was never easy, and I thank my parents a lot for that.”

She says she got her sense of Southern hospitality from her mom. Rae might be famous now, but she’ll still greet strangers on her walk to the nearest coffee shop and strike up a conversation with the barista once she gets there. “I value a sense of community where I am, so being a regular makes me happy,” Rae says. She’s had to learn some boundaries, though: “It actually might be dangerous to let somebody in your car for a ride,” she says with a laugh.

Like many Southern belles before her, in 2019, after high school, Rae enrolled at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she planned to join the dance team, hoping to catch her big break on the sidelines of a Tigers game. But when she didn’t make the team, which would have paid her a stipend, her parents told her it was going to be tough to make the college economics work, even though they’d moved to be closer to campus so Rae could live at home.

She began pursuing a major in broadcast journalism, but found herself “struggling really hard, because it’s fucking miserable to write papers about shit you don’t care about,” she says. “I was like, ‘Wow, what am I going to do?’ I really just wanted to perform. I wanted to honor the passion and desire to entertain that was inside of me, but I also didn’t want to struggle, and make my family struggle, as a result of that dream.”

She begged her parents to let her move to Los Angeles. To keep expenses low, she moved in with the family of a friend she had met online. “I was so thankful for them,” Rae says, “because I don’t know how I would have ever made that work otherwise.” Before long, she had signed with the behemoth talent agency William Morris Endeavor and began pursuing every job opportunity she could get her hands on. “I was doing any sponsored video I could do to make money to try and make this work for myself,” Rae says. “That’s why I was posting so much. I was like, ‘There’s only one chance.’ It was a big bet to make, and I knew I would hate myself if I didn’t try as hard as I could to make this happen.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Ellen Von Unwerth

After signing with WME, she asked her parents to move to L.A., too, telling them she didn’t know how she was going to live this life alone. So they found a way to get themselves to the West Coast city, even joining TikTok, dancing alongside their daughter. At times, her parents’ tit-for-tat relationship conflicts have blown up fantastically on TikTok; Rae says she now refrains from checking her parents’ social media. “My family has taken a step back and become much more private,” she notes. “Family is always tricky, but at the end of the day, you love them and you take the good and try to leave the bad in the past. Nobody’s perfect.”

As Rae’s following swelled, she continued documenting her life gratuitously for the cameras, signing off each video with her dazzling, beauty queen smile. “It was an intense period of my life—there was a lot of work that went into us living there—but I also had so much fun while I was doing it all,” she says. “I wasn’t going to let being cringe and posting a million videos stop me. And now that I look back at it, I don’t feel embarrassed about anything I ever posted. I can appreciate that girl and say that was a girl who was going to make it happen, no matter what that meant doing.”

“And I wasn’t doing anything harmful,” she adds. “I was just having a dandy time dancing.”

Making the transition from social media to pop stardom was always going to be an uphill battle. In March of 2021, she released the squeaky-clean track “Obsessed”—“I’m obsessed with me-e-e as much as you”—which was widely panned by critics. It was a blow to her nascent music career, and she considered giving up on the idea altogether. But eventually, she went back into the studio to work on more songs, which were unceremoniously leaked online the following year. She has said she has no idea how the songs got out, and was crushed, but then something amazing happened: The tracks became sleeper hits online. Charli XCX even contacted her to feature on the song “2 Die 4”.

I will move on soon. However, in a Variety feature from last May, they reveal how Addison Rae’s debut album was produced by women. In a music industry where there is still a huge imbalance regarding the gender of producers in studios, it is a huge positive step that such an important artist’s debut album is produced by women. Let’s hope that this year sees that happen more:

“In a candid interview for Variety’s Behind the Song, Rae details the making of her second Hot 100-charting single “Headphones On,” and her upcoming self-titled debut album, produced entirely by a trio of women — herself, Luka Kloser, and Elvira — a rare feat in an industry still dominated by male producers.

What began as a casual collaboration during a session in Stockholm (Rae was literally sick at the time, joking that she “sounds like she’s holding her nose” on the song “Headphones On”) quickly turned into something deeper: a creative bond rooted in mutual trust, vulnerability and femininity.

“I have something really special with these girls,” she says of the team behind her album. “It feels really beautiful and magical that it is just all females. I never set out for it to be that way, I think because it’s not very common and you almost don’t get that opportunity very much to work with just females in a room.”

Though many are curious about Rae’s musical influences, she insists she pulled few for the making of “Addison,” explaining that her process was driven by emotion. “We definitely didn’t reference anything making this album. It was always me trying to provoke a feeling from a song or from music,” she said. Much of the inspiration came from her dance career and her own self-expression: “I’m a very sensual and sexual person. I’m very intimate with myself and my body, and everything kind of reflects that. Everything feels very personal”.

The next interview I want to come to is from W Magazine. They spoke with Addison Rae: a Pop artist very much tailor-made for today. Somebody who does not hanker for the viral side of social media and the emptiness of that, Rae is and has “digital savvy, unbridled charisma, and plenty of talent, the TikTok sensation is creating a new blueprint for pop stardom”. I think that we might even get a new album from the Louisiana-born artist this year. Or some new singles:

“While making Addison, which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 in June, Rae was far more deliberate. “I’m a very visual person, so everything was mapped out: colors, themes, how I wanted to translate them into a project. I made a binder. I printed out photos and colors and words. Before the album had any sonic world, before there was any audio involved, it was just purely visions, visuals, words,” she explained.

She worked exclusively with Swedish producers Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser, both in their 20s, to create a sophisticated blend of shimmering electronic sounds. “We were three girls in a room,” said Rae. “It was a very fun and free-flowing environment. There was no pressure to force ourselves to make an album or a certain number of songs. It just happened gradually over time.” Rae says that with only women in the studio, the recording sessions had a different energy. “We had this really magic moment making ‘Diet Pepsi’ on the first day we met, which is really crazy and almost seems so unrealistic,” she added. Yet it mirrored how things tend to happen in her life: simultaneously making “so much sense and also no sense at all.”

Released in August 2024 as the lead single from her 2025 debut, “Diet Pepsi” earned Rae her first major breakthrough. The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica ranked the breathy track No. 4 on his year-end list, calling it “the most saccharine whisper of the year.” Rae’s reverb-heavy vocals and dense soundscapes drew comparisons to Lana Del Rey’s 2012 Born to Die and Madonna’s late-’90s pop reset. “Diet Pepsi” nods to “Diet Mountain Dew,” and in “Aquamarine” Rae sings, “I’m the ray of light.” In “Money Is Everything,” Rae makes her artistic lineage explicit: “Please DJ, play Madonna / Wanna roll one with Lana.”

Like Madonna and Del Rey before her, Rae is consciously embodying the pop moment; only in her case, that means making the most of an era defined by likes, shares, and views. Her genius lies in turning TikTok trends, influencer clout, and algorithmic intuition into deliberate creative tools. A lifetime of switching between her private and public selves has sharpened Rae’s talent for improvisation and intimacy; she’s genuine enough to seem unpredictable and canny enough to know exactly how she should appear across our screens. Hers is a new kind of artistic blueprint: Get famous first through the feed; prove you’ve got creative chops once you’ve established an audience. That’s why her Addison transformation feels believable—she’s not replacing the content creator with the inner artist, but revealing how both sides work together. With a wink, a nod, and sometimes a shriek, Rae is signaling that she’s in it for the long run, showing the world she’s more than capable of referencing the legacy of pop icons while forging something entirely of her own”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rafael Pavarotti for W Magazine

Before getting to The Guardian then a review of Addison, there is one more interview to come to. The Los Angeles Times chatted with Addison Rae in December. Having released her debut earlier in the year, there was a lot to reflect on. She can now truly look back at 2025 and everything she has achieved. I do think that this year will be the biggest one yet. One where she also gets some huge acting roles. I would love to see huge Pop artists like Addison Rae, Taylor Swift and Charli xcx to team up for a film:

“A lot of the reaction to your album — the energy has basically been: Hold up, this is pretty good.

