FEATURE: Heart Is a Drum: Beck’s Morning Phase at Ten

FEATURE:

Heart Is a Drum

Beck’s Morning Phase at Ten

_________

ON 21st February…

we mark ten years of Beck’s Morning Phase. One of his most underrated albums, Morning Phase acts as a companion piece to 2002’s Sea Change. Almost every credited musician who was involved with Sea Change returned to record for Morning Phase (with the sole exception being Sea Change producer Nigel Godrich). I am going to end with some reviews for Morning Phase. Six years after Modern Guilt, Beck changed sonic tact. Modern Guilt is a fantastic album, though it is very different compared to Morning Phase. Producing alongside Dangermouse, it is a short album. One filled with paranoia and some drum loops and chunky guitars. It has a Hip-Hop feel in some respects. An album that has this special type of energy and anxiety. Morning Phase was a flip. Much more mellow and contemplative, it is a classic example of Beck being able to shift tone and sound between albums and creating something cohesive and natural. A top-five album here and in the U.S. – and other nations -, Morning Phase won the GRAMMY for Album of the Year. It also won for Best Rock Album and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical. Acclaimed and hugely successful, I wanted to look back a decade at this incredible work. Prior to getting to some reviews for Morning Phase, there are a few interviews I want to bring in. The Guardian spoke with Beck in 2014 about one of the most important and stunning albums of his career:

“Beck's new album, Morning Phase, is his 12th studio album but only his first in six years. Inspired variously by 70s LA rock and Nashville country, it's a reunion with the band with which he made 2002's Sea Change. It's a slow, almost ethereal affair, a far remove from his more rambunctious records like Odelay or Midnite Vultures. It's also, in places at least, a melancholic album, one whose centrepiece – the eerie, reverberating Wave – climaxes in a howled one-word refrain of "Isolation".

If you were to try to pinpoint a reason for this dark mood, there's one obvious candidate. Before Christmas, Beck revealed to an Argentinian newspaper that he had in recent years suffered "severe damage" to his spine and that throughout his "long, long recovery" he had been unable to play music. He gave no more details than that and doesn't address the subject directly with me either. It seems fairly certain that for someone whose life has been built around musical performance, such an injury would leave a deep mark. But when it comes to Morning Phase, there is a sense that Beck is channelling more than just that experience; a broader, more universal disappointment.

"I was thinking about it the other day," he says, "this idea of… how everyone has a different experience in life. Some just blow through things and keep on an even keel, others have these ups and downs, but almost everybody goes through a point that could lead to a bitterness or a cynicism. It's not what you set out for, hopefully things go well… but there's a point where some people don't believe in anything. I had run-ins with older musicians when I was starting out who were very bitter. At the time my attitude was like, 'Wow, I get to put out a record, this is the greatest thing ever!' But then, as time goes on, you realise what they're talking about. Some brutal shit. Some people don't make it, some artists get destroyed by it, you can really do your head in.

"There's a reason why I made these songs and this record. It felt very personal and direct and uninhibited. At the same time I'd hate to say it sums up some kind of mood or something because I'm now working on another record that's the opposite of this. I was trying to express things in a way that… like a lot of songwriters… in a way that might speak to or resonate with somebody else. Can you make [things] good again even when it's all been ruined and you need to start over? Can you find that again? I think that's what I was trying to reach for on this record."

Reaching seems an appropriate word, in the sense that things still stay outside the listener's grasp. As an artist, Beck has always veered towards ambiguity – not just in blending musical genres but in his lyrics, which rarely offer up direct meaning (and sometimes offer the direct opposite). A typical pattern can be observed in Blue Moon, a song on Morning Phase where the opening line sets out a theme – "I'm so tired of being alone" – but refuses to elaborate on it, in favour of veering into enigmatic imagery: "See that turncoat on his knees/ Vagabond that no one sees".

"It makes it more interesting if there's a little bit of the elliptical happening," Beck says of that particular habit. "Hopefully some of it translates. Perhaps it won't literally translate from the lyrics but somehow from the feel of the music. Even in the music, it's iffy you know, but it's a good attempt."

Morning Phase came together over a lengthy period and in uncertain fashion. Wave was the first song to be recorded – at Capitol Studios in 2009. Three other songs were salvaged from an abandoned project that had taken place in a flash in Nashville in 2010. His reunion with the five-piece Sea Change band came just last year but was similarly brief, totalling just two days. ("Getting all those individuals in the same room is like the aligning of nine planets," Beck says.)

Those final sessions form the core of the record and were characterised by a particular technique. "Everything is exceedingly slow," says Beck. "Almost impossible-to-play slow, you know? When a lot of the songs were being tracked we were always 'Slower, let's get slower'. Because the slower it gets, the harder it is to play. They get harder to sing. But suddenly these songs that could be just simple singer-songwriter songs, everything elongates and they become something else. It just has a spell to it, this suspended feeling, and I wanted a lot of the sounds to feel familiar, but also to have something a little bit haunting and strange about them. I don't know why I just thought it might make it a little more interesting." 

During his convalescence Beck had been developing his skills as a producer, working on projects with Charlotte Gainsbourg and Stephen Malkmus (a little randomly, he also chipped in on the Scott Pilgrim Vs The World soundtrack). He did all the production on Morning Phase himself, but unlike the lightning bursts of recording, it was something he laboured over for months. "I was replacing things, rewriting," he says of the process. "I have some records like that, where you write the thing about 30 times until you get something that you feel is OK; it isn't just trite or something you've heard before. This record was supposed to come out in October so I was working all spring, no sleep. Working 10 weeks, seven days a week, no breaks, working till three in the morning every day just trying to get the record done by July so it could come out in October. We got the record done and then it ended up coming out later. I wish I had known, I would have slept more."

The result is an album that strikes a tender balance between angst and hope, between something beautiful and something just a little discomfiting. Another outcome, though, is that Beck appears to have rediscovered his enthusiasm for making and listening to music. This at a time when the crushing together of genres that he pioneered has become increasingly the norm.

"That's gratifying for me," he says, "because I feel like I had a lot of bottles thrown at me over the years for attempting to do that." He talks up the work of Diplo and Kanye, but also Dirty Projectors and Ariel Pink ("LA art-pop-punk performance weirdo music that is, to me, just something that I grew up around")”.

I am not sure whether there are any plans for the tenth anniversary of Morning Phase. I have not heard of any reissues or anything special taking place. It is a shame, as Morning Phase is a tremendous album that warrants celebration and fuss. One that I would urge people to check out. I am going to bring in some sections of a Billboard interview. One of the most standout sections of the interview is where Beck says he doesn’t trust his instincts anymore:

“Morning Phase” started with a shared revelation of sorts, onstage, in May 2012. Beck and “Sea Change”‘s four-man backing band – bassist Justin Meldal-Johnsen, guitarist Smokey Hormel, keyboard player Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and drummer Joey Waronker – had reunited to play a last-minute gig at the relatively intimate El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles. It was a warm-up for a few bigger shows to follow, and it was a hot ticket: Beck hadn’t played his hometown since shortly after his 2008 album, “Modern Guilt.” And, though that stellar supporting band had been with him for a few albums in a row when they made “Sea Change,” they hadn’t all played together since. “In the interim, a lot of life has happened,” says Beck. “It had a huge impact on all of us, to revisit those songs. I think we were all feeling them in a different, maybe deeper way.”

Meldal-Johnsen later says: “It was pretty intense. I knew it would be like that. Something about the music we created together being the only thing that’s permanent during that duration of time is a heavy concept, but it was also joyous and rambunctious at the same time.”

“Morning Phase,” Beck’s 12th studio album, evolved naturally from there, picking up where “Sea Change” left off: the aftermath of the aftermath, the morning phase. Although he’d already started piecing together another new album with a series of high-profile collaborators, including Pharrell Williams – possibly due out later this year, “time willing” – Beck set those tracks aside to focus on “Morning Phase,” recorded at studios in Nashville, London, Los Angeles and New York over the course of several months in 2013. “I had some old songs, and I found the ones that fit together the best, and then I worked on building it, stripping it back, rewriting it and just kept going until I felt like it was getting better and better.”

Meldal-Johnsen says Beck and the band never explicitly discussed what type of sound they were going for, but it was inevitable: “It’s the same room with the same guys, with the same microphones and a lot of the same equipment and the same engineer. We don’t even talk when we start these songs; we just listen and respond. These are the tones and sounds and approaches that come forth from that recipe and these five guys. I think Beck responds to music in that trusting way, where he lets things unfold without judgment.” As Beck puts it: “Something just happens when you’re making a record, where certain things start to come out. It’s just something in the air. I might have been shooting for Royal Trux, and it came out Lynyrd Skynyrd, but it’s working, so…” He trails off.

I suggest that he obviously has confidence in his own instincts, but Beck quickly demurs, “My instinct has definitely gone awry; I could give you many examples.” He laughs and tells me about how, several years ago, he turned down repeated requests to write the theme song for a new cable TV series. “It’s about ad executives in the ’60s? They’re going to make a show about that? Really? Um, I don’t think so,” he remembers saying. “Yeah, just like the best show ever made!”

“I wish I had more confidence,” he adds. “I think that’s probably my Achilles’ heel. If I had more, I probably would have felt emboldened to make more interesting music earlier on, or really go for it in an artistic or songwriting sense. I’ve seen that kind of confidence serve other people really well. I really admire it. Like, I hope my kids have some of that kind of confidence that enables you to take risks”.

I will come to some reviews soon. Before that, The Quietus’ interview is worth highlighting. It is interesting how Beck’s colour and sonic palette changed between albums. After an album like 2008’s Modern Guilt, few were expecting an album like Morning Phase in 2014:

“At what point did it became apparent that this was a companion piece to Sea Change?

BH: I really wasn't telling myself that. It was more about doing a kind of record with songs based on acoustic guitar, piano... quieter, slower, as opposed to Modern Guilt, which was a collaboration with Danger Mouse, and the previous album [The Information] which had all these breakbeats that we'd created - we cut all the tracks live, and then remixed the whole thing, y'know? Those are completely different projects, there's a different orientation to those records. I feel like because there are different kinds of records that I make, that Morning Phase ends up being a bookend by default, because there's another five albums in between that are in a similar vein [to each other]. If I were allowed to make more records, I think, creatively, I would have more records like Morning Phase.

You lost a potential follow-up to Sea Change, didn't you?

BH: Yeah. I had a bunch of songs that I'd written over a two-year period after the Sea Change songs, which I felt were gonna be the next record in that vein. Then when I was on tour, the tapes were in a suitcase that was left behind at a venue. When we went to look for them, they had been taken. I think that partially had something to do with not making another record in the vein of Sea Change, because that was really heartbreaking to me. I was really proud of those songs, and I felt like they were building on the shoulders of Sea Change. I thought the songs were a lot better. It was a real step up. Unfortunately I hadn't memorised most of those songs. I'd recorded them on tapes as a reference, and I had them on tour with me so that I could work on them. But they were gone. It was sort of a shock that you could have a whole body of work and then the next day, completely gone. So I think for several years I was just a little bit frustrated and didn't want to have anything to do with writing a song on an acoustic guitar. [laughs] I ended up making another record with the Dust Brothers [Guero] because we had a lot of unfinished material. Then I did another record with Nigel [The Information] where we did the opposite of Sea Change. He wanted to do a kind of beat-driven hip hop record.

Godrich has since started the electronically-orientated Ultraista (with frequent Beck collaborator Joey Waronker) but The Information must have been quite a departure for him at the time?

BH: I think that was a real laboratory, and a bit of school, those sessions. Because I had been working with songs that had beats and that sort of production for years, but doing it with him, y'know, we were starting from scratch. There were no samples or programming, it was just all live. So I think for him, it was like beat school. It was kind of an experiment. It felt like we were sixteen year olds let loose, it had that kind of energy to it. A lot of discovery. It's a little rough around the edges, which was how we approached it, wanting to make it not so polished. Something you would make when you're just still trying to figure it all out. Because as time goes on, you learn how to do certain things properly, and I think with the nature of the songs we were trying to do, the production needed to be a little bit raw for it have that kind of energy.