I’ll take a win where I get it [laughs]. I’ve actually gotten really comfortable in this space of everyone thinking that everything I do will be mediocre and me doing something better than that and them being surprised. I do think that will change, though.

What do you think is behind the low expectations? Certainly, part of it is because you’re a woman and that’s the world we live in.

Boring.

You clearly made the right album. Have you thought about what the wrong album would’ve been?

The label definitely wasn’t keen on “Diet Pepsi” being the first song. They were like, “We don’t think this is what people are expecting from you.”

Did you have a sense of what they thought people were expecting?

I think there was an idea of what my music should sound like.

Which was?

Bad? Bad or soulless or maybe just a little more shallow, I guess. And by the way, I love shallow music. When I put out my first single, “Obsessed” [in 2021], it was very much based on what I thought I wanted to be as an artist. And over time that changed. Thank God for the critics — without them, I maybe would’ve kept doing music like “Obsessed” and not pushed myself to try things that people didn’t expect.

We seem to be living in an age of pop-girl rivalries. Do you agree, and if so does that bum you out?

It doesn’t have to be a thing, but I get it — it’s entertaining. Historically, there’s always been this friendly or maybe unfriendly competition between people. I think it’s a very natural human thing to want to exceed a standard that someone else has laid out. I’m not really interested it for myself. I think it takes away from the reason I want to do any of this stuff.

Can you avoid it? Take Taylor Swift versus your friend Charli XCX as an example. I wonder whether you feel like you have to take a side.

I guess we’ll have to see. But there’s so much more to all these things. There are people that do weird things, and I try to avoid those people.

When you moved to L.A., you wanted to sing, dance and act. Has your success in music reshaped your ambitions for acting?

I feel like it’s all one and the same to me — I just want to perform, and wherever that finds its home is where I’m putting my energy. I wouldn’t say that every night on tour before I went onstage I was necessarily in the best mood of my life. Some nights, you’re crying before you go on, so you’re kind of acting in a way to put on this performance for people. I’m very ambitious in general. I love chasing big dreams, and if that comes in the form of an amazing script or a director that I really love and trust, I’m 10 toes deep”.

I am ending with a positive review for one of the best albums of last year. The Guardian named Addison Rae as their artist of the year. They interviewed Rae about her shift from TikTok star to bona fide Pop icon of today. How she is both regaining and relinquishing control – and is looking to share less this year. I think that Addison Rae is a fascinating artist who is among the most gifted voices and songwriters of the modern era:

“I read her something that the Washington Post wrote when they named Addison album of the year: “Why does this woman sound so alone?” “That is so interesting, I actually want to see that,” she says, typing in the newspaper’s URL before being surprised to hit the paywall: “I thought I was totally paying for that!” She gets why listeners would interpret it that way. “The album was [from] a very lonely perspective. I wanted to say it on my own and to communicate in a way that felt like I was speaking for myself. Life is lonely, and there’s something really powerful about taking that into your own hands.” That’s one of the most captivating aspects of the record, I suggest: the steeliness of her self-reliant perspective versus the enveloping softness of its sound. “That means a lot,” she says. “I am an introspective person and I love to look inside and understand why I feel the way I do. I think that is being alone in a very beautiful way, in a way that honours the stories I want to tell and the way I want to tell them.”

It’s immediately clear when you get Addison on something she’s less keen to share. She’s fairly guarded when I ask about whether being a sexual person, as she recently described herself, was challenging when she attended religious schools in Louisiana, or if she had to unlearn anything she was taught there. “I was never someone who was necessarily a rule follower,” she says. “If anything, staying in line was more of a way to avoid conflict.” She talks at slightly filibustering length about always wanting to understand why different people had different beliefs, and credits moving to California with showing her “so many ways of experiencing life that I was not questioning or I was so unaware of when I was living back home”.

It’s both surprising and understandable to hear how much Rae obsesses over control. Her appeal comes from her unaffected, sweetly giddy persona: during her Variety awards speech, she appeared genuinely breathless with excitement. She is also one of several pop stars who has put the fun back in fame after several years of musicians stressing how painful it is, the newly minted insider making a gasp-face at the thrill of it all on the red carpet. She treats celebrity as part of her craft and is open about craving it: “Have you ever dreamt of being seen? / Not by someone, more like in a magazine,” she sings on High Fashion (winningly, also the song she has listened to the most this year). “I enjoy fame,” she says plainly. “I think fame is very exposing and raw, and it puts you in a position that not everyone gets to experience. I enjoy the luxury of it all, though of course there is a price you pay.”

Rae’s new year’s resolution, she says, “is to share less. I’ve actually been thinking about this so much. No one needs to know anything!” She laughs. “Obviously I love to talk and to share, and I’ve done a great deal of that on this call already, but I think the less you share, the more in control you are.” As for the rest of 2026, although she just got back from writing in Sweden, there’s no immediate plan to follow up Addison. “When something’s ready and done, I want to put it out as soon as possible,” she says”.

 I will finish off with a review of the astonishing Addison from Pitchfork. They herald the “girlypop album of summer” that warrants comparisons to Lana Del Rey, Madonna and Britney Spears. Pitchfork ask if we are truly ready for Addison Rae. One of these artists that you know we’ll be discussing for so many years to come. Addison is without doubt one of the best albums of last year. The more I listen to it, the more I get and discover:

“Rae’s debut album, Addison, floats in on a swell of goodwill following a string of improbably great singles, each one a little weirder than the last. Last August’s effervescent “Diet Pepsi” felt a bit like early Lana in the star-spangled coquetry of its parking lot romance. But where Del Rey sang her torch songs with cool resignation, Rae’s layered vocals seemed to buzz with woozy warmth, punctuated here and there with “Ahh!”s of satisfaction. Its followup, “Aquamarine,” has grown on me since fall—a four-on-the-floor siren song which eagerly begged comparison to Madonna’s Ray of Light or Kylie Minogue’s Fever. The moody minor chords of February’s “High Fashion” were less primed for the charts than for a cuddle puddle at an after-hours flophouse. And there was poignance in the downcast trip-hop of fourth single “Headphones On,” which faced the doldrums with a cigarette and a stiff upper lip. In the video, Rae pops in a pair of wired earbuds and is whisked off from her day job to a manic pixie dream world.

After years of deferring to the professionals in sessions, Rae met Elvira Anderfjärd and Luka Kloser in early 2024—a pair of young songwriter/producers signed to MXM Studios, the publishing camp of pop mastermind Max Martin. After writing the hook of “Diet Pepsi” together that same day, the three women would go on to write almost all of Addison themselves, while Kloser and Anderfjärd are the album’s sole producers. What ties its tracks together is less a genre than a feeling—sensual and heady, propelled by private intensity, occasionally euphoric and other times lost in itself. It’s music you can move to, though not exactly “club,” often built atop the stacked chords of the Korg M1 keyboard, whose organ presets epitomized the sound of ’90s house. The mood is often wistful in spite of the ripe imagery—sun-kissed skin, foggy windows, drunk cigarettes and so forth—as if life moved too quickly to relish in real time.

If Addison has a narrative throughline, it’s one you’ve heard before, in which a plucky ingénue strikes out for fame and fortune in the wacky world of showbiz. But Rae is at her most delightful balancing camp and sincerity on starry-eyed numbers in which all the world’s a stage. “You’ve got a front row seat, and I/I’ve got a taste of the glamorous life,” she trills on “Fame is a gun” with just a whiff of desperation, a callback to another Britney adage. (“There’s only two types of people in the world,” Spears sang knowingly on “Circus.” “The ones that entertain and the ones that observe.”) She opens “Money is Everything” with a faux-naive stage whisper: “When I was growing up, Momma always told me to save my money so I never had to rely on a man to take care of me,” purrs the girl who claimed that she dropped her Southern accent because “Marilyn Monroe never said ‘y’all.’” “But money’s not coming with me to heaven—and I have a lot of it!” Rae presses on. “So can’t a girl just have fun?” Cue the beat drop and the chorus, a slightly psycho girl choir whose “Lemonade”-esque harmonies sound like they’re being shouted from the sunroof of a speeding car.