In contrast to The Information, Morning Phase is an exceedingly lush and 'produced' album. Do you think this quality, along with the recurrent images of sun and sea, derives from a uniquely Californian outlook?

BH: I'm so bad at that. I'm not sure what a Californian outlook is. Because I grew up in California, but in East LA. I never saw the sea. All we saw was smog and urban blight! The palm trees had rats the size of cats, the public transportation - it could take two to three hours to get from one side of the town to the other. I only partially relate to that view of California. But y'know, I spent a number of years living in the country and in the mountains, in the elements, so I think some of that came through in the songs on this record. Maybe some of the other material that I've worked on over the last five years, but particularly this record.

Do you miss the time when fewer people were paying attention? When you wouldn't get instant feedback via the internet?

BH: I think most musicians in the last ten or fifteen years have been making a massive adjustment to that. This kind of seemingly consensus opinion that you get through the internet, through blogs, and comments and feedback from social media, all these things present musicians, filmmakers, any creative person with this kind of instant feedback that is intense, a little bit intimidating. Sometimes I think it can warp your sense of what you're doing. And I think that it has warped people's perspectives. It's messed with mine a bit and with other musicians I know. I've talked with friends of mine, they've had this discussion with a lot of other musicians, there have been these sort of growing pains to becoming accustomed to that kind of feedback. And possibly a period of time where there's been some self-consciousness. For myself, I feel like I've come out of [that] for the most part, because I'm used to it, but I would say that it was a little bit… it has taken some adjustment, and maybe I think differently about things I'm doing, question things in a way that I never would have in the 90s, when I was starting out”.

I am going to wrap things up with a couple of positive reviews. NME were among those to provide their spin on an amazing album. From an artist many might assume to be nothing but craziness and oddity, there is something deeper, more grounded and personal working through Morning Phase. I have been revisiting the album a bit ahead of the tenth anniversary. It still elicits emotions and response after every visit:

“At some point in the six years that have elapsed since the release of Beck’s 2008 album ‘Modern Guilt’, the inveterate musical shape-shifter has finally relaxed into a stereotype. The Los Angeles native has long flirted with the idea of the hippyish singer-songwriter, the long-haired troubadour penning harmony-laden folk-rock tunes from his house in Laurel Canyon. On this, his 12th album, he finally succumbs wholly to that soaring, swooning late ’60s and early ’70s sound, as typified by The Byrds, The Mamas & The Papas and Neil Young. But Beck being Beck, he adds an idiosyncratic twist in the shape of a majestic bleakness that hangs over the album’s portentous 13 tracks like a funeral veil. That’s not to say there aren’t optimistic moments, but if you feel like locking yourself in a dark room and sobbing at any point during your listening experience, well, no-one would blame you.

Touted as his ‘acoustic’ album, ‘Morning Phase’ is rather more symphonic than such a reductive description would have you believe. After the sweet orchestral swell of the 39-second opener ‘Cycle’, we drift into the lush ‘Morning’. With simple strumming laid over delicate drums that roll like Pacific waves, it’s a breezy, slow-paced nod to the oceanic swells of Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s all too brief solo career. Here the sadness comes as subtle shoreside melancholy, with Beck plaintively cooing, “This morning/I let down all my defences”.

With his emotions on the line, in comes the softly psychedelic ‘Heart Is A Drum’, its shimmering instrumentation and heartworn harmonies straight from the lungs of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Twanging California guitars and a Gram Parsons lilt briefly lift the mood for ‘Say Goodbye’ and ‘Country Down’. Lead single ‘Blue Moon’ could be one of the most captivating things Beck has ever composed – a woozy bluegrass lament, spiralling around desperate calls of “Don’t leave me on my own”. The glumness is almost transcendental by the time we reach the orchestral misery of ‘Wave’, his echo-chamber vocals now intoning the word “isolation” over and over.

This isn’t LA in the blazing sunshine, as seen from a classic car cruising through Beverly Hills. This is the seedier fringes of the city just around twilight; Bukowski-like tales that feel warm with the afterglow of a party, but with a hangover on the way. It couples a moody sort of glamour with a concrete feeling of loneliness, and it makes for some of the most affecting comedown folk you’re likely to hear all year”.

I will end with Rolling Stone and their review of the majestic and stirring Morning Phase. Even though Beck has not really released an album like this since, I do feel we will get a Morning Phase/Sea Change-like album soon enough:

“ON HIS REMARKABLE 2002 album, Sea Change, Beck ditched his signature irony, break beats and jump cuts to vibe on the country-tinged singer-songwriter tradition of his L.A. hometown. Since then, the album’s stature has only grown – even as Beck left his fringed-suede jacket tucked away in a closet. He has finally put it back on for Morning Phase, which features many of the same players and themes as Sea Change. The result is a set that feels like an instant folk-rock classic.

The paired openers here, “Cycle” and “Morning,” set the tone. The first is a daybreak-conjuring string overture, conducted by Beck’s father, David Campbell, which introduces the LP’s musical themes. The second is a great early-hours song in the tradition of the Velvet Underground‘s kindred album opener “Sunday Morning.” Around bright acoustic guitar and chiming percussion, ripples of reverb and synthesizers blur Beck’s layered vocals and Stanley Clarke’s acoustic bass into a gorgeous watercolor-hangover haze. It echoes a lot of what Beck’s been up to lately – the lean formalism of his sheet-music Song Reader, the psychedelia of 2008’s Modern Guilt, the crate-digging of his online Record Club covers project, and the orchestral experiments of Rework, his Philip Glass collaboration.

At its core, Morning Phase is a record about what to do when the world seems totally fucked. Irony doesn’t cut it anymore; truth, beauty and resolve are the best weapons. “Looked up this morning/Saw the roses full of thorns/Mountains are falling,” Beck croons with falsetto swoops on “Morning,” then asks, “Can we start it all over again?” He could be referring to a crashed relationship, or a trashed ecosystem. On “Heart Is a Drum,” which radiates the cocooned warmth of Nick Drake‘s Bryter Layter, he asks, “Why does it hurt this way?/To come so far to find they’ve closed the gates.” Coming in the wake of a back injury so severe Beck couldn’t pick up a guitar for a number of years, Morning Phase‘s struggle toward the light feels as personal as it does universal.

Beck remains a master of pastiche, and trainspotters can have a field day mapping reference points: “Blue Moon” shares a name with the Rodgers-Hart and Alex Chilton songs, but more closely resembles Bob Seger’s “Mainstreet” getting abstracted by Brian Eno in a Laurel Canyon time share. The strings from “Cycle” resurface in “Wave,” a lovely voice-and-orchestra meditation that could almost be a Björk cover. On “Country Down,” reminiscent of Harvest-era Neil Young, he sings about a man in a lifeboat while Greg Leisz’s pedal steel draws chem trails across the sky.

The album ends with another aching morning song, “Waking Light.” But the line that persists comes a few tracks earlier, on “Don’t Let It Go.” “In the crossfire, there’s a story,” Beck offers, “how it ends, we do not know.” With lyrical nods to Bob Dylan‘s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” and the crossfi rehurricane birth in the Stones‘ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” the song is in effect about how musical storytelling helps us push through terrible times. Morning Phase aspires to no less”.

On 21st February, Beck’s Morning Phase turns ten. One of the best albums of his career, everyone needs to hear it. I know that there will be celebration on the day. Hopefully, songs from the album will be played on some radio stations. After a decade, Morning Phase still holds such power and emotion. Go and take some time out and listen to this…

WORK of brilliance.

FEATURE: A Live Phenomenon: Kate Bush’s The Tour of Life at Forty-Five: Marking the Anniversary

FEATURE:

 

 

A Live Phenomenon

IN THIS PHOTO: Cowgirl with Pistol: Kate Bush captured during the warm-up gig of The Tour of Life at the Poole Arts Centre on 2nd April, 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris

Kate Bush’s The Tour of Life at Forty-Five: Marking the Anniversary

_________

THERE is a lot to unpick…

PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne

when it comes to Kate Bush’s 1979 The Tour of Life. I am going to finish off by marking the fact that we need something to mark the forty-fifth anniversary. Whether that is a podcast, documentary or issue of a live album, the fact is that The Tour of Life was hugely important. The warm-up date happened in Poole on 2nd April, 1979. It is a really important moment in Kate Bush’s career. Where she embarked upon her only tour. Many might not know that Bush’s stage sound engineer Gordon Paterson developed the wireless headset microphone using a wire clothes hanger. Kate Bush was the first artist to use that. Also, in terms of this huge live spectacle selling out and extra dates being added. There are artists who experience this now. If you think about some of the huge live sets and concepts from female artists of today, you can trace many back to Kate Bush and The Tour of Life. I don’t think there has really been a substantial release from the tour in terms of recordings. EMI Records released the On Stage E.P. on 31st August, 1979. It featured Them Heavy People, Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake, James and the Cold Gun and L'Amour Looks Something Like You as recorded at the Hammersmith Odeon on 13th May, 1979. An hour-long video of aspects of the concert was released as a home video, Live at Hammersmith Odeon, in 1981. The video featured twelve performances. In 1994, the video got a re-issue as a box-set, including a C.D. of the broadcast plus the video. Neither the E.P. or video make reference to The Tour of Life – a name used after the tour’s completion. Maybe better known as The Lionheart Tour or The Kate Bush Tour, I think there should be a cleaned up video of one of the sets. I think fans have tried to make HD videos of various sets, though there has been no official release. Many would love to get an album of The Tour of Life. As we are approaching the forty-fifth anniversary, I am thinking about that moment. When Kate Bush stepped onto the stage at Poole Arts Centre on 2nd April, 1979.

In terms of her band, we had Preston Heyman (drums), Paddy Bush (mandolin. various instruments and vocal harmonies), Del Palmer (bass), Brian Bath (electric guitar,-acoustic mandolin and vocal harmonies), Kevin McAlea (piano, keyboards, saxophone, 12-string guitar), Ben Barson (synthesizer and acoustic guitar), Al Murphy (electric guitar and whistles) and backing vocalists Liz Pearson and Glenys Groves. The Tour of Life did begin with tragedy. After that warm-up date in Poole, lighting director Bill Duffield fell through an open panel high on the lighting gallery when performing an ‘idiot check’ – looking around the venue to make sure there were no left belongings or anything that needed taking away. He would die of his injuries a week later. Mostly consisting of songs from 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart (the two albums she released to that point), there was also some material from 1980’s Never for Ever – these amazing songs getting a premiere. Divided into three acts plus an encore of Oh England My Lionheart and Wuthering Heights, it was this epic set that saw Bush move from the U.K. into Europe – the first date there was 24th April at Konserthuset, Stockholm -, before coming back to London on 12th May. Aside from reduced sets on 24th, 26th, 28th and 29th April because Bush was suffering from a throat infection, she undertook these twenty-eight dates. In 2010, Graeme Thomson (who wrote the brilliant Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush) wrote a feature for The Guardian about The Tour of Life. The question remained as to why Bush decided not to tour again after 1979. Her 2014 residency saw her based in London:

“An independently creative woman in what was still a very male world, Bush battled against a widely held prejudice that she was little more than a novelty puppet whose strings were being pulled by some unseen svengali. As such, the tour came to be seen as a testing ground for her talent. It sold out well in advance and the BBC's early-evening magazine show Nationwide sent a film crew to cover the build-up to the opening show on 3 April at the Liverpool Empire.

Brian Southall, then head of artist development at EMI, was also there to "fly the flag" for the company. He recalls Bush being "terribly, terribly nervous, but the show was just extraordinary. We didn't quite know what we were letting ourselves in for, this extraordinary presentation of her music."

Few other artists had taken the pop concert into quite such daring territory; its only serious precedent was David Bowie's 1974 Diamond Dogs tour. There were 13 people on stage, 17 costume changes and 24 songs – primarily from her first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart – scattered over three distinctly theatrical acts. Her brother John declaimed poetry, Simon Drake performed illusions and magic tricks, and at the centre was a barefoot Bush, still only 20 years old.

For Them Heavy People she was a trench-coated, trilby-hatted gangster. On the heartbreaking Oh England, My Lionheart, she became a dying second world war fighter pilot, a flying jacket for a shroud and a Biggles helmet for a burial crown. Every song offered something new: she moved from Lolita, winking outrageously from behind the piano, to a top-hatted magician's apprentice ; from a soul siren singing of her "pussy queen" to a leather-clad refugee from West Side Story. The erotically charged denouement of James and the Cold Gun depicted her as a murderous gunslinger, spraying gunfire – actually ribbons of red satin – over the stage. There was no room for improvisation. The band was drilled to within an inch of its life and Bush never spoke to the audience, refusing to come out of character. "She was faultless," says set designer David Jackson. "I don't remember her ever fluffing a line or hitting a bum note on the piano."

As the tour rolled out around the UK the reviews were euphoric: Melody Maker called the Birmingham show "the most magnificent spectacle ever encountered in the world of rock", and most critics broadly concurred. Only NME remained sceptical, dismissing Bush as "condescending" and, with the kind of proud and rather wonderful perversity that once defined the British rock press, praising only the magician.

However, the mood of the tour had been struck a terrible blow early on, after a low-key warm-up concert on 2 April at Poole Arts Centre in Dorset. While scouring the darkened venue to ensure nothing had been forgotten, the lighting engineer Bill Duffield fell 20 feet through a cavity to his death. He was just 21. Bush was shattered, and contemplated cancelling the tour. "It was terrible for her," says Brian Bath. "Kate knew everyone by name, right down to the cleaner, she was so like that, she'd speak to everyone. It's something you wouldn't forget, but we just carried through it."

Owing to demand, the tour ended with three additional London concerts at Hammersmith Odeon, following 10 shows in mainland Europe. The first night became a fundraising benefit for Duffield's family and featured Peter Gabriel and Steve Harley, for whom Duffield had also worked. They joined Bush on several songs, ending with a spirited, if rather ramshackle rendition of the Beatles' Let It Be. The second night was filmed for the Live at Hammersmith Odeon video release, which most involved agree never quite captured the essence of the Tour of Life, and the way in which it rejected the orthodoxy of the typical rock concert while simultaneously suggesting a template for its future.

Looking back, the most striking aspect is how ahead of its time the Tour of Life seemed. With its projections, its pioneering use of the head-mic, its multimedia leanings and its creation of a narrative beyond the immediate context of the songs, it was a significant step forward in the evolution of live performance. On Hammer Horror, Bush even performed to playback, an unheard-of conceit at the time but nowadays almost the norm for any show with significant visual stimuli.

PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne

Bush seemed born to play live, but the third night at Hammersmith Odeon now appears to have been a final curtain call. Despite the very occasional cameo – her last live appearance was in 2002 with David Gilmour at the Royal Festival Hall, singing the part of the "Evil Doctor" on a version of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb – she hasn't toured or played a headline concert since. She came closest in the early 1990s, announcing at a fan convention her intention to play gigs in 1991; Bush is a longtime fan of The Muppet Show, and there were rumours she had contacted Jim Henson's company to discuss working with her on a new stage show.

However, the plans came to naught. Instead, her innate gift for performing was channelled into lavish videos and one patchy short film, The Line, the Cross and the Curve.

The draining experience of conceiving, organising, rehearsing, performing and overseeing the Tour of Life may have outweighed any desire Bush had to repeat the experience. "I think it was just too hard," said the late Bob Mercer, the man who signed her to EMI in 1976. "I think she liked it but the equation didn't work. These are not conversations I recall ever having with her, but I went to a lot of the shows in Britain and in Europe and I could see at the end of the show that she was completely wiped out."

The mechanics of touring certainly didn't appeal. Bush's dislike of flying has been an active ingredient in her decision not to perform on a global stage, and having endured a promotional whirlwind throughout 1978 and 1979 she found that the lifestyle – airports, hotels, press calls, itineraries, entourages and precious little solitude – sabotaged the way she wanted to live her life and conduct her career.

Others suggest that Duffield's death weighed heavily; or that the tour, which was largely self-financed, was too expensive; or that, having shown her hand so impressively, she felt no need to do it again. "People said I couldn't gig, and I proved them wrong," she said. And as Brian Southall points out, "It did pose the problem: follow that”.

It is a shame that Bush did not tour again after 1979. Even though she disliked flying, I think maybe Del Palmer was less keen on flying. Bush found travelling tiring and was aware she was out of the studio and not creating new music. In 2020, Louder told the story of The Tour of Life. It is worth reading as they discuss the preparation involved in putting it together. It is clear that this was like no other live experience:

“But that was where any similarity with a standard rock show began and ended. On an ever-shifting stage of which only a central ramp was the sole constant physical factor, Bush was a human conductor’s baton leading the entire show. As the scenery shifted through the opening Moving, Room For The Life and Them Heavy People, so did the costumes – and the atmosphere.

“I saw our show as not just people on stage playing the music, but as a complete experience,” she later explained. “A lot of people would say ‘Pooah!’ but for me that’s what it was. Like a play.”

Indeed it was – or perhaps several plays in one. On Egypt, she emerged dressed as a seductive Cleopatra. On Strange Phenomena, she was a magician in top hat and tails, dancing with a pair of spacemen. Former single Hammer Horror replicated the video, with a black-clad Bush dancing with a sinister, black-masked figure behind her, while Oh England My Lionheart cast her as a World War II pilot.

Like every actor, she was surrounded by a cast of strong supporting characters. As well as dancers Stewart Avon Arnold and Gary Hurst, several songs featured magician Simon Drake, who performed his signature ‘floating cane’ trick during L’Amour Looks Something Like You. And then there was her brother, John Carder Bush, who recited his own poetry before The Kick Inside, Symphony In Blue (fused with elements of experimental composer Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie 1) and the inevitable encore, Wuthering Heights.

But at the heart of it all was Bush, whirling and waving, reaching for the sky one moment, swooping to the floor the next. Occasionally she looked like she was concentrating on what was coming next. More often, she looked lost in the moment.

“When I perform, that’s just something that happens in me,” she later said. “It just takes over, you know. It’s like suddenly feeling that you’ve leapt into another structure, almost like another person, and you just do it.”

Brian Southall was in the audience at the Liverpool Empire. Despite the fact he worked for EMI, he had no idea what to expect. “You just sat in the audience and went, ‘Wow’. It was extraordinary. Bands didn’t take a dancer onstage, they didn’t take a magician onstage, even Queen at their most lavish or Floyd at their most extravangant. They might have used tricks and props in videos, but not other people onstage.

“That was the most interesting thing about it – her handing it over to other people, who became the focus of attention. That’s something that never bothered Kate – that ‘I will be onstage all the time and you will only see me.’ It was like a concept album, except it was a concept show.”

Two and a quarter hours later, this ‘concept show’ was done and the real world intruded once again. If there was any sense of celebration afterwards, then the main attraction was keeping it to herself. “I remember sitting in the bar after the show at Liverpool and Kate wasn’t there. She was with Del,” says Southall. “She wasn’t an extrovert offstage. There were two people. There was that person you saw onstage, in that extraordinary performance, and then offstage there was this fairly shy, reserved person.”

“I need five months to prepare a show and build up my strength for it, and in those five months I can’t be writing new songs and I can’t be promoting the album,” she once said, the closest approximation to a reason she has ever offered. “The problem is time… and money.”

Not that there wasn’t a call for it, especially overseas. America was one of the few countries where she didn’t sell records, and the idea was floated that she play a show at New York’s prestigious Radio City Music Hall so that her US label, Capitol, could bring all the important media and retail contacts to the show to see what the fuss was about. “She’s not a great flier,” says Southall. “And she wouldn’t do it.”

Even more tantalising was an offer to support Fleetwood Mac in the US in late ’79. A high-profile slot opening for one of the most successful bands in the world would was an open goal for most artists. But Bush wasn’t most artists.

“Like most support acts, she was going to get half an hour, no dancers and no magicians, so just going up there with four musicians and banging out a couple of hits,” says Brian Southall. “And she wasn’t prepared to do that”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Max Browne

I am going to wrap up in a minute. Before that, this feature from Dreams of Orgonon looked inside The Tour of Life. The reaction and reception that afforded it was ecstatic. Proof that Kate Bush was a superstar. After two albums where she felt like a cog or not someone in control, this tour was an opportunity for her to add her stamp and create something that was meaningful and true to her:

“Every night of the show got stark raving reviews from the British press. Mike Davies of Melody Maker admitted going to see Bush “more as a pilgrim than a critic,” John Coldstream of the Daily Telegraph praised her “balance between the vivid and the simple,” and former Bush naysayer Sandy Robertson of Sounds announced she had “seen the light.” There were a couple reviews from more negative quarters, mostly notably by Charles Shaar Murray in NME, who opined that “her songwriting hints that it means more than it says and in fact it means less” and “her shrill self-satisfied whine is unmistakable.” One could smugly grin at Murray for panning a critically praised and influential tour in 1979, but why do that when he invented every sexist whinge about Lauren Mayberry more than three decades early? It’s a break from the orthodoxy of Bush’s tour reviews, and thus in keeping with Bush’s ethos.

An oft-commented on aspect of Bush’s shows in reviews was its synthesis of theater and rock. This is a glib and useless description are there were many “extravaganzas” in rock music at the time, but even among them the Tour of Life broke rank. Bush had more planned for her debut concerts than simply playing her new album — she was producing a stage show, a colorful spectacle with extensive costuming, mime routines, dancers, act breaks, poetry, and elaborate set design. “I think the most important thing about choosing the songs is that the whole show will be sustained,” said Bush later. “…the songs must adapt well visually: a show is visual as well as audial, so there must hopefully be a good blend of the two.” As per usual, Bush’s way of proving herself was unorthodox. While there were other especially theatrical rock acts performing at the time (glam was the world’s loudest costume drama, and prog acts like Genesis and Pink Floyd thrived on massive setpieces, and disco and ABBA were more theatrical than they were credited for), they were mostly playing their songs live with different arrangements and more props. Bush was staging a long play, with dance acts, characters, and spoken word segments. The concerts were made by small flourishes: “The Kick Inside” got a spoken prelude by John Carder Bush with a foreboding call-and-response (Kate hauntingly shouts “two in one coffin!”), “Saxophone Song” has a saxophonist projected onto the stage, and mime Simon Drake appears decked out in white make-up as Charlie Daniels’ devil channeled through Iggy Pop. A classic component of the shows is, bizarrely, from the “Room for the Life” performances, in which Bush is rolled around in a velvet cylindrical egg (get it? It’s a uterus). She eventually departs the egg and frolics with her band during the song’s outro, giving way to Bush’s greatest performance ever as she enthusiastically calls “a-woom-pa-woom-pa-woom-pa-woom-pa-woom-pa!”, elevating the worst song on her debut album to a highlight of her career.

It was a wild time for Bush. “It’s like I’m seeing God, man!” she said enthusiastically. When she’s onstage in a black-and-gold bodysuit and blasting her bandmates with a golden, it’s easy to believe she made that comment while looking in a mirror. It takes a shot of the divine (or perhaps a deal with it?) to stage a tour of this magnitude and success while dealing with such severe drama behind the scenes? It’s no wonder Bush stayed in the studio after this, recording closer to home all the time until she set up a studio in her backyard. Even when she finally returned to the stage thirty-five years later, she made sure her venue was in nearby London. 1979 was a different time. A Labour government was feasible, and Kate Bush was regularly on TV. She plays things close to the chest now, never retiring from music but often looking infuriatingly close to it. In a way, she retired in 1979. Kate Bush the media sensation was a spectacle of the Seventies. She cordoned herself off afterwards, becoming Kate Bush the Artist. Next week we’ll look at Never for Ever, the first post-tour Kate Bush album where she unleashes a flood of ideas into the world. What does one do after the Tour of Life? In Bush’s words: “everything”.