Later in that song, Rae traipses to the DJ booth to request Madonna, then rattles off some shoutouts in a cartoonish yelp: “I wanna roll one with Lana/Get high with Gaga/And the girl I used to be is still the girl inside of me!” She’s made a point of wearing her inspirations on her sleeve, though Gaga’s influence was stronger on her 2023 EP, AR. As for Lana, there are moments (mostly “Summer Forever”) when the Born to Die worship approaches Kirkland Signature territory, with lyrics torn from the inscription pages of a high school yearbook. Rae’s disposition is generally sunnier than Del Rey’s, minus the abjection that invariably shadows romance. But where their mindsets meet is a solemn belief that you ought to live your life as if it were a work of art.

In Rae’s first cover story earlier this year, there’s a quote from Charli xcx—her mentor-slash-bestie whose “Von Dutch” remix marked the first time that Rae came off as cool—that’s been rattling around my head. “Everything she does relates back to her art,” said Charli of her friend’s evolution. “Every item of clothing she wears, everything she says in a red carpet interview, everything she tweets—it all is a part of the world-building.” Initially, I found the idea depressing: a teenage girl who’d changed her life performing to a phone camera, now optimizing her every move for the aesthetic. Then again, there’s something potent in Rae’s winking performance—a borderline unhinged devotion to the American promise that a person’s destiny is entirely in their hands. Why not trade small-town boredom for gonzo Hollywood glam? Why not conspire against reality in favor of romance? Towards the end of the Frou Frou-esque “Times Like These,” Rae hears her own song on the radio and wonders aloud: “Let’s see how far I go”.

After a magnificent and hugely successful year – including a GRAMMY nomination -, you do wonder what this year holds in store. Addison is a staggering album that I absolutely love. I am so interested to see where Addison Rae…

HEADS next.

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Follow Addison Rae

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Melody's Echo Chamber

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Diane Sagnier

 

Melody's Echo Chamber

__________

THE alias…

of Melody Prochet, Melody’s Echo Chamber is one of the queens of modern music. I am featuring her in this feature as I really love her music and new album, Unclouded. I will end with a review of that album. If you are not aware of Melody’s Echo Chamber, it is the work of the French-born musician. In terms of style, you might describe the music as s Dream Pop, Space Rock and Psychedelic Rock. I think that Unclouded is one of the best albums of this year. A typically beautiful and memorable album from a sensational songwriter. I am going to start by bringing in some interviews from last year. Make sure you catch Melody’s Echo Chamber on tour. I do wonder if there are any U.K. dates coming up, as people here would love to see her. She was in the country recently as she was being interviewed by, among others, BBC Radio 6 Music. I hope that more stations in the U.K. get behind her music as she is a wonderful artist that everyone should check out. There are three interviews I want to get to, before I wrap up with a review for Unclouded. I am going to start out with an interview from Occult Magazine:

“Back in 2012, Melody’s kaleidoscopic psych-rock/pop debut album, Melody’s Echo Chamber, was essential on arrival— it was a defining psych album of the 2010’s that inspired the many waves of artists to follow. Melody’s sophomore record Bon Voyage was even more ambitious, taking her sounds in bold new directions– it reinforced the notion that Melody would continue to be a multifaceted force.

Tomorrow December 5th, Melody will release her 4th official studio album– Unclouded, which is a brilliant meshing of two worlds. The vivid, psychedelic visions of Melody’s Echo Chamber remain prominent, but they are emphasized by the rich and exotic orchestral escapism of Swedish composer/producer Sven Wunder, who co-wrote and produced Unclouded. The production and instrumentation lifts Melody’s grounded perspective, and paints her shimmering tunes into the audio equivalent of a gorgeous impressionist painting. Melody floats over the elegant sonic palette effortlessly, and the record truly feels like a breath of fresh of air. 

BEAU:  I'm very excited for the release of Unclouded–  It's a very beautiful, vibrant, and very rich album.  It's been a few years since your last release. How does it feel to bring this new version of yourself to the world at the moment?

MELODY:  Thank you. Yeah– it's been a while. Recording this new music kind of sparked a new light in me– this new sense of faith somehow. So it's very exciting and really special.

BEAU: Yes– It has a very grounded, positive, peaceful tone that really resonated with me.

MELODY:  Oh, thanks. That means a lot!

PHOTO CREDIT: Diane Sagnier

BEAU: So I've had your music and rotation for plenty of years since your debut Melody’s Echo Chamber,  but Sven Wunder’s music is a more recent obsession–I actually discovered his records during the pandemic. I loved Eastern Flowers and Wabi Sabi– and his record this year, Daybreak, is really great.

Unclouded is a really great link up of both of your worlds. Sven’s touches compliment your work, and vice versa in the process. I'd love to hear how the collaboration came about.

MELODY:  I discovered his music a few years ago with the song “En Plein Air”. I had an instant crush, and I was like, “Oh, I really want to float and sing into this landscape”... and those lush and luxurious sounds. It felt really organic and absolutely mind blowing. I really wanted to try to work with him, so I reached out to him, and at the same time, I reached out to El Michel's Affair. I was looking for producers and both really wanted to do it.

Timing wise– it worked out with Sven Wunder, more fluidly and easily. So that was really special.  I just crashed my soul into his world and same with him. So that's really exciting and terrifying at the same time, because we didn't know each other at all. The first song we worked on was “Memories Underground”, which was a really small demo of mine, it was shoegaz-y… guitar-y.. We really clicked and matched on this one. From this song, we knew it was going to work out okay– and it did.

BEAU: So, you also have an incredible roster of musicians on this record too.

MELODY:  Yeah, it's true. I'm really lucky.

BEAU:  I really love the break beats– that snappy drum sound is a big personality on the album. How did you decide on the members of the band for this record? I did see that some of the tracking was done separately.

MELODY:  Yeah, the process was really new to me, and Sven Wunder's ideas were really incredible. We first went into his studio and with my demos, a little bit of his demos as well, we both had material to share, and to see what would inspire us.

We started in his studio with him, he was ripping drums that we love from his program. He could get like my favorite Can-beats and drumming modern or old, so we could just work on amazing material.

And then we had to recreate that, which was another challenge– but we knew we could manage with some really great drummers. His partner at Piano Piano Records came up with the idea of Malcolm Catto, which is legendary– but I never thought I could work with him.

PHOTO CREDIT: Diane Sagnier

He managed to contact him and got him to come on board. So we went to Dalston in London, an incredible neighborhood. We recorded Malcolm in his incredible studio, which was set in a community center. It was really raw and authentic, and he was like coming down into a cavern of analogue…it was insane. He's absolutely the best at doing that whole kraut-rock, meets rock, meets soul/hip-hop…this whole jazz fusion thing– he makes it all into his own story.

It was perfect for us to have this consistent and classic sound towards the whole record. That's what I wanted– and that's what I also thought Sven Wunder had in his own records, which he usually records with all Dina Ögon’s  musicians. So that's why we also went to record Daniel Ögon and Love Orsan from Dina Ögon– the amazing Swedish band, so that was all pretty natural.

BEAU: You know–  I feel like Unclouded kind of resolves with those last two tracks before “Daisy”... (“How to Leave Misery Behind" and the title track.) Then “Daisy” is like a new beginning at the end.

MELODY:  Exactly! That's why I put it in the end. I felt like it was the start of the next chapter somehow…

BEAU: So what can you tell me about “Daisy” with El Michaels Affair – it's a beautiful song.

MELODY:  I was listening to his music– we were going to play together in Mexico around 2023. I had never heard of his music before, which is crazy, but I discovered his music there and I was like “Oh, that would be the perfect match!”.

So I reached out to him, and he loved my work and we spoke on the phone. We were like “let's try to make something!”. So he sent me some beats and pieces and I worked on it. I completely made a whole new thing out of it. It was just like a little playground between our two worlds– that was really cool.

I'm working on a new track that he sent to me, and I think we will do some more for sure.

Also I had his mixer– Jens– who mixed the record, which was a game changer really, because he has such a special sound. So that really changed my life as well”.