I do wonder whether there is going to be some retrospection and celebration ahead of the forty-fifth anniversary of The Tour of Life. Ahead of 2nd April and that first date, it would be amazing to see a video release or one of the sets coming to a streaming service or physical formats. A chance to hear something truly spectacular! There was nothing like this incredible live concept. Kate Bush’s studio songs given new life and scope. Even though people have discussed The Tour of Life and given it love through the years, there is opportunity to go further. As bootlegs of the show had poor audio, something that is cleaned-up and clear should come out. There are some okay-quality videos of the sets and various performances. Nothing really that is as sharp as it could be. Such an important moment in Kate Bush’s career, we do need to celebrate The Tour of Life. Such a remarkable, dizzying and spectacular thing, The Tour of Life still hold so much power…

AFTER forty-five. years

FEATURE: Bring Me Your Loves: The Magnificent St. Vincent at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

Bring Me Your Loves

The Magnificent St. Vincent at Ten

_________

AN album that you…

PHOTO CREDIT: Winnie Au

should buy if you have not done so already, St. Vincent came out on 24th February, 2014. A wonderful eponymous album from the alias of Annie Clark, I am going to come to some interviews and reviews around a truly staggering album. One that I love very much. Featuring standout tracks such as Digital Witness and Birth in Reverse, it is one of the best albums of the 2010s. Her fourth studio album, I think that St. Vincent might be one of her best and most important. Released on 24th February, 2014 in the United Kingdom and a day later in the United States, it was produced by the legendary John Congleton. Highly critically acclaimed on its release, St. Vincent won a 2015 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album - making St. Vincent only the second female solo artist to win the award since its inception in 1991 (when it was awarded to Sinéad O'Connor). I am going to start off with an interview from The Guardian. They spotlighted an artist who admitted that she is always on the intersection of accessible and lunatic. We got an insight into her remarkable 2014 eponymous album:

“She named herself St Vincent after a line in a Nick Cave song that referred to the famous Manhattan hospital, St Vincent's, where Dylan Thomas died in 1953. (At one point in our conversation, she segues into a highly entertaining anecdote about how, a couple of years ago, terrified of what she assumed was a rat running from room to room in her apartment, she picked up a volume of Thomas's poetry and threw it at the creature, killing it on impact, "even though I don't like any cruelty being done to living things".)

Clark's fourth album goes right through the emotional wringer: one song, Psychopath, is about a date she once had with someone who is now a friend; other titles include Regret, Severed Crossed Fingers, Bring Me Your Loves and Every Tear Disappears. In person, though, she is less agonised than ethereal and sprite-like (last week, the online teen magazine Rookie posted a charming video of her showing off her mean soccer skills). "I have a sneaking suspicion that everybody has dark thoughts, but maybe doesn't say them," she says.

As she polishes off a plate of eggs and spinach, Clark, who lives in the East Village, says that she has just arrived home from Christmas with her family in Texas. "In New York, I have to repress the urge to call men 'sir' and women 'ma'am'." (She smiles, then shivers. "I don't want to be 'ma'am' to anyone.")

At school, Clark admits people may have found her "a little odd", but that she was not "a figure of derision. I was always trying to get my sister to do fun, mischievous adventures, like to tip over the porta-potties (portable lavatories) at school or steal candy". She liked drawing and at five made her first guitar from cardboard and rubber bands. She made up songs and listened to classic rock and Led Zeppelin. Music "obsessed" her.

"When I was nine, Nirvana's Nevermind came out and that was a sea change across the world," Clark recalls, sipping her cafe au lait. "One day everyone was in polo shirts, the next in flannel. Suddenly my heroes were not C+C Music Factory, it was Kurt Cobain." She wonders, given how fragmented music distribution is now, and the proliferation of so much, so fast by the internet, whether something as culture-shifting as Nirvana could have the same profound and prolonged impact today.

Clark always wanted to be a solo artist. "My uncle told me when I was a teenager that if you want to be a person with confidence just pretend you are a person with confidence and eventually you will have confidence, so I did that. There's a fair amount of self-delusion involved. I never envisioned a Plan B. I'm almost immune to the idea of failure; it never occurred to me." She remains wary of working with others, though made an exception to collaborate last year with David Byrne on the much-praised album Love This Giant and subsequent tour.

This article includes content provided by Spotify. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue'.

With so many complex layers of instrumentation in her songs, is she a perfectionist? "There's a difference between perfection and being detail-oriented. Perfection is everything on time, in tune, not a hair out of place. That's vanilla. Detail-oriented is different: some songs are puzzles sonically. The producer and I slightly recontextualise sounds. We manipulate guitar sounds to sound like [other] instruments.

"I try to live at the intersection of accessible and lunatic. As far out as David Byrne and I go, we counterbalance that with a memorable melody or something for people to latch on to. I try not to put songs into ill-fitting clothes." And does her labyrinthine style owe anything to a love of classical music? "Stravinsky is my all-time favourite, his shit bangs," she assents heartily. "Like heavy metal and hip-hop, it grooves really hard."

She insists that however fraught her songs sound they are in fact "quite literal." Rattlesnake, on the new album, is about a walk she took by herself on a friend's ranch in west Texas. "It was a beautiful day and no one was around, so I thought, 'I'm going to take all my clothes off to fully experience this'. I was having this communion with nature when I saw this rattlesnake. I took off running and when I got home had a shot of tequila."

Another song, Huey Newton, named after the co-founder of the Black Panther party, relates what happened after she took a sedative to relieve jetlag while on tour in Helsinki. "If you take one and go to sleep, you sleep for 12 hours. If you take one and don't fall asleep, you're high. It's bananas. You're in that high state between sleepfulness and wakefulness. I had this hallucination that Huey Newton was in the room with me. We didn't talk about the Black Panther party. We just kind of communicated. We understood each other. I was as high as a kite."

She says she has been listening to Beyoncé's latest album. "What I love about it is that she's the biggest star in the pop world, where there is a lot of focus on youth, especially for the hot new female-whatever. And here is Beyoncé singing about basically loving her husband, having a baby and being a fabulous woman. She didn't come pouting with a lollipop and pigtails and be something she's not. I think that's very helpful for people to see."

Clark thinks "being a feminist by action speaks louder than arguing about semantics. Being a strong woman in the world is a feminist act. It's impossible to be a woman and not see misogyny, but I don't walk through life feeling like a victim. I've been very lucky. The strongest thing a woman can do is be successful, powerful and excel at whatever they choose to excel at."

While her songs are drenched in the trials of love and relationships, Clark is single. "I live an absolutely unconventional life where I travel 10 months a year, so it's not always the easiest to hold a relationship together. I didn't ever imagine my wedding day. Someday I'd like to have kids, but I don't have that burning desire to."

Abruptly, eggs and spinach polished off, she removes the beanie to reveal a surprising large, tangled mass of grey hair, totally different to her usual brunette style. She says was inspired by old footage of David Bowie "who had tried to dye his hair blond but it had gone orange and was awesome", and also by a blonde contestant on the last series of TV show The Bachelor, in which a group of women compete for a man's romantic attention. One of the women had one arm "and was understandably horrified to learn that as part of their date she had to jump off the side of the building". It's comforting to know that Clark, cool as she is, can be caught in the headlights of trashy reality TV just like the rest of us”.

Prior to getting to some reviews of the astonishing St. Vincent, I want to include a Brooklyn interview from July 2014. Two years after her collaborative album with David Byrne, Love This Giant, and three years after her solo album, Strange Mercy, St. Vincent was a big step forward. Her most confident and compelling work to date:

“Clark began writing the songs that would comprise St. Vincent almost immediately after the tour for Love This Giant—her 2012 collaboration with David Byrne—ended. “I got a good night’s sleep and laid around on the couch, and then the next day I was writing again,” she says. “I didn’t have a big plan. I started just taking things out of my little idea-chest and without any judgment going, ‘Oh, what’s this? What’s this? Can these go together?’ and just writing pretty furiously.”

Clark doesn’t separate well from the work—it sustains her; it’s a source of nourishment—and she tells me that she spent her first few weeks back trying to ease into a more banal existence by “partying—just going crazy to feel anything.” The transition was challenging. “I was going a little crazy because I didn’t have the adrenaline and release of a show every night,” she says. “I’ve spent my whole adult life on the road, and in my mind I thought that someday I’d want to take a big break. But what I realized is that’s not who I am at all. I love working. I love being creative. I think I’ve just made peace with the idea that there’s not some other way I ought to be living.”

If Clark is an inscrutable presence, her songs, at least, offer a little more insight. “I think you can’t write about things you don’t know, or don’t [at least] know on some kind of intuitive, emotional level,” she says. For St. Vincent, Clark says she mined her most formative relationships for fodder— “I was looking around, looking at my friends and my family and myself, and being like, ‘What are we doing?’”—but her presence in these songs is still tough, self-assured, and nearly anonymous. If anything, Clark’s reluctance to perform a certain kind of intimacy—to sound vulnerable, to equate emotion with weakness—is a subtle condemnation of our expectations of her.

PHOTO CREDIT: Winnie Au

Still, there are glimpses of a very raw place. “I Prefer Your Love,” a stark, loping ballad in which Clark insists “All the good in me is because of you,” was written shortly after her mother recovered from some unnamed but grave illness. Even now, listening to Clark talk about it, I can hear the tiniest shift in her voice, a crack—then a hardening, a recomposition. “She’s doing great now, but she almost died, which was the scariest thing ever,” she says.

Clark was born in Tulsa but raised in Dallas—her parents split when she was young and her mom remarried; with all the attending step- and half-siblings, she grew up as one of nine children—and she still spends some of her downtime in Texas. “My mom is a really sweet person to bring out [on tour] because she thinks everything is great. I’ll come into a hotel room or a city and be like, ‘Ugh, I’ve been here seven times and it’s cool, but I’m gonna take a nap.’ And she’ll go and find the smallest thing that she just thinks is so interesting and fascinating,” she says. “You know, I’ll never forget being on the Byrne tour and bringing her along to Louisville. We were walking downtown, which is fine and cute, and she saw this green painted wall, and she was like, ‘That is the most beautiful color.’ And I was just like, ‘Oh my god, I wish I had your brain.’ I never would have noticed that in a million years.”

Her mother’s illness is present on St. Vincent, if never explicitly addressed. “I started writing this record right after the coast was clear, so in that way I was really checked in with myself and my senses of empathy and compassion,” Clark says. “I don’t mean it arrogantly, but the music part is very easy for me. I could write music all day, but having a song where it feels like a ghost is walking through the room…” She pauses. “I sang it in one take and just cried a lot and then it was done. I wasn’t in such dire straits, by any means, making this record. But I wanted to make sure everything had heart. Making music’s easy. I could come up with some crazy arrangement for you in five minutes, but that doesn’t make a song. A song is something else.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Winnie Au

We talk for a while about aspirational jams, all the songs and genres (gangsta rap, arena rock, commercial country) that are rarely relatable in a literal way but become anthems nonetheless. By the time we get to Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded”— “Is that a pedophile song?” Clark asks—we’re both snickering. “I’ve never felt like that,” she says. “I’ve never felt that whole rocky strut. I can’t even meet you halfway. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Or even the stuff that’s like, ‘We’ll be together forever!’ I’m like, ‘Really? You won’t! That’s not how life works. I hate to break it to you and I wish you all the best, but—you know what I mean?’”

Clark, for her part, isn’t one to indulge romantic fantasies, and she’s adopted a similarly hard line about her career. “If you’re lucky enough to find yourself in this position, you better play till your hands bleed and just give it all you have,” she says. Ultimately, work is the only thing she’s willing to submit to, and she’s made her peace with that. “It’s so liberating to be in a place where you don’t really give a fuck,” she says. “Where you can look back and say, ok, my instincts got me to here, so why in the world would I second-guess my instincts now?”.

I am going to start off with a short review from Rolling Stone.. They were full of praise for the songwriting brilliance of Annie Clark and the potency of St. Vincent. No doubt one of the very best albums of 2014, I would advise anyone who has not heard it to go and listen to it now. St. Vincent is one of the greatest artists of her generation:

“Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent) isn’t just a great songwriter. She’s a great song dissector, breaking down pop’s essential rhythmic, melodic and emotional components, retooling every impulse. No wonder her fourth album has a lushly distracted jam where she and a boy smash up and snort a hunk of the Berlin Wall (“Prince Johnny”) – finding new uses for old structures is kind of her thing.

St. Vincent is her tightest, tensest, best set of songs to date, with wry, twisty beats pushing her lovably ornery melodies toward grueling revelations. On the spring-grooved “Rattlesnake,” a clothes-free walk turns dangerous; the poetic, personal “Huey Newton,” named after the assassinated Black Panther, starts out shyly and explodes into mordant sludge rock; “Psychopath” is where her Kate Bush side and her David Byrne side (see their 2012 collaboration, Love This Giant) come together for a white-knuckled road anthem. Two live drummers – Homer Steinweiss of Brooklyn funk troupe the Dap-Kings and Midlake’s McKenzie Smith – help give the music a propulsive snap that plays perfectly off Clark’s chunky guitar noise. This album is haunted by isolation, dark hungers, regret and even death. But the playful way these songs contort makes pain feel like a party”.

Prior to coming to a feature from The Guardian – who named St. Vincent as the best album of 2014 -, I will bring in an extensive review from Pitchfork. It is amazing though not surprising reading all the positive words about St. Vincent. I am surprised that there has not been a tenth anniversary reissue of a hugely important and impressive work. It is one that everyone needs to hear:

“Annie Clark's bold and almost jarringly confident fourth record, St. Vincent, does not sound like it was recorded here on Earth. Its songs sprout with their own strange, squiggly lifeforms and are governed by unfamiliar laws of gravity. Check out the first one, "Rattlesnake", a song that's bare, Kraftwerky, and full of imagery that is somehow both Edenic and post-apocalyptic. Clark glances around: "Am I the only one in the only world?" She spots the title creature, gasps, and then comes this song's idea of a chorus, like melodic gagging, or distress expressed in an 8-bit video game: "AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH AHH AHH/ AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH AHH AHH." You often get the sense in a St. Vincent song that Clark has touched down on a desolate, previously unexplored planet without an air supply and is showing off the fact that—for the moment at least—she can still breathe.

Given the fangs she bares on St. Vincent, it seems like Clark could take that snake, easily. Over the course of four albums, many early-career guest spots, and a 2012 collaboration with David Byrne, Clark has been focusing her vision and sharpening her music's edges; were it not for Google image search, it would be easy to convince yourself that you merely dreamed those days when she wore butterfly wings with Sufjan Stevens and blithely flowing robes with the Polyphonic Spree. With each release, Clark sounds less like anybody but herself, and more forcefully embraces a darkness that was quietly stirring in even her earliest songs. "You don't mean that, say you're sorry," she chimed in a creepy, Bride of Chucky voice on her still-magnificent debut single, "Now, Now". But the smirking overlord that stares out from the cover of St. Vincent does not apologize, not for any of the unpleasantries she utters through gritted teeth, nor the much nastier things she blurts out her fingers.

St. Vincent continues Clark's run as one of the past decade's most distinct and innovative guitarists, though she's never one to showboat. Her harmonic-filled style bears the influence of jazz (she picked up a lot of her signature tricks from her uncle, the jazz guitarist Tuck Andress) and prog rock, two genres known to embrace sprawl. But Clark's freak-outs are tidy, modular and architecturally compact—like King Crimson rewritten by Le Corbusier. Even at its most spazzy, there's always something efficient about St. Vincent. The stark, spring-wound single "Birth in Reverse" doesn't waste a second on superfluous sounds, and the same goes for the corrosive crunch of "Regret", which sounds like a classic rock song pared down to its most essential elements. All the negative space in that last one makes Clark's riffs hit that much harder, especially when—in one of the most thrilling moments on the album—a solo strikes down out of nowhere like a cartoon lightning bolt.

Critics of St. Vincent call her pretentious. Fair enough—these are the sorts of songs that dare take themselves seriously and tack on easy suffixes like "in America" when they want to let you know they are Making a Statement. But there's an under-appreciated playfulness about Clark's music that balances this out. I can't think of much contemporary guitar-based music that has this much fun with texture—the rubbery whiplash percussion on "Prince Johnny", the stretched-taffy vocals on "Bring Me Your Loves", the gleefully synthetic-on-purpose sheen of "Digital Witness". At best, St. Vincent has a mischievous curiosity about texture (and explosions) that feels almost childlike. Recently my 8 year-old cousin asked me, with a wicked twinkle in his eye, if I'd ever microwaved a banana. I'm terrified to try, but I'm sure whatever happens—splattering, abrupt, radioactive—sounds exactly like an Annie Clark guitar solo.

"What's the point in even sleeping/ If I can't show, if you can't see me?" Clark asks on the single "Digital Witness", a rather on-the-nose critique of our hyper-transparent, Instagram-your-every-meal culture. It's tempting to label St. Vincent Clark's anti-internet album, but that wouldn't be quite right—it knows too well what a life mediated through screens feels and sounds like to be sending it up entirely. (In fact, digital life may have influenced her concise, anti-jam style: "I have some restless ears, and I now have a fractured attention span because I'm like living in the modern world," she said in a recent interview. "So I'm like, how do I make this sound interesting to myself?") "Huey Newton" is maybe one of the best songs ever written about falling down a late-night, vaguely depressive internet k-hole ("Pleasure dot loathing dot Huey dot Newton/ Oh, it was a lonely, lonely winter"); seemingly stream-of-conscious references to Black Panthers, Byzantine architecture, and the Heaven's Gate cult flicker by like puzzlingly connected Wikipedia pages. The common threads emerge if you look closely. From the self-coronated Prince Johnny to the "near-future cult leader" Clark has fashioned herself on the album cover, there's a fascination with power, faith, and mind-control running through these songs—learning how to sell yourself your own lines well enough to sell them back to other people, too.

"I was reading Miles Davis' biography," Clark says of her Beyoncé-like decision to self-title a record this late in her career, "and he says that the hardest thing for a musician to do is sound like yourself." In that sense, it's a perfect title. St. Vincent is the Platonic ideal of a St. Vincent record, executing with perfect poise everything we already know she can do. But this also is why it falls just short of being her best. That honor still goes to Strange Mercy, which had a capacity to surprise and defy expectations in a way that this record does not. Strange Mercy was easier to connect to emotionally ("If I ever meet the dirty police man who roughed you up," she cooed on the title track, a line that was as jarring for its tenderness as it was for its violence) and gave Clark a little more room to stretch her legs in the grooves. The pixelated shredding on "Huey Newton" and "Regret" are great, but nothing here feels as unhinged as the borealis chaos of at the end of "Northern Lights" or the razor-sharp coda of "Surgeon". The Bowie-esque metamorphosis suggested by the cover image doesn’t mean she’s reinvented her sound. Of course it's not the worst problem for an artist to have, but Clark's become so good at being St. Vincent that, on future releases, she risks boxing herself in. You hope the next album finds her coloring outside the lines she's so meticulously drawn for herself.

Still, it’s hard to ask too much more from an album that boasts melodies as lovely as  "Prince Johnny" and "Severed Crossed Fingers". That last one is the best closing song on a St. Vincent album yet—a self-deprecating, slow-motion parade of a ballad that sounds like if Lorrie Moore had written the non-existent lyrics to “Here Come the Warm Jets”. (This song and “Birth in Reverse” both take their wry titles from Moore’s great short story collection Birds of America.) It’s a moment of vulnerability and bleak hope rounding out Clark’s hardest, tightest, and most confident record to date—a vaguely ominous promise of better days ahead. "We’ll be heroes on every bar stool," she vows, sounding so sure of herself that you’re liable to follow her to whatever planet she’s headed”.

At the end of 2014, The Guardian crowned St. Vincent as the best album of the year. With many of her fans wondering if there will be a follow-up to 2021’s Daddy’s Home, I would urge people to check out, perhaps, her finest work. An eponymous album that has no weak moments. St. Vincent is worthy of every impassioned review that it has received:

“There’s a sense in which Annie Clark’s career to date feels like a process of refinement, gradually paring down the clutter of fascinating ideas found on her early albums until she arrived at the music on St Vincent: self-titled, she claimed, after reading a quote from Miles Davis in which he said the hardest thing to sound like was yourself.

There’s a certain swagger about that explanation. Actually, there was a certain swagger about everything Annie Clark did in 2014: the album’s cover, on which she stared impassively while seated on what looked like a throne; the interviews in which, a discombobulated Guardian correspondent noted, she engaged in “flirtation as a kind of deliberate power-play”; her Twitter-trending choreographed appearance on Saturday Night Live; the clip on teen website Rookie where she demonstrated her “sweet soccer moves” while wearing a ridiculous pair of shoes. It would have been a bit annoying if she hadn’t had a point, but her confidence didn’t seem misplaced: on St Vincent, Annie Clark sounded suspiciously like an artist reaching the top of her game, capable of doing it all. She could write beautiful, crystalline melodies – the woozy swoon of I Prefer Your Love, Prince Johnny’s astonishing octave-leaping chorus, the warped power ballad Severed Crossed Fingers – then arrange them in a way that made them sound more astonishing still.

From Digital Witness’s claustrophobic electronic funk of to the stutter and buzz of Bring Me Your Loves, the sound of St Vincent owed nothing to rock cliches, and didn’t bother with the comfort blanket of familiarity: it never sounded like Clarke was trying to sound like someone else, which is a rare thing in rock music these days. She could play guitar in a way that made you gawp, shoehorning tricksy prog-rock runs, the angular influence of out-there jazz and splurges of noise into Rattlesnake and Birth in Reverse, but there was no showboating about her solos: not a moment of St Vincent felt self-indulgent or superfluous.

Similarly, it was smart enough to wear its intelligence lightly: however many intriguing sonic ideas it bore, however meticulous it all sounded, however many references to Seurat or Hagia Sophia the lyrics dropped, however many allusions to the short stories of Lorrie Moore the titles carried, St Vincent never sounded like a dry scientific experiment or a smartarse intellectual exercise. Clarke’s lyrics pack a genuine emotional punch. She’s brilliant on human beings’ increasingly complex and fraught relationship with social media (“pleasure dot loathing” as she puts it on Huey Newton), and capable of making a song as oblique as Prince Johnny – during which you’re never really sure if the protagonist is a man or a woman, a lover or an errant friend – remarkably moving.

If you saw Annie Clark perform the latter song live this year, or watched her performance of it on Letterman, you’ll have seen her end the performance with a bizarre, heavily stylised piece of choreography. She plays the kind of guitar solo that you suspect Robert Fripp would approve of, then stagily crumples to the floor, before very slowly rolling down a flight of stairs and ending up in an inverted crucifix position. It’s simultaneously ridiculous and hypnotising: it seems to have come from a completely different, more intriguing world to most rock music in 2014. You could say the same thing about the album the track’s taken from”.

On 24th February, we will mark ten years of an utterly wonderful album. St. Vincent reached twelve in the U.S. and twenty-one in the U.K. It has lost none of its brilliance and genius after a decade. Speaking to Uncut in 2015, St. Vincent discussed her eponymous album:

“This is a more primary colour record than I've done in the past. It's generally a bit brighter. It was less emotionally fraught than when I was writing Strange Mercy. There's an exuberance in Love This Giant, and maybe some of that carried on into this record. It's entertainment. It's fun… I did a lot of sketching for St Vincent in GarageBand before going into the studio. The process of actually recording it was less about discovery and putting the Frankenstein's monster together, and a bit more about execution. There were a lot of things that had already been decided long before I walked into the studio. It was a different experience than Strange Mercy or Actor. Recording took about six months all in, around May 2013. John and I usually work every day and take maybe one day off every ten or twelve days”.

On its tenth anniversary, I know there will be a lot of fresh attention on St. Vincent’s eponymous album. A masterful work from one of music’s true originals, I am glad I have had opportunity to revisit such a wonderful album. There are truly no other albums quite like…

THE phenomenal St. Vincent.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Yasmin Hass

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Yasmin Hass

_________

THIS is a truly wonderful artist….

that everyone needs to hear! Yasmin Hass is someone I only recently discovered, though she is somebody I am now very much invested in. Born in Melbourne, Yasmin Hass-Sinclair was raised in London by her German mother and Jamaican father. The stunning Yasmin Hass is influenced by powerful, beautiful and eclectic sounds she was experiencing growing up. From Luther Vandross and Angie Stone to Eva Cassidy and Leonard Cohen, you can feel shades and elements of them in her musical blood and DNA. With a unique sound, Hass also has real affection in the important artists that she was exposed to when she was younger. With her debut E.P., Worst of Me, recently out, there are a lot of new eyes and ears on this phenomenal artist. I am going to get to some interviews with this very special artist. I want to head back to August. That is when oyuna interviewed an artist that, once heard, can never be forgotten:

“You have a rich cultural background. Do you draw upon this in your songwriting, and, if so, how?