Before getting to an interview with CLASH, I want to drop in this one from Flood Magazine. An artist that creates this alchemy, Melody’s Echo Chamber drew inspiration and strength from art therapy. Working with producer Sven Wunder, Prochet created this incredible and immersive album. One that is “a warm, colorful tapestry of dreamy psychedelic rock, a kind of phantasmagorical canvas that lets the listener interact with its world in a meditative way”:

“When discussing her creative process, Prochet gets esoteric and spiritual. To her, creativity is about alchemizing the bad into something good—in her words, “turning shit into gold.” Like a powerful sorceress, she sees it as a divine process. She even considers creativity a goddess, much like Sophia of the Gnostics or Athena of the Greeks, as she references Dreams Unlimited’s Arise installation for Burning Man, a sculpture representing the mother of transformation and creation. Creativity and self-expression are crucial because they help her process hard moments and emotions, even if they’re difficult to articulate. “My song ‘Into Shadows’ was pretty bad—I tried to put words to it, and they would never come,” she explains. “So I used ‘La-la-la,’ and I thought, ‘It’s OK to not be able to name things that are really hard.’ It’s another way to express it.”

To help herself get into a creative mindset, Prochet goes for walks, creates vision boards, and finds new ways to make music. She gets particularly excited when talking about using reference drums from artists as diverse as My Bloody Valentine and Little Simz, re-contextualizing them into something completely different as a jumping-off point. To her, creativity is everything—a reason for being. “It makes me love living, and I have so much tenderness now for the living experience,” she shares. “There’s the same sort of magic in creating anything—it’s not just music or art, it’s definitely finding a solution to anything, to any problem.”

Although she loves art, Prochet acknowledges that it’s a privilege to make a living off of it. The world is bigger and more complicated when you factor in the real people and real consequences that lie beyond the creative world. She points out that what’s going on in American politics is terrifying, but she has hope for what’s to come. “That’s what I mean by ‘unclouding’: taking that responsibility to exist and uncloud your own mind so you can resist. Your mind can resist all those things in your own way, every day. But that’s definitely something on my mind,” she explains, referring to the harm done by the Trump Administration.

Prochet also hints at what’s next. Although they only worked on the new album’s track “Daisy” together, she and producer Leon Michels have been thinking of co-producing a full-length album in the near future. Michels—a founding member of El Michels Affair and Lee Fields’ backing band The Expressions, and known for working with artists like Clairo, Kali Uchis, and The Black Keys—has a classic-soul touch to his psychedelic production work, which she gravitates to. “Leon sent me a very classical French-sounding song that I didn’t finish, but it was quite sweet. But I think I would not want to go there. I think I would probably want us to create something new together”.

Although it has been a while since she last released an album, you feel the time away was crucial. In terms of her songwriting. More vital and extraordinary than ever before. Even though there have not been huge music changes, you can feel this progress ands shift on Unclouded. Last month, CLASH spoke with Melody’s Echo Chamber about one of the more underrated albums of 2025. I think that she is one of the most special artists that we have:

“What brought you back into the studio? Was there a specific moment in your life that prompted you to start writing and recording again?

That’s a good question. There were multiple reasons, but the main one was going back on tour in 2023 across the United States. I got such a drive from the audience because they were the sweetest, and it all started to make sense again. Meeting all those people and getting so much energy in return was magical … it reminded me why I make music.

Also, I heard a lot of amazing new music that gave me butterflies and made me want to start making music again. Artists like Crumb, Saya Gray, Water From Your Eyes, SAULT, Tyler the Creator, El Michels Affair and Sven Wunder, my co-producer — all this amazing, visionary, avant-garde production is what inspired me. It’s as simple as that, really.

You’ve named several artists who inspire you, but do you wish to work with them or does Melody’s Echo Chamber function best with just you calling the shots?

It depends on the phase I’m in, but I love to crash my world into someone else’s. I made a little song with Crumb a few years back, which was really cool. I find working with others deeply enriching, though it can be challenging since I have a strong vision of what I want to create.

This record was very collaborative, but I wanted my vision to be even stronger than before. I chose to give other people quite a lot of space on my last two records, so I wanted to guide the project more this time.

Your arrangements and texturing play a key role in giving the album an immersive feel, especially on tracks like ‘Eyes Closed’. How much of that comes from you versus the musicians you bring in?

I see myself more as a sculptor. We had some pretty well-written demos before bringing in the other musicians, who we chose for their sound and soulfulness. Actually, we went to their spaces to record. We were at [drummer] Malcolm Catto’s cavern and using analog gear, so it was quite special. I’m great at capturing people’s hidden treasures, which I then combine with my own ideas.

My passion is editing, so there are all these magical little moments that I’ll loop and arrange into a kind of hip-hop collage. That’s my little vision, but then Sven worked really hard on the string arrangements. I guided the distortion, the bends and all those small ideas, but he shaped the landscape. It’s hard to give a clear answer about who did what because the planets just sort of aligned, and everyone contributed in their own way.

The title track of the new album has no lyrics, yet it is deeply poignant. What can you tell us about the word ‘Unclouded’ — why that name, and is there a core theme that ties all 12 songs together?

I settled on the title very close to the deadline, just one day before we had to master the songs. I wanted one word that summed up the record, so it wasn’t easy. I actually got it from a [Hayao] Miyazaki quote, but it’s really about how I’m constantly trying to uncloud my mind every day — finding clarity, clearing up clouds of disinformation and being free of judgment; protecting my sense of discernment and nonbinary thinking. It’s difficult to stay unclouded in modern times, and it takes a lot of hard work.

It takes little acts of resistance to be a decent human amid all this chaos. I feel a lot of anger at what’s happening in the world, so my philosophy is to take full responsibility for my inner sky. To me, the song ‘Unclouded’ feels like being in an aligned and peaceful state.

Why did you position the song second-to-last on the tracklist?

That was actually supposed to be the end of the record, but then my track with Leon Michels (of El Michels Affair) ended up being the last. I loved the idea of putting ‘Daisy’ at the end, because it’s like a doorway to other adventures and maybe another chapter. I think Leon and I are going to work together more, so it made sense to have our song close the album while opening a new story.

What about the album cover — is that something you put a lot of thought into or was it more of an impulse?

This kind of goes back to the previous question, because it’s always been challenging for me to incarnate my music in terms of physical identity. I’m very much an introverted shoegazer and I’ve never wanted to sexualise my looks, so I’ve always preferred artwork where I’m not fully present, but still there. I worked with a really cool graphic designer, and we just kind of put together all these ideas I had — me standing with an instrument, nature ornaments, green tones”.

I am going to end with a review of Unclouded from SPIN. If some felt that there was some repetition on the double album and a more judicious editing process could have taken place, I think that CLASH say it best: “Overall, ‘Unclouded’ is a further incantation of psych-pop goodness”. SPIN had some positive words for a dreamy and memorable album from this astonishing artist:

“For more than a decade, Melody Prochet’s songs have drifted through dream logic — language dissolving into texture, emotion refracted through haze. Unclouded, her fourth album as Melody’s Echo Chamber and third for Domino Records, doesn’t abandon that ethereal quality thanks to the arrival of the Swedish producer/songwriter Sven Wunder, best known for the lush psych-jazz soundscapes of his own dazzling discography. But here, Wunder grounds her pastel palette with something newly tactile: breakbeats, supple bass lines and strings that move like muscle rather than mist.

From the start, the rhythm section does as much storytelling as the lyrics. On opener “The House That Doesn’t Exist,” Love Örsan’s bass and Heliocentrics legend Malcolm Catto’s drumming lock into a groove that summons the home Prochet’s singing about — one built from motion and heartbeat rather than stone. “In the Stars” introduces Wunder’s calling cards with gliding strings, boom-bap beats and a melody that pirouettes between melancholy and delight. Lyrics about “finding a place I can call mine” land harder because the music itself sounds like a destination.

That physicality animates the whole record. “Eyes Closed” and “Childhood Dream” surge forward with frenetic drumming and burbling bass, tracing the boundary between control and surrender like a chocolate mushroom trip along the French Riviera. Even when the drums on “Burning Man” become purposefully muffled so as to sound like they’re in a closet two rooms over, keyboard glissandos and a Per “Texas” Johansson flute solo keep the music moving on a heavenward trajectory.

There’s still mystery here, but it’s less about distance than transformation. Unclouded reveals how clarity can coexist with psychedelia and how groove can sharpen the emotional frame rather than smudge it. Wunder’s graceful, deeply felt arrangements are key to that proposition, as Prochet’s lyrics about impermanence and renewal, once opaque, now feel illuminated by the rhythm itself.

By the time the album winds down with the Stereolab-flavored “Broken Roses” and the resolute “How To Leave Misery Behind” (“please be kind,” she pleads), Prochet has seemingly mastered the art of staying present inside the flux and dancing within the blur instead of floating above it. Throughout Unclouded, the music breathes, the feelings land and the vagaries of life are evermore illuminated”.

Go and follow Melody’s Echo Chamber. Even though she has been on the scene for a while now, the music is still fantastic and changing. Unclouded is the latest chapter from the French songwriter. Someone I hope visits the U.K. this year and plays. If you have not heard her music then go and check it out now. She is someone that everyone should seek out. Truly, a majestic songwriter whose music…

IS among the best out there.

___________

Follow Melody’s Echo Chamber

FEATURE: Kate Bush: Them Heavy People: The Extraordinary Characters in Her Songs: Rocket (Rocket’s Tail)/Misty (Misty)

FEATURE:

 

 

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

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

 

Rocket (Rocket’s Tail)/Misty (Misty)

__________

IN future features…

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

I will explore some real-life characters that have gone into Kate Bush songs. However, there is something unusual about the pairing for this outing. I am teaming an animal influence for Rocket’s Tail from 1989’s The Sensual World with a snowman for Misty. That song appeared on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. Neither are human and both are quite unusual, though it is typical of Kate Bush that she would pull influence from such unusual source. Let’s start out with the central figure from the penultimate song on The Sensual World. In terms of the tracklisting from her sixth studio album, there are a couple of huge songs on each side together with a few deeper cuts. On the first side, we have The Sensual World then Love and Anger. The Fog, Reaching Out and Heads We’re Dancing complete that side. On the second side, there is Deeper Understanding and This Woman’s Work. Whilst the first side puts its two singles as the first and second tracks, the two best-known tracks from the second side are at the top and bottom. I may well feature The Sensual World again for this character-driven series as The Sensual World suggests itself. No named characters, though it does revolve around a woman who breached during pregnancy and the father has to step up and be responsible and strong. Featuring ‘The Father’, I will explore the themes of the song and Bush’s use of birth, life and reproduction through the years. On The Sensual World, there is a mix of deeply emotional, romantic and songs based more in fantasy. Deeper Understanding is a warning about the lure and obsession with technology. Heads We’re Dancing is about a woman who unwittingly is at a dance/dinner back in the 1940s and dances with Hitler. How would you put Hitler into a song and build from that? It is a song that demands discussion.

There are songs that deal more broadly with love and loss. Ones that are about relations. Between a Man and a Woman and Never Be Mine. Even The Fog and Reaching Out are about human psychology and relationships. Reaching Out includes these lines: “See how the child reaches out instinctively/To feel how fire will feel/See how the man reaches out instinctively/For what he cannot have”. The Fog includes these lines: “Just like a feeling that you're sending out/I pick it up/But I can't let you go/If I let you go/You slip into the fog”. Rocket’s Tail seems to be one of the most whimsical songs on The Sensual World. An animal connection. Rocket was the name of a cat Kate Bush had at the time. Immortalised in Rocket’s Tail, the song is actually one of the standouts from The Sensual Word. It is also notable because it features the vocals of the Trio Bulgarka. They also appear on Deeper Understanding and Never Be Mine. For this first half, I will discuss Bush’s connection with them and animals in Kate Bush’s musical world. Rocket’s Tail is also notable because it features David Gilmour on guitar. Bush’s mentor and friend, its central character is one that fascinates me. Let’s lead with some interview archives, where Bush talked about the track:

“Rocket is one of my cats, and he was the inspiration for the subject matter for the song, because he’s dead cute [laughs]. And it’s very strange subject matter because the song isn’t exactly about Rocket, it’s kind of inspired by him and for him, but the song, it’s about anything. I guess it’s saying there’s nothing wrong with being right here at this moment, and just enjoying this moment to its absolute fullest, and if that’s it, that’s ok, you know. And it’s kind of using the idea of a rocket that’s so exciting for maybe 3 seconds and then it’s gone, you know that’s it, but so what, it had 3 seconds of absolutely wonderful… [laughs]

Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1 (UK), 14 October 1989

“It was a vehicle to get their voices on a track in as dominant a way as possible. So I put this down with a DX7 choir sound so it had this kind of vocal feel. Then we got a drummer in and got this big Rock ‘n’ Roll thing going. Then I got some friends in to hear what it would sound like with big block vocals singing behind my voice, and although they were English people that sing completely differently, it still gave me a sense of vocal intensity. So these two friends must have spent all day trying to sing like Bulgarians. But it was so useful, because there were so many things I immediately understood we couldn’t do, and lots of things it felt like we could do.

So we took it to Bulgaria and started working with this arranger. I told him what I wanted, and he just went off and said “what about this?” and they were great. He kept giving me all these things to choose from, and we worked so well together. It was so good that we decided to hold the drum kit – it was originally starting much earlier in the song. Then we let Dave Gilmour rip on it, so we’d have this really extreme change from just vocals to this hopefully big Rock ‘n’ Roll kit, with bass, and guitar solos.

Tony Horkins, ‘What Katie Did Next’. International Musician, December 1989”.

Soloist Yanka Rupkhina adds something gorgeous to the song. What Bush said about her cute cat inspiring the song, but it was also about that brief excitement and moment of pleasure. One that might then fizzle out. In a way, there is a bit of Kate Bush channelling David Bowie and Elton John. Bush covered Elton John’s Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time) for a 1991 compilation tribute album to him and Bernie Taupin. She was a big fan of David Bowie. Bowie wrote Starman and Space Oddity. Lines in Rocket’s Tail where Bush explores space flight and rockets, albeit one that is London-based and a bit more low-key and less grand: “And, dressed as a rocket on Waterloo Bridge–/Nobody seems to see me/Then, with the fuse in my hand/And now shooting into the night/And still as a rocket/I land in the river”. Even if Rocket the cat does not feature heavily in the song, the delight in seeing the cat’s tail and that excitement the cat gets and the way the tail swishes put Bush in mind of a firework perhaps. These thoughts from a Substack post are interesting:

“I once heard that Rocket was Kate’s cat, but it doesn’t really matter, because it’s such a pretty story. I mean, it MUST be true, right? Anyone who’s seen cat zoomies can attest that they’d shoot across the sky like a meteor if they could, and who better than a cat can demonstrate a tail on fire?

But it seemed to me the saddest thing I'd ever seen
And I thought you were crazy wishing such a thing

I saw only a stick on fire
Alone on its journey
Home to the quickening ground
With no one there to catch it

The poignance of this set of lines blew me away, that where the intrepid cat saw excitement and adventure and the sheer thrill of adrenaline-inducing hijinks, the speaker would see isolation in the vast chill of space”.

There is a lot of interesting takes you can get from Rocket’s Tail. How Bush connected with animals and they have been in her music through the years. Her dogs, Bonnie and Clyde, feature on the cover for Hounds of Love. Little Shrew (Snowflake) used a cute animal as a symbol for something much bigger. Whale song opens Moving. That is the first sound we hear on a Kate Bush album. The heroine dreaming of sheep on one of Hounds of Love’s best songs. A kangaroo mention on The Dreaming’s title track. Percey Edwards impersonating animal noises for that track. Kate Bush using birds and birdsong throughout Aerial. Her own label, Fish People, and how the fish people visuals were a part of her 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. Animals and wildlife a big part of her visual and sonic world. Rocket as the unusual inspiration for Rocket’s Tail. The aspect of Bush embracing international inspiration. The Bulgarian trio that appear on The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. This is what Bush remarked about Stoyanka Boneva, Yanka Rupkina, and Eva Georgieva:

“Suddenly, there I was working with these three ladies from a completely different culture. I’ve never worked with women on such an intense creative level, and it was something strange to feel this very strong female energy in the studio. It was interesting to see the way the men in the studio reacted to this. Instead of just one female, there was a very strong female presence.