It‘s definitely influenced my music taste and songwriting. For me it’s important I draw on the eclectic genres I listened to growing up, weaving them into one another, to hopefully create my own sound. As culturally, the music from both sides of my background are quite different, but I think they compliment each other in the best ways.

What are your "desert island discs" (pick 3, and tell us how they've influenced your life / music / style and why!)

Resolution - by Matt Corby: I listened to it with two of my best friends pretty much on repeat for 2 hours, when we were on holiday. After that, anytime I needed to escape on my own and not be able to physically, I’d play that song on repeat for a while.

Something’s Coming - West Side Story: Stephen Sondheim is my favourite lyricist. This song represents that thrilling feeling, when you know something is about to change in your life for the better, or you’re on the brink of something creatively/personally that you know has exciting potential.

Tonight - West Side Story: It has to be from West Side Story twice for me. This is one of my favourite love songs of all time!

What inspired your hit song, “Goodbye”, which has over 1MM streams?

I wrote Goodbye at a time when I knew I needed to end a relationship, as it was no longer serving either of us in the way that it should’ve been, or had been in the beginning. So eventually I had to face the confrontation I’d been avoiding and set a boundary, by putting myself first, whilst knowing I was nervous of the change it would bring.

We know you take a hand in your own creative direction, eg. your album covers and photoshoots. As a model, you've been on many, and as a singer you can now have more of a voice in your own direction. Tell us about what inspires you visually, during this process?

It can be anything from overhearing a conversation on the tube one morning, from a painting in a gallery, a character in a book, or a lightbulb moment as I’m drifting off to sleep. Film and theatre I also find helpful to spark something visually inspiring. And then of course, Pinterest. Slightly addicted to pinning things I find!

How is your "on stage" style different from your everyday style? Or is it not?

To be honest I haven’t quite figured out my style on stage yet. I go with how I’m feeling on the day, but so far it’s been very relaxed and similar to my day to day wear. But I definitely want to experiment some more, as I love fashion.

What artists have personally influenced you recently? List some of your favourites, and why?

Paolo Nutini’s a big inspiration of mine. I absolutely love everything about his music. And Leif Vollebekk’s another one. His melody’s and piano playing I could listen to for hours.

Yasmin wrapped in a SEREN Throw in pumpkin.

When do you feel most authentically yourself?

Definitely when I’m making music. It forces me to think about my truths and what I have/want to say”.

I am going to get to a couple of recent feature/interviews around Yasmin Hass. DIY spoke with Yasmin Hass back in November. Speaking with an artist who recently signed to the Cool Online label, they were intrigued by as-yet-unreleased E.P., Worst of Me. It was fascinating discovering more about Hass’ early music memories and some of her influences:

“Yasmin Hass isn’t a complete newbie to the industry, having put out a run of singles between 2021 and 2022. Feeling frustrated by her then-management’s push to pigeonhole her into a stereotypical R&B box, she took some time off releasing before returning in stunning fashion with instant earworm ‘Cleo’. Drawing on childhood influences as diverse as Nina Simone, Nick Cave, and musical theatre (not to mention her family connections to gospel and Bob Marley), she’s primed to enter a new era with the arrival of her forthcoming debut EP ‘Worst Of Me’ - a project which encompasses indie pop, soulful lyricism and electronic flourishes to examine the insecurities and uncertainties of your early twenties. We caught up with Yasmin ahead of its release to find out more…

What's your earliest musical memory?

Listening to my Mum practicing singing at the piano, then my sister and I always joining in. We’d request a Disney song every time, without fail.

What's the first song you developed an obsession for, and why?

‘Colours of the Wind’ from Pocahontas. I loved everything about the lyrics and melody. When I was younger I wouldn’t have thought about the message it portrays, but it is such an important one.

You'll be putting out your debut EP 'Worst Of Me' via the soon-to-be-announced label Cool Online. Can you tell us a bit more about the recording process?

Ah, I’ve had such a fun time recording this EP! I wrote both ‘Cleo’ and ‘Alexander’ with Ed Thomas (Jorja Smith, Stormzy), Ross MacDonald (The 1975) and Ed Allen. ‘Cleo’ was our first session together and it’s inspired by one of my best friends, who I grew up with. I debriefed them on what was going on in my life, which involved me feeling quite stuck in London at the time and Cleo’s decision to move to Lisbon after a break up. Then we got down to writing it! Oh, and a pizza break was crucial before I started recording the vocals.

Alexander’ was a similar process and I remember thinking about early on in a relationship, when you start to trust one another enough to begin unveiling parts of yourself you’re scared of showing. Then I actually wrote ‘Maybe’ with Jonah Summerfield (Dylan Fraser, Holly Humberstone) before lockdown. I’d come out of a relationship and was so unsure on what I wanted, as my ex had come crawling back a few months later (a classic), so I decided to write the second half of the song from his perspective. And when Ross produced it, it took on this new energy that I just loved.

You've got familial connections to Australia, London, Jamaica, and Germany. How do you think these different cultures and identities inform your work?

Being born into these cultures and backgrounds means I’m lucky enough to have been influenced by so many different musical styles growing up. I think this is why I found it challenging at first, in my musical journey, figuring out what kind of music I wanted to create in terms of genre, as I’m influenced by so many. But I’ve realised I can use it to my advantage, as one's artist project doesn’t have to be as black and white as sometimes I feel the industry wants it to be. As long as I’m proud of what I’ve written, that’s enough. I can have a level of playfulness and fluidity in my music, which I think only adds to the allure.

Are there any other artists breaking through at the moment that you take inspiration from?

Olivia Dean! I love her voice and music so much. During lockdown she saved my sister and me - we’d have her music on repeat. I also love that she’s constantly smiling on her social media, it’s so refreshing”.

I am going to end with a feature from CLASH. They saluted Yasmin Hass as a next wave artist who is going to have a long future. With Worst of Me out in the world, it is a very exciting time for the Australian-born artist. If you have not heard her music yet then do make sure that you check her out:

“If there’s an element of theatre in new EP ‘Worst Of Me’, she argues, then that’s all the better. She’s continually absorbing new influences, continually learning, and sharpening her skills. “I feel so lucky to live in London, to be around so many different cultures, people, food, art. The more I explore, the more I immerse myself, the more it rubs off, in the best way. Lots of my lyrics I’ve written on the tube, or walking to the studio, I seem to love writing on the move. My surroundings and this city definitely inspire me and act as a catalyst to my ideas.”

Sitting down with not one but two powerhouse producers, the sessions behind the EP hinged on pure enjoyment. Taking it in her stride, Ross MacDonald and Ed Thomas augmented her vision, but never interfered. “We’d write, chat for ages and mess around with different ideas. They made me feel incredibly comfortable and it’s always such a joy to bounce ideas back and forth. I love how collaborative our sessions are and there’s always so much to learn from the both of them.

With her new EP out now, most artists could be excused from putting themselves through the creative process for a while. Not so with Yasmin Hass, however – more work is in the pipeline, including live shows and a follow-up EP. “There’s a second EP on its way,” she gushes, “with the first single out in March. I’ve written so much music over the years, which is finally coming out. I’m so excited to share it! It’s been such a humbling experience to see my music being streamed and I’m grateful to all of my listeners, thank you for the support. Hopefully I’ll see you all at my first headline show in June! Can’t wait”.

Go and spend some time with the brilliant music of Yasmin Hass. I am sure there will be an album coming out in the next year or two. If you are new to her music, then it is a perfect time to dive into the Worst of Me E.P. I hope that there are tour dates later in the year, as I would love to catch her in London. There is no doubt that Yasmin Hass is one to watch. A phenomenal talent that is going to very far, make sure that her music…

IS in your ears.

_________

Follow Yasmin Hass

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/yasminhasss/reels/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/yasminhasss

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1ngeTsUw6Wo2W4TTgTSCcC?si=TvRjrO-qTCOZJYWazyo9Xg

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvAZICeK_lsbfDLxhfYvC1w

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/yasminhasss/

FEATURE: When I'm Home, Everything Seems to Be Right: The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night at Sixty, and a Desire for a New Documentary or Biopic

FEATURE:

 

 

When I'm Home, Everything Seems to Be Right

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles (left to right: Paul McCartney, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and John Lennon) in a scene from 1964’s A Hard Day’s Night (directed by Richard Lester)/PHOTO CREDIT: United Artists/Getty Images

The Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night at Sixty, and a Desire for a New Documentary or Biopic

_________

THERE has recently been….

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles posed in a portrait on a black backdrop in January 1964/PHOTO CREDIT: John Dominis/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock

a lot of talk about and remembrance of The Beatles arriving in America for the first time and them playing for the first time on The Ed Sullivan Show. That first appearance happened on 9th February, 1964. Sixty years of a T.V. performance that changed popular culture and made history. Maybe gaining more popularity in the U.S. sooner – in the sense Beatlemania seemed to have started with the band’s first visit to the country – than here in the U.K., when they arrived back from the U.S. in February 1964, Beatlemania firmly was waiting for them at the airport. They could not escape the screams and fame. Their lives would never be the same again. From then, George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney could not perform live or go anywhere without there being this huge roar and attention. Maybe not all bad, I wanted to think and cast back to 1964. It is a year when they released the film and album, A Hard Day’s Night. I am know there will be celebrations around the sixtieth anniversary. The album came out on 26th June, 1964 in the U.S. (10th July in the U.K.); the film on 6th July. Of course, one would hope they’ll be screenings of the film in cinemas. As this studio album has not been reissued and given the Giles Martin treatment – where we get demos and outtakes -, I hope that this will be the next project. I wonder whether anyone has written a book about The Beatles’ 1964. Paul McCartney’s photobook gives first-hand insight into the whirlwind year. It really was a storm! Like nothing we have ever seen and will never see again, The Beatles were world-famous and the most sought-after band in the world less than a year after their amazing debut album, Please Please Me, was released. I often feel like the title track from A Hard Day’s Night was John Lennon and Paul McCartney reacting to their lives. The fact they have been working like dogs and wanted to sleep like logs – yet the schedule and fame will never allow that! The opening credits and that famous scene from the film is as close to their real life as imaginable.

The band running through the streets of London and being chased by hordes of fans. Having to hide and disguise themselves so they are not caught and, potentially, piled-on by thousands of screaming girls and women! I am going to come onto thoughts about the sixtieth anniversary of The Beatles arriving in America, conquering the globe, releasing a successful album and film of the same name – and plenty more besides! Has there been a recent documentary about this time and new interviews with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr? It is amazing to think that this band that put out their first album in 1963, by the following year, had risen to levels not seen before. This astonishing success. In 2014, USA Today talked about the relevance and freshness of The Beatles’ first feature film, A Hard Day’s Night, fifty years later:

“Hard Day's Night is that rare film that brilliantly captures a specific phenomenon and is also timeless.

John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were much more than mods, rockers or mockers. Audiences first met the film-star Beatles in A Hard Day's Night in 1964 as they mischievously navigated the insanity of screaming fans, neurotic producers and voracious press. From the first frame, who didn't yearn to be immersed in their madcap world eight days a week?

"You don't just want to watch it; you want to be in it," says director Steven Soderbergh, who co-wrote Getting Away With It with Hard Day's Night director Richard Lester. "You want to be one of them. You want to climb inside of it and be surrounded by that kind of energy."

From all accounts, the filmed ebullience of the four lads from Liverpool captured their real-life charisma.

"That specific kind of exuberance is very difficult, if not impossible, to fake," Soderbergh says. He ought to know: He says his 1998 fast-paced Out of Sight was inspired by it.

The film's blend of indelibly engaging Beatles music, wacky shenanigans and anarchic humor made it thoroughly infectious.

Nothing like the films of Elvis Presley, Cliff Richard or other music stars before The Beatles, A Hard Day's Night was so witty, stylish and joyously unrestrained that it influenced a spate of later comedies and created a template for contemporary music videos. Its style of rapid pacing, zig-zag cutting and playful one-liners remains inventive today.