Terry Atkinson, The Baffling, Alluring World of Kate Bush, Los Angeles Times, 28 January 1990”.

Kate Bush mixing in the personal and local with the international. Irish music and sounds connected her to her mother and upbringing. Irish musicians and sounds. From 1982’s The Dreaming onwards, Kate Bush brought more influences in that originating from other countries. Malagasy and African music inspire moments on The Red Shoes (1993). Australian Aboriginal music on The Dreaming. Balearic influences on Aerial. The balalaika, a Russian stringed instrument, was part of her incredible and world-hopping instrumental arsenal. Bush looking beyond the human for her song inspiration and beyond the traditional and conventional in terms of the instruments and sonic palette.

The second song, rather than taking the name of a feline and building out, instead features a snowman. The title character in Misty is one that appears very briefly and melts in the morning. In terms of exploring angles in terms of this character study, we could think about the imaginative, filmic and child-like wonder. Misty is an epic track. One of seven on 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, it is a story about a woman who spends the night with a snowman and then it melts in the morning. One might think it has Christmas origins. Maybe a more adult version of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman. Instead, this is Bush exploring sensuality and sex in a very different way. Drawing right back to her debut album, 1978’s The Kick Inside, it is this extraordinary artist talking about desire and passion but not doing it in the way her peers do. The Kick Inside mixed gothic romance, romantic fiction-inspired trysts and even an incestuous relationship. 50 Words for Snow longest song is the only one that is strictly about sex and the physical. Elsewhere, Bush explored fifty words for snow, mythical beings, and a ghost in a lake. Actually, Snowed in at Wheeler Street is about lover separated through periods in history. However, there is something magical about Misty. Fantastical and child-like – a woman who built a snowman is like a child getting excited about snow – fuses with something much more grown-up. I also want to discuss that fantast and make-believe element. Bush much more curious about the unexplained and departed. Lake Tahoe about a woman’s ghost. Wild Man about a yeti and this empathetical narrative about a Himalayan creature. Among Angels and its title suggest something heavenly. There is romance and death explored. Love and real longing. I think a lot of parallels with The Kick Inside and what she was covering then. Bush almost going back to her teenager years and debut album. The piano much more a focal point than before. Stepping things back, though giving these longer songs more cinema and grandeur. The longest track Kate Bush has ever released, it is my standout from 50 Words for Snow. This encounter in a 2011 interview is why I love Kate Bush:

“It’s a silly idea. But I hope that what has happened is that there’s almost a sense of tenderness. I think it’s quite a dark song. And so I hope that I’ve made it work. But in a lot of ways it shouldn’t because… It’s ridiculous, isn’t it, the idea of the snowman visiting this woman and climbing into bed with her.
But I took him as a purely symbolic snowman, it was about…
No John, he’s REAL (laughs).

BBC4 Radio, Front Row, 2011”.

If some perceive Misty to be about this strange sexual encounter, maybe it is about a feverish dream. Bush inhabiting the mind of a child. Rather than an attraction to a snowman, it is bringing something to life. Perhaps trying to connect with something ephemeral and transient: “I turn off the light/Switch on a starry night/My window flies open/My bedroom fills with falling snow/Should be a dream but I’m not sleepy/I see his snowy white face but I’m not afraid/He lies down beside me/So cold next to me/I can feel him melting in my hand”. Misty talks of a window and a ledge. Reminding me of Wuthering Heights from 1978. That ghostly Catherine Earnshaw beckoning Heathcliff to the window. Here, another tale of departure, relates to the disappearance of a once-real snowman: “He must be somewhere/Open window closing/Oh but wait, it’s still snowing/If you’re out there/I’m coming out on the ledge/I’m going out on the ledge”. I wonder where Kate Bush got the name of Misty from. I would love to know more about that. If some people find the song silly and a little insubstantial, it is also fascinating and hugely emotional. This woman who might be lonely and has lost a lover dreams of a night with a snowman. More symbolic than literal, however, there does seem to be remnants of this ‘lover’ on her sheets. Again, maybe more symbolism and imagined than real, the logistics and odd physics of a human-snowman night of passion is humorous and also quite uncomfortable. This article shows some love for a song that is among the most delirious, brilliant, mad and beautiful Kate Bush ever recorded:

“Perhaps the only person in the world who could do it or would do it is Kate Bush, who in her 30+ year career has consistently pushed the boundaries of art and has an affinity for oddball subject matter. A very underrated trait among great artists, especially ones I admire, is the willingness to go through with ideas that seem insane on the surface. As someone who has a lot of half-finished posts sitting in my drafts folder on this blog, I feel a lot of respect towards Bush, who sat down at her piano and hammered this song out because she knew it would be good. I imagine her picking up the phone during the writing process and having to tell whoever called “I can’t speak right now. I’m working on my song about loving a snowman.” She probably put off other real-life responsibilities while writing her snowman song, confident that people would want to listen to it when it was finished. To me, that is pretty much the definition of an artist.

Now, when you read that the song is about falling in love with a snowman, you probably figured “oh, it’s a metaphor for being with a cold, distant lover or something.” Nope. Another reason why this song is great is that Bush attacks the subject matter head-on instead of using bland, figurative language. Above a recurring piano figure, she recounts building the snowman, then how the snowman ends up in her bed.

Unfortunately, like all one-night affairs with snowmen, Bush’s tryst was doomed to end in heartbreak. “I can feel him melting in my hand,” she laments, knowing that you only have a limited amount of time to be with a snowman. At about the 8-minute mark, a guitar and some light strings join the piano as the song picks up in tempo. “I can’t find him… the sheets are soaking,” Bush sings, her voice full of very real yearning. The seriousness with which Bush sings the song is just another way that I think she’s in on the “joke” and is aware of the song’s dark comedy and absurdity.

But even though this song is absurd, it has a genuine emotional impact. Once you let the initial concept sink in (and since the song is so long, it will if you have the patience), it becomes a pretty stirring tale of two star-crossed lovers who obviously can never have a future. She was the good girl from the high-class family who wanted the best things in life. He was three balls of snow stacked on top of each other with a mouth full of dead leaves. You can see why it would never work out”.

I see these lines not about a woman having sex with a snowman. Instead, more metaphor and symbolism. Poetically talking about fleeting or lost love and the memory of someone who was in her life very briefly. This fictional woman perhaps who lost someone dear but still imagines them: “I see his snowy white face but I’m not afraid / he lies down beside me / I can feel him melting in my hand”. In 2011, when Kate Bush was in her fifties, was writing in this way that you would associate with a younger artist. Love and sex less about settling and being comforting. More about electricity and the sensual. However, nobody in music was and is writing about a snowman! In the same way Bush broke ground and wrote about a famous novel for her debut song, over thirty tears later, she was bringing something as unique into Misty. I feel you can look at a song like this and see how it has inspired so many artists today. Pop artists that go beyond the boundaries. The likes of Chappell Roan. You can also feel an influence of Björk. An artist who is influenced by Kate Buh, the fantastical, icy and mysterious reminds me of Björk. Maybe Bush nodding to her. What is most striking about Misty is the sincerity. Bush never laughs or makes light of something as almost absurd as a snowman being brought to life and disappearing. It is oddly moving when you humanise something imagined or inanimate and then it dies. Again, like a children’s story or a fantasy film. So heartfelt and moving, you would feel less upset if a human got up and left the woman alone. A snowman alive that then melts and is gone seems more impactful. That is why Little Shrew (Snowflake) – which is Snowflake from 50 Words for Snow, but given a new lease – uses a shrew and not a human, as the thought of a small animal being in danger gets people more moved than they would be with a human.

50 Words for Snow is so filmic! The seven songs almost like short films in themselves. If Aerial’s cinema explored the skies and a summer’s day; the depths of an ocean and the allure of lover’s on the beach, the colder and more wintery cinema takes us to frozen lakes, snow falling from the sky and a Himalayan creature traipsing through the forest. Misty could be set in an English garden, though it is perhaps the most snow-filled and densest track on 50 Words for Snow. In terms of the atmosphere and visuals, you wonder how the snowman came to life. I do think that the song relates to a dream. However, I also think Misty is one of the most intriguing characters in Kate Bush’s songbook. Someone who has a child and has a husband perhaps not feeling the need to write like someone who was single or in a new relationship. Instead, this flight of fantasy sees her imagine this woman who spends the night with a snowman. You ask why that idea came to her mind and what it represents in a wider sense. If one might feel Misty was motivated by sadness and loss, when Bush spoke with Jamie Cullum in a 50 Words for Snow promotional interview in 2011, he said how Misty was his favourite track from the album. Its sense of imagination:

“JC: You’re a fantastic example of someone who can write within the world of the imagination, that you can go into deeply, kind of, uncharted waters. Is that something that comes, has always come quite naturally to you?

KB: Yeah I think it has, yeah. I think it just seemed to be something that I clicked with at a very early age, and I think also something that’s said a lot is that you have to be miserable to write something that’s good, and I’m not sure about that because I think, from my point of view I think some of my better work has been when I’ve been really happy, I mean, such as ‘Aerial’. I think of that as one of my best pieces of work, and it was very experimental and it was one of the happiest times of my life and I think, you know, that somehow has gone into the music”.

Two very different characters from two albums that share little sonic relationship. One of Kate Bush’s cats was the germ of an idea for Rocket’s Tail. She took that and then went beyond. I see her cat in the song and alongside her, though it is very much about a brief bang and pleasure. Perhaps a lust or spark that is temporary and thrilling but goes so quickly. Bush, in her thirties, exploring womanhood and her life at a stage when she was looking at love in different ways. Perhaps thinking about the future and family. Misty is similar too. However, its characters and inspiration is very much at the centre. However, it too is about this brief pleasure. Rocket’s Tail about heat, fireworks, bangs and colours in the night sky. Misty concerns the white and black. The cold and sombreness of a winter’s night. Less about gunpowder and that residue, sticks, snow and water are on the bed. Rocket’s Tail is this spirited and energised song that is more positive, in spite of its subject matter. Misty much more emotional and soulful. However, both songs very much have a child-like spirit. A silliness and throwaway element that is built into these rich and compelling songs. How Bush can use non-human characters and inspiration to incredible effect. Another reason why this genius is so influential. A songwriter whose pages are filled with these wonderful and diverse characters that…

LINGER in the mind.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Eight: Will the New Film Adaptation from Emerald Fennell Bring Attention to a Masterpiece Song?

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights at Forty-Eight

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978

Will the New Film Adaptation from Emerald Fennell Bring Attention to a Masterpiece Song?

__________

ON 20th January…

IN THIS PHOTO: Emerald Fennell has directed a new adaptation of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, which is in cinemas from 14th February/PHOTO CREDIT: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images for Loewe

Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights turns forty-eight. It is one of the most remarkable debut single ever. I have asked before whether this song will ever get a viral moment or be used in a film. Rather than force new popularity and attention, it is a song that I don’t think had been talked about as much as it should. Although very well known, it is still a bit under-appreciated. Forty-eight years after it was released, nothing like it has come along. I am endlessly fascinated by how the song was born and Kate Bush’s take on it. Whereas other songwriters might cast Catherine Earnshaw as a victim and find sympathy, Wuthering Heights seems to cast her as a ghoul. This villain of the piece trying to drag Heathcliff away. If adaptations of Wuthering Heights have focused on the entire novel and balanced the romance with tragedy, Kate Bush’s song is very much about this intense and visceral moment where Earnshaw’s ghost tries to take Heathcliff away. Though there is passion and longing, Bush was influenced by the final moments of a 1967 T.V. adaptation that was shown. I am not sure the exact date she saw it, though she was later compelled to write a song about what she saw. It is interesting that her first single not only was about a novel (Emily Brontë’s sole novel of 1847), but is was this very specific aspect. I do like how Kate Bush cast herself as the heroine. Rather than a romantic take and sing about this desire, she is a ghost that you cannot really sympathise with. There have been some great adaptations through the years. The 1967 BBC version saw Ian McShane as Heathcliff and the late Angela Scoular as Catherine Earnshaw. A 1978 T.V. adaptation starred Ken Hutchison and Kay Adshead. In terms of recent versions, a 2022 film starring Jet Jandreau and Bryan Ferriter was produced. There hasn’t been a T.V. adaptation for a while. However, on each occasion, there is not really much connection with Kate Bush’s song. I am not suggesting the track should  be used in adaptations, though I would like to think that there would be some form of retrospection of her classic.

Despite numerous versions of the novel being brought to the screen, could you say that any feel distinctly ‘Kate Bush’? In terms of a perhaps less orthodox or conventional telling of the novel. Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights seems so unusual and unique. No wonder it captured attention back in 1978. Emerald Fennell’s new film version has drawn a lot of attention. Some have criticised the casting and have slated the film. The trailer has definitely garnered reaction. Wuthering Heights is likely to be among the most discussed films of next year. It is out on 14th February. I am going to come to an interview from Vogue with its star, Margot Robbie. She stars opposite Jacob Elordi in a film that I feel is a much needed twist. Fennell very much bringing something distinct to her version. Perhaps quite unconventional and controversial in its way, I do feel a lot of the previous versions have been quite samey. Not really taking the text in a new direction. It would be nice to see a modern-day version that takes the novel and puts it in today’s culture. However, though Emerald Fennell is keeping things pure in terms of the time period, there is going to be something darker and a bit edgier in her version. I think the casting is brilliant. I sort of think of Margot Robbie as someone who is a Kate Bush fan. If she became a director, I’d like to imagine her slipping a Bush song in the mix. My hope is that this version of Wuthering Heights not only gets people listening to Kate Bush’s 1978 single. In a strange way, I feel Emerald Fennell links to Kate Bush. Being unconventional and out of the ordinary. Not in a bad way. It is hard to put into words, though people draw parallels in the bold, artistic vision of Fennell and they note that her creative spirit aligns with Bush's unique style. As Emerald Fennell is a Kate Bush fan, I do hope that her film will get people listen to arguably the best Wuthering Heights adaptation: the 1978 debut single from one fo the greatest artists of all time.

I do want to bring in parts of a Vogue interview from late last year with Margot Robbie. Can we draw parallels between Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw and Kate Bush’s? I love Margot Robbie’s film roles and I think of Kate Bush. In terms of how Robbie can play these incredible heroines who are cool and kick-ass, though she can also switch to these romantic leads and then play historical characters. Such an adaptable and curious actor, I think Robbie’s version of Catherine Earnshaw will be closer to Kate Bush’s song. The spirit of that amazing single. Charli xcx, who recorded the songs for the Wuthering Heights soundtrack, is a big Kate Bush fan. In terms of the way Margot Robbie conducts her private life and keeps the personal personal, that puts me in mind of Kate Bush. Her boldness and how she cannot be categorised and easily defined, another quality of Kate Bush. I do think Robbie’s portrayal is going to be the closest we will get to the physical embodiment of Kate Bush’s Cathy. What that song summons. I want to get to some extracts from that recent Vogue interview:

“The first officially released photo showed Elordi’s finger entering Robbie’s open mouth, along with a few tufts of grass (twisted, earthy eroticism forever a Fennell calling card). Then came a flurry of paparazzi photos from the set, which featured Robbie drifting across the moors in a sumptuous if somewhat off-kilter wedding dress. (Per costume designer Jacqueline Durran, an industry titan – Atonement, Pride & Prejudice – it’s a style that marries Victorian and 1950s fashion, and references both the portraits of Franz Xaver Winterhalter and the wasp-waisted elegance of Charles James.)