"It's still fresh because it was done with so much energy," says Giles Martin, who produced Paul McCartney's 2013 album New and collaborated with his father, longtime Beatles producer George Martin, on the soundscape of Love, the Cirque du Soleil show that incorporates Beatles music. "They were parodying themselves in a tongue-in-cheek way. They had a huge ability to be irreverent and flippant, but with meaning."

Lester conveyed the magic and mystery of a rare phenomenon when he re-created what it was like to be one of the Fab Four at that seminal moment.

"It was sort of happenstance, the planets lining up with the perfect filmmaker to capture it," Soderbergh says. "That's really what's happening: He's capturing something as opposed to staging it."

As the black-and-white film celebrates its 50th anniversary with Criterion Collection's release of the Blu-Ray and DVD versions, and opens for a special summer engagement starting Friday at more than 100 theaters nationwide, it's an optimum time to examine the massive cinematic contribution of The Beatles and the filmmakers involved in A Hard Day's Night.

The quartet began working on the film just a month after their legendary appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. The movie opened on July 6, 1964.

Lester let The Beatles' youthful irreverence shine through and raucously communicated the whirlwind of being the world's biggest musical stars.

Not only was it massively entertaining and brilliantly directed, the movie hugely expanded The Beatles' fan base in the United States and spread across the universe in a big way.

"At the time the film was contracted, The Beatles had not yet broken America," says biographer Mark Lewisohn, who wrote Tune In: The Beatles: All these Years. "It was made with the hope that it might help their popularity in America, but it was made pretty much on their strength in Britain. ... It was made to amuse but was also made as a vehicle for a pop group.

"Those kinds of films hadn't always been comedies. They'd been light with maybe funny moments, or attempts to be funny. It was a complete send-up of all the pop musicals before. The jukebox musical was the genre they were mining. And they just completely revolutionized it."

Lester intrinsically understood what an extraordinary phenomenon he was depicting.

"The Beatles knew Lester and he knew them," Soderbergh says. "They roped in (screenwriter) Alun Owen, who had an incredible ear for the kind of one-liners they were pretty good at coming up with on their own. Lester has such a great visual sense of humor and was able to put visual jokes on top of the verbal jokes."

Lester has said there was never any discussion about an alternative way of approaching the film.

"They were almost entirely asked to do what they normally did: to go to a club, to go to a rehearsal room," Lester, 82, said in a previously published interview included in a booklet that accompanies the anniversary collection DVD. He was not available to be interviewed for this story.

Lester cleverly incorporated improvisation. The memorable scene in which the four moptops attend a news conference and give hilariously goofy responses to journalists was unscripted, developed as they filmed.

"They couldn't shoot on the street anymore," Soderbergh says. "They were creating so much chaos because crowds were showing up. So Lester said, 'Get me a room and get me a bunch of journalists and they started writing up these questions.' "

Viewers gets a mounting sense of four musician pals held captive — or at least hemmed in — by their escalating fame. When they run onto an empty field (and sing Can't Buy Me Love), their sense of release is palpable.

Deftly conveying the surrealistic adventure of the Liverpool lads (without ever mentioning the name The Beatles in the film), Lester juxtaposed their impudence with the taciturn weirdness of veteran British actor Wilfrid Brambell, who played Paul's oh-so-clean grandfather. Lester has said he capitalized on the four pals' "private idiom" along with a faux sense of cinema verité, heightened in black and white. Flourishes of the Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati and Britain's The Goon Show infuse the film.

The blend of fast-paced visual antics and witty wordplay in A Hard Day's Night left a legacy evident in the Monty Python movies and mockumentaries like This is Spinal Tap, and it still resonates in comedies today.

As Soderbergh puts it: "Even for all its frantic feeling, it's still a beautifully crafted movie. Prior to that, films with music in them tended to be more staged and much more formal in their cinematic approach. This thing looks like it was shot tomorrow”.

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles during filming of A Hard Day’s Night in London, 1964. The Beatles’ film was primarily shot on a moving train/PHOTO CREDIT: David Hurn/Magnum Photos

I think, as 1964 was such an important year for The Beatles, whether there will be sixtieth anniversary reissues and celebration. Their iconic appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show would perfectly be marked by documentary including that footage. Maybe a special album or release around those performances. A Hard Day’s Night - the film and the album - are sixty soon. I know there were events around the fiftieth anniversary. As it has been a decade, many will be discovering that album and film for the first time. What about the studio album?! Are we going to get a reissue with some demos and extras?! Maybe a film release with behind the scenes, interviews or people discussing the impact of the film and The Beatles’ impact. I guess many would say a biopic is sacrilege. Committing that year and period of The Beatles’ career to film with actors playing them. I do think that, if there were no plans for a documentary or special, having a film looking inside such a hectic and history-making period would be amazing. Not having actors sing the songs themselves, you could use actual recordings but have the actors do the speaking parts. I don’t know. I do think that really getting a view into their world and what they experienced sixty years ago would prove hugely popular. There is a lot to mark and focus on. Go and check out all the videos you can on YouTube. You can watch A Hard Day’s Night here, buy the album of the same name here. I think it is also worth watching videos like this that give an impression of how nuts things were in 1964. The reaction they got from every note and move! I do hope, at least, sixty years after the release of A Hard Day’s Night film and album, that they are given…

SPECIAL treatment.

FEATURE: Innovation, Colour and Form: Forty-Five Years of Sony’s Walkman and Forty Years of the Discman – and Why We Need Modern Updates

FEATURE:

 

 

Innovation, Colour and Form

PHOTO CREDIT: mymind

Forty-Five Years of Sony’s Walkman and Forty Years of the Discman – and Why We Need Modern Updates

_________

THIS year is quite a big one…

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Ricard Jorge

when it comes to anniversaries of important music technology. I want to talk about Sony and them launching the Walkman and Discman. The Discman was launched in November 1984. We will mark forty years of its release later in the year. Even though some deride its lack of stability and the fact CDs would skip, it was a revolutionary and important breakthrough. The Walkman arrived on 1st July, 1979. It turns forty-five in the summer. It should be celebrated and compel makers to come up with a modern version. I know there are modern equivalents of the Discman, though there are few modern-day portable cassette players. Even the modern technology that is on the market lacks the personality, coolness and colour of Sony’s products. The photo I have included at the top was taken from Twitter. Someone discussing how cool Sony’s technology is in terms of the design and look. Before thinking about why we need a modern-day equivalent, I want to bring in some articles about the iconic Sony Walkman. The Design Museum give us some history about a device that, in 1979, allowed people access to music on the go:

“An Accidental Success

The Walkman was first created because Sony co-founder Masaru Ibuka wanted to be able to listen to music on long flights. The first model of Sony Walkman, the TPS-L2, was released in 1979, and it proved to be a huge hit.

Small and Sturdy

The original Walkman was created from aluminium, and the later models were made from plastic. Amazingly, the Walkman wasn't much bigger than the cassette tape itself! And it wasn't just the player that was tiny. Before the Walkman, there hadn't been any need for headphones that you could wear whilst you were walking; they were all designed to be worn whilst stationary. Headphones made before the Walkman were very heavy, but Sony managed to produce a lightweight set that weighed just 45 grams.

A bit too nifty?

The inventor of the Walkman thought people would want to listen to music together, so he put two headphone jacks on the player (remember that the headphones went over your head instead of the earphones most of us use today, where you can share one pair between two people). The Walkman TPS-L2 also had a HOT LINE button, which when pressed, muted the music on the Walkman and turned on an inbuilt microphone. This meant you could talk to someone without having to take your headphones off. Both of these features were later removed from the Walkman because people didn't use them. This is important as it shows a change in what was considered the norm. Previously, walking around with headphones would have been seen as rude and antisocial, but it soon became accepted behaviour.

Paving the Way to Bigger and Better

The Sony Walkman cassette player revolutionised the way that we listen to music. It enabled people to create soundtracks to their lives in ways that hadn't been possible before. The fact that you could use your Walkman anywhere changed that; music had never been so personal.

It was the first in a long line of portable audio players, and without it, we might not have the same objects such as iPods and MP3 players that we do today”.

I do think that there is a lack of consideration for portable devices today. At a time when physical formats like CDs and cassettes are coming back and demanded, there is not this sense of supply and urgency from manufacturers. In 2024, in a year when we mark at least two big Sony anniversaries, why is there not more of an effort to create something iconic for the modern consumer?! A range of portable devices for cassettes and CDs that would not price people out. As they are not revolutionary and new anymore, you can afford to charge between £50-£100 for a modern Walkman or Discman. The New Yorker discussed the significance of the Sony Walkman in a feature from 2020. Over forty years after it came out, I don’t think we have seen anything as groundbreaking in terms of music-playing devices:

“The Walkman instantly entrenched itself in daily life as a convenient personal music-delivery device; within a few years of its global launch, it emerged as a status symbol and fashion statement in and of itself. “We just got back from Paris and everybody’s wearing them,” Andy Warhol enthused to the Post. Boutiques like Bloomingdale’s had months-long waiting lists of eager customers. Paul Simon ostentatiously wore his onstage at the 1981 Grammys; by Christmas, they were de-rigueur celebrity gifts, with leading lights like Donna Summer dispensing them by the dozens. There had been popular electronic gadgets before, such as the pocket-sized transistor radios of the fifties, sixties, and seventies. But the Walkman was in another league. Until this point, earphones had been associated with hearing impairment, geeky technicians manning sonar stations, or basement-dwelling hi-fi fanatics. Somehow, a Japanese company had made the high-tech headgear cool.

Steve Jobs, then the young C.E.O. of a fledgling Silicon Valley startup called Apple Computer, had personally received a Walkman from Morita on a business trip to Japan, where Jobs went in search of disk-drive suppliers in the early nineteen-eighties. When Jobs returned home, he didn’t even bother listening to a cassette on the Walkman; instead, he opened and dissected the machinery piece by piece, reading tiny gears, drive belts, and capstans like tea leaves, to divine how he might, someday, make something so epically world-changing himself. “Steve’s point of reference was Sony at the time,” his successor at Apple, John Sculley, recalled. “He really wanted to be Sony. He didn’t want to be IBM. He didn’t want to be Microsoft. He wanted to be Sony.”

Jobs would get his wish with the début of the iPod, in 2001. It wasn’t the first digital-music player—a South Korean firm had introduced one back in 1998. (That Sony failed to exploit the niche, in spite of having created listening-on-the-go and even owning its own record label, was a testament to how Morita’s unexpected retirement after a stroke, in 1993, hobbled the corporation.) But Apple’s was the most stylish to date, bereft of the complicated and button-festooned interfaces of its competitors, finished in sleek pearlescent plastic and with a satisfying heft that hinted at powerful technologies churning inside. Apple also introduced a tantalizing new method of serving up music: the shuffle, which let listeners remix entire musical libraries into never-ending audio backdrops for their lives. Once again, city streets were the proving ground for this evolution of portable listening technology. “I was on Madison [Ave],” Jobs told Newsweek, in 2004, “and it was, like, on every block, there was someone with white headphones, and I thought, ‘Oh, my God, it’s starting to happen.’ ”

That happening never really stopped, even after the advent, in 2007, of the iPhone—a direct descendant of the iPod and Walkman—made stand-alone portable music players obsolete. The iPhone added the intraocular drip of always accessible Internet, a new way of escaping the cacophonies that surround us. But the headphones were here to stay. iPod sales have dwindled to the point that Apple stopped reporting them in 2014, but, that very same year, the company purchased the headphones company Beats by Dre for more than three billion dollars. At the time, this marked the single biggest acquisition in Apple’s history—proof of Sony’s prescience in discovering and stoking an incandescent hunger for auditory escapes in our daily lives. The Walkman wasn’t the end of meeting people, but it paved the way for surviving an unthinkable era in which we would find ourselves unable to meet at all”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Retrospekt

Most modern-day music-playing devices from Sony are functional and sleek rather than interesting. They rely more on digital music rather than the physical. As the physical market is growing, the selection of players we have out there are probably not enough. Very few are particularly interesting. By introducing a range of contemporary Walkman and Discmans in a range of colours and designs, it would definitely appeal to people now. Not just a younger demographic. For people like me who had a Discman and a Walkman when I was a child, it would be great to own something to play CDs and cassettes on. It is clear that Sony particularly had an eye for appealing designs. Even if some of the devices were not durable and had their faults, they were definitely innovative and convenient. I recall having a Walkman for a very long time. My Discman had its moments, yet I owned it for years and got a  great deal of value from it. This year marks forty-five years of the Walkman. It is also forty years since the Discman was released. Even if the oriignal versions were a little bland, through the years, Sony evolved in a sense. More eye-catching and attractive, they did not skimp on functionality and durability. Always with one eye on the look and the other with endurance. When we are seeing CD and cassette sales rise, why are we not seeing new models come out?! I guess some would say there is not enough demand. I would argue against this. If the price was reasonable and we could keep CD and cassette prices reasonable, it would mean a lot more people bought them and devices on which to play them. I hope that one day soon we see a company realise that the Discman and Walkman should not be…

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Society6

CONFINED to the past.