The gown raised questions around period authenticity, which were swiftly answered by a deliciously off-the-wall first trailer, a sweaty, sensual, skin-crawling, deliberately fantastical fever dream with glossy red lacquered floors, heaving bosoms and more outlandish, eye-popping costumes, soundtracked by Charli XCX’s “Everything is Romantic”. (The ubiquitous pop star-cum-harbinger of cool is providing original songs for the movie too.)

Add to this a smart, sexy tagline (“Drive me mad”) and the film suddenly became the most talked-about of the year – and it’s not even out yet. When it opens on Valentine’s Day, Robbie says we will all have to, “Buckle up.”

She is a producer too, as she was on Fennell’s last two films. As a result, the actor has been hands-on about every aspect of Wuthering Heights, including its promotional campaign. “The first image anyone sees of a movie is when you actually begin entertaining them,” she tells me, grinning. For that first photo, she says, “I remember someone being like, ‘Do you want a double [to have a finger and some turf stuffed in their mouth]?’ And I was like, ‘How dare you even ask me?’” She lets out a delighted cackle.

She was also captivated by Fennell’s Cathy. “I just felt like…” Robbie takes a breath, her fork aloft. “Not like she’s mine, but like I both understood her and didn’t, in a way that drew me to her. It’s this puzzle you have to work out.” She would have produced the film anyway, but decided to throw her hat in the ring to play Cathy too – though she didn’t “want Emerald to feel like she had to say yes”.

Fennell was delighted. “Cathy is a star,” she explains. “She’s wilful, mean, a recreational sadist, a provocateur. She engages in cruelty in a way that is disturbing and fascinating. It was about finding someone who you would forgive in spite of yourself, someone who literally everyone in the world would understand why you love her. It’s difficult to find that supersized star power. Margot comes with big dick energy. That’s what Cathy needs.” The first time she met Robbie, nine years ago, Fennell says, “She smelt so delicious, which is an extremely creepy thing to remember. But she has that fairy dust. And she never, ever lets up. She operates at a higher percentage than anyone I’ve ever met.”

Elordi concurs. “Margot is a force,” he writes to me over email. “And she makes it look easy. Sometimes I think she has Hermione’s Time-Turner – she can raise a baby, shoot a movie, produce four others and still meet for a beer at 5pm.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Mikael Jansson

Robbie understands the kerfuffle around the film’s casting, to a degree. Of the chatter over this new Cathy being blonde not brunette, she says, “I get it” because “there’s nothing else to go off at this point until people see the movie”. (Fennell also clarifies that her Cathy is older than in the novel, in her mid-20s to early 30s.) On the subject of Elordi’s casting, though, Robbie is quiet and contemplative. “I saw him play Heathcliff,” she says finally. “And he is Heathcliff. I’d say, just wait. Trust me, you’ll be happy. It’s a character that has this lineage of other great actors who’ve played him, from Laurence Olivier to Richard Burton and Ralph Fiennes to Tom Hardy. To be a part of that is special. He’s incredible and I believe in him so much. I honestly think he’s our generation’s Daniel Day-Lewis.”

The best reference point for the film as a whole, Robbie thinks, is Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo & Juliet. “It’s a literary classic, visually stunning and emotionally resonant. In one of our first conversations about this film, I asked Emerald what her dream outcome was. She said, ‘I want this to be this generation’s Titanic. I went to the cinema to watch Romeo & Juliet eight times and I was on the ground crying when I wasn’t allowed to go back for a ninth. I want it to be that.’” Their hope is that women “go see it with 10 of their female friends”. “And I think it’s going to be an amazing date movie,” Robbie adds. She has been encouraged by the response from early test screenings. “I was surprised by the fact that so few people had actually read the book,” she says of the film’s first audiences. “Quite a few had heard of it, but actually a huge portion hadn’t. So, for many people, this is their introduction to Wuthering Heights, which is exciting.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Mikael Jansson 

As with Barbie, a film much of the industry was sceptical about up until it was released and became an instant cultural touchstone, Robbie is determined to follow her instincts. “Everyone was like, ‘Well, that did well because of course it was going to.’ And I’m like…” She chuckles. “‘This was not the conversation at the time.’ I try to remind myself of that with Wuthering too. You have to just not listen to the noise and trust that the thing you’re putting out is what people will be happy to have.”

In many ways, Wuthering Heights is exactly the kind of film that Robbie wants her production company, LuckyChap, to keep making more of – ones with a female focus or storyteller, which “feel like they have the potential to penetrate culture and a reason to exist”. Projects in the pipeline include two directorial efforts from Olivia Wilde, new TV shows from Maid’s Molly Smith Metzler and My Old Ass’s Megan Park, and a movie from Rich Peppiatt, the Irish director behind the film Kneecap. (“I love Kneecap,” says Robbie of the 2024 movie. She saw the namesake band at Glastonbury last summer, too. “It was wild. The crowd was just mental.”)

She doesn’t think she’ll ever stop acting – next year, production begins on the 1960s Europe-set Ocean’s Eleven prequel she’s starring in with Bradley Cooper – but she’s also keen to direct. “That’s kind of where my focus is shifting to. I’ve wanted to direct for 10 years. I haven’t rushed into it, but I feel like it’s getting closer to that time when I’m ready to dive into that.” She’s just not yet sure what that project will be.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mikael Jansson

On weekends, Robbie hangs with the girls. There’s a group of her childhood friends in Australia, a gang of assistant directors who make up her London circle and in LA, actors including Phoebe Tonkin, Jessica McNamee and Nesta Cooper, as well as mates who work in advertising and PR. There was a recent girls’ trip to Miami, but mostly they drink rosé, host parties with mandatory themed costumes, often for no particular reason, and do karaoke until 2am (Robbie’s go-to is Cher’s “Believe”). In London, she loves doing “touristy shit”, including the Jack the Ripper and Ghost, Ghouls and Gallows walking tours. Next week in LA, they’re going to a pole dancing class.

When I catch up with Robbie on Zoom several days after that lesson, sitting in her light-filled office with a printed blue sofa and giant abstract canvases behind her, she’s still sore from it. Dressed in a monochrome Chanel tank and black Bec & Bridge trousers, with her shiny hair twisted casually into a low bun, she’s barefaced and in a slightly more serious and reflexive mood.

The only topic that remains off limits is her marriage to Ackerley, who is also her producing partner, and their son. As mentioned, the couple met on the set of the Second World War drama Suite Française, on which the Brit was third assistant director. They were London housemates before they got together and then cofounded LuckyChap. “I was the ultimate single gal,” Robbie told American Vogue back in 2016. “The idea of relationships made me want to vomit. And then this crept up on me”.

I think it was me thinking about Emerald Fennell and Margot Robbie. Women you feel connect with Kate Bush in many ways. I don’t think we will get any reference to Kate Bush in the soundtrack or interview around the film, yet I do hope that a young generation who are discovering Kate Bush and might also be fans of this upcoming film and would naturally check it out would then seek out Bush’s single. I feel the tone and nature of this new film adaptation screams Kate Bush in a very loving and positive way. How it does stand out and does something genuinely different. Bush, especially back in 1978, was not following the path you’d expect a female artist to. Producing music that was a departure from the sounds of the time, I know she is a huge film fan. I would like to think Bush will see the new film. Her single does deserve new streams and discussion when the film comes out (on 14th February), as I don’t think anyone will write about it. Margot Robbie, I feel, will link to Kate Bush in some form one day. Using one of her songs or doing something. I look at the trailer and promotional images and read that Vogue interview and something about Kate Bush comes to mind. That Charli xcx association. How she posted to TikTok a clip about her association with the film and doing the soundtrack and used Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights in the background. The most recent adaptation of this classic text does seem to be the most geared to Kate Bush. In terms of its risk-taking and originality. How those tied to the film are fans of Bush and could give her music, especially Wuthering Heights, a boost. If the Emerald Fennell-helmed film is a much-needed step in a new direction, is there a better adaptation of Wuthering Heights than Kate Bush’s single? I think not. Forty-eight years after the song’s release (20th January, 1978), it is clear that there is…

NOTHING quite like it.