FEATURE: When I Was a Child, Running in the Night…. Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Eight

FEATURE:

 

 

When I Was a Child, Running in the Night….

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Louise Patricia Crane

Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love at Thirty-Eight

_________

IT does seem strange…

that any song from Hounds of Love would get a mixed reaction. That is the case with the title track. Released on 17th February, 1986, I wanted to look ahead to the thirty-eighth anniversary of one of Kate Bush’s most celebrated and best tracks. Kate Bush’s fifth studio album was released in September 1985. The sublime title track saw Kate Bush step behind the camera to direct her first video. She had assisted and co-directed other videos, yet this was her first sole direct. I am going to go a bit deeper into one of the most iconic songs in Kate Bush’s catalogue. Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for bringing in interview archive of Bush discussing Hounds of Love. A song that is still widely played and loved to this day:

“[‘Hounds Of Love’] is really about someone who is afraid of being caught by the hounds that are chasing him. I wonder if everyone is perhaps ruled by fear, and afraid of getting into relationships on some level or another. They can involve pain, confusion and responsibilities, and I think a lot of people are particularly scared of responsibility. Maybe the being involved isn’t as horrific as your imagination can build it up to being – perhaps these baying hounds are really friendly.

KATE BUSH CLUB NEWSLETTER, 1985

The ideas for ‘Hounds Of Love’, the title track, are very much to do with love itself and people being afraid of it, the idea of wanting to run away from love, not to let love catch them, and trap them, in case th hounds might want to tear them to pieces and it’s very much using the imagery of love as something coming to get you and you’ve got to run away from it or you won’t survive.

CONVERSATION DISC SERIES, ABCD012, 1985

When I was writing the song I sorta started coming across this line about hounds and I thought ‘Hounds Of Love’ and the whole idea of being chasing by this love that actually gonna… when it get you it just going to rip you to pieces, (Raises voice) you know, and have your guts all over the floor! So this very sort of… being hunted by love, I liked the imagery, I thought it was really good.

RICHARD SKINNER, ‘CLASSIC ALBUMS INTERVIEW: HOUNDS OF LOVE’. BBC RADIO 1 (UK), 26 JANUARY 1992”.

There is not much written about the title track from Hounds of Love. Reaching number eighteen in the U.K. chart, I am always surprised that the song did not get higher. I am going to give my thoughts on it, in addition to considering its importance and influence. With B-sides, The Handsome Cabin Boy, Jig of Life, Burning Bridge and My Lagan Love (depending on the country the song was released in), it is wonderful that we are still listening to and celebrating such a hugely powerful song. I always associate Hounds of Love with its ambition and incredible production. On the second side of the album is the magnificent suite, The Ninth Wave. The first side is where the more conventional songs are. Four out of five songs from that first side were released as singles (Mother Stands for Comfort was not). Hounds of Love is often ranked as one of Kate Bush’s best songs. The Guardian ranked Hounds of Love fifth in the best Kate Bush songs in 2018. Back in November, MOJO ranked Kate Bush’s fifty best songs. Hounds of Love came out first:

“Kate runs headlong from love and right into its clutches.

No matter how refined the circumstances of its creation – built at leisure in Bush’s new 48-track studio – or how newfangled its production – still tangible in the hi-tech stabs and pads of Fairlight, and the crispness of Jonathan Williams’ cello – Hounds Of Love is red in tooth and claw, its breathless, atavistic fear of capture mixed with almost supernatural rapture. Love is thundering through the psychosexual woods, hunting down somebody terrified of what it means to surrender to another person. The song opens with a quote from British horror film Night Of The Demon but that’s the only moment it feels like theatre. From then on, Hounds Of Love maintains a dizzying emotional velocity, the relentless double drumming of Charlie Morgan and Stuart Elliott stamping down on the accelerator. Bush’s voice might dip and soften, but those drums are merciless, while the strident backing vocals, like a hunting horn call, goad her on if introspection threatens to slow her down. It never lets up, every line heightening the pitch, closing the distance between song and listener. It ends with a suddenness that makes it seem like she’s hit the ground and you’ve hit it with her, breathlessly waiting for an answer to the question: “Do you know what I really need?” The uncertainty, however, is not reflected in the confidence – the perfect, dazzling completeness – of the song’s execution. On Hounds Of Love, Kate Bush is going at full pelt, chasing the horizon, running her vision to ground. Not really the hunted, but the hunter all along”.

There is some debate around the release date of Hounds of Love. Some say that it is 24th February, 1986, though the vinyl 12” single was released on 17th February, 1986. It is amazing to consider what was happening around the time of the single’s release. On 17th February, 1986, Bush was extremely busy! This website documents how busy things were for Kate Bush on 17th February, 1986 and the month that followed. The fact that she was recording with Peter Gabriel on the same day. I have always felt a film version of The Ninth Wave should be released. We can see that it was planned and discussed, though Bush abandoned that as I feel album promotion would have been too pressing and time-consuming:

“February 17, 1986

The third single, Hounds of Love, is released in seven- and twelve-inch formats.

Kate records a duet with Peter Gabriel for his fifth solo album. The track is called Don't Give Up.

Kate abandons the plan to make a film version of The Ninth Wave side of the new album.

March 6, 1986

Kate appears on Top of the Pops to perform Hounds of Love.

March 19, 1986

For the making of the video for The Big Sky Kate assembles over one hundred fans on the sound stage of Elstree Studios.

Kate records a live performance of Under the Ivy at Abbey Road Studios for the 100th edition of the Tyne Tees TV programme The Tube”.

Although it is played quite a lot on the radio, I still think there is not enough attention given to Hounds of Love and its themes. As it is Valentine’s Day today (14th February), there is something both appropriate and ironic focusing on a song released a few days after Valentine’s Day in 1986. There is a lot of passion and desire in the song, yet it is a young Kate Bush fearful of love chasing her down and attacking her. Bush opening up and being very open. Confessing to cowardice. Such a mature and intriguing song from a genius songwriter, this beautiful moment from Hounds of Love still makes such an impact thirty-eight after its release. After successful singles in the form of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and Cloudbusting, the fact that a supreme song like Hounds of Love barely got into the top-twenty in the U.K. seems very frustrating. Why people thought there were any better songs out, let alone nearly twenty! Despite the fact I have written about Hounds of Love a lot and explored this track thoroughly, I wanted to spend more time with it. I think it is one of the most powerful and beautiful songs she ever released. As a first-time director, the video is really accomplished and memorable. Stirring, cinematic and with a wonderful colour palette and composition, I am sad I have never seen Kate Bush play this song live. Those lucky enough to see her live in Hammersmith in 2014 would have done. Turning thirty-eight on 17th February, go and listen to Hounds of Love’s mesmeric title track. Seen by many as her greatest achievement, I think there are…

FEW can have any argument about that.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Infinity Song

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Infinity Song

_________

DESPITE being on the scene a long time now…

PHOTO CREDIT: Roc Nation Records

I am not sure how many people in the U.K. know about the wonderful Infinity Song. The U.S. quartet consists of two sets of siblings. They are a remarkable group that everyone needs to know about. I shall come to some interviews with them. First, here is some biography about an act that will blow you away the moment that you hear them:

“Infinity Song is a Soft Rock band based in New York City comprised of 4 siblings, Abraham, Angel, Israel, and Momo Boyd. With a blend of tight vocal harmonies, dreamy lyricism and sublime guitar riffs, the band creates a transcendent experience for the audience on every stage and in their recorded music.

Homeschooled academically and musically, along with their 5 other brothers and sisters, by parents who founded the Boys & Girls Choirs of Detroit, the siblings have performed in front of audiences since Pre-K. They were raised on classical, gospel and jazz, like Pat Methany, Marvin Gaye, The Winans Family and many others.

Infinity Song’s journey was a labored yet adventurous climb. In 2006, the Boyd patriarch, John Boyd, relocated the entire family from Detroit to New York and they began performing publicly all around the city. Singing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

in the morning, on 5th Avenue in the afternoon and Times Square at night, eventually Central Park’s Bethesda Fountain became a permanent stage for the next 12 years of their lives. After several years of developing a following and turning casual park visitors into loyal fans, the group was introduced to Jay-Z.

In 2016, the band was signed to Roc Nation by Jay-Z, who advised them to not conform to the label’s artistic culture, but rather allow Roc Nation’s artistic culture to catch up to them. 4 years later in 2020, the siblings made a giant splash with their debut album

“Mad Love” and several viral videos that amassed millions of views across all social media sites, garnering attention and support from some of Hollywood’s biggest names.

Infinity Song is currently reeling from the reception of their now viral single, Haters Anthem, that is being released ahead of their next project. With over 200 million people having heard the song, an endorsement by popstar Doja Cat, and a number of press write ups, the catchy single is making waves all around the world. Even leading many listeners to compare the band to legendary 70s groups such as Fifth Dimension, The Mamas and The Papas, and ABBA.

With this amount of excitement surrounding their next project, Infinity Song is ready to continue to solidify their place in the space where great music is being created in today’s culture”.

PHOTO CREDIT: John N. Adams III

They release a limited edition vinyl of their 2023 acclaimed album, Metamophsis, on 29th March. It is available to pre-order here. I would advise people to do that. I shall come to a review of that. First, some interviews with the group. In December, The Aquarian spoke with Infinity Song. At the end of a successful year – and one where they released an amazing album -, there was a lot to reflect on:

“The Boyd Family make up Infinity Song, a band of shining stars who mesh their heavenly voices together to create their own type of Motown and modern soul. Those lush harmonies are what created one of the most refreshing EPs of 2023: Metamorphosis. The brother-sister quartet started making music when they were young. As Abraham, the oldest of the bunch, told us, “Music is our family tradition. Our father was a choir director and there was no escaping it. It was a natural progression of our lives since we grew up. It’s a way of life.”

Alongside Abraham are the talents of Angel, Israel, and Momo. They each make up the heart and soul of this band, and their story begins in Detroit, Michigan right before the 2008 financial crisis. This was a city that felt the effects of the recession and saw the struggle earlier than most. “The recession started in 2006 for us. The automotive industry collapsed, so there was no space for artists when everyone is just trying to survive and figure out where their next meal is coming from,” said Abraham.

This was a musical household, though, so the family sang in music festivals and parks around Detroit until the public started taking notice. The Boyds soon chose to uproot themselves and move to New York City where they continued harmonizing in the subways, on the streets, and in Central Park. “It’s still difficult to be discovered by the music industry,” the oldest sibling added. “We have been signed for seven years and new people are discovering us every day. That journey of discovery is a lifetime battle.”

Angel jumped in to voice more about the band’s growth. “What we’ve learned –and what has been the easiest – is accepting the reality that the most effective way to be an artist is to divert your path being discovered by the industry that you are in by [going] directly to the people. When you are not relying on the gatekeeper to introduce you or place you on a platform and go directly to the people, that’s what works. TikTok is a great example.”

The foursome met so many folks during their course of their 16-year hustle. “Someone took a video of our sister Victory singing in Central Park. They sent it out to director James Samuel and that was our connection to Jay-Z,” Abraham explained. It was the start of something new.

Initially, the soulful family were not invited to the record label’s office, but their father wanted to make an official introduction of Infinity Song… and Jay-Z wanted to see them sing. “It was truly a surreal moment getting off the elevator and seeing Jay-Z smile at us. We sang [Aerosmith’s] ‘Dream On’ and another pop song by Tori Kelly. It was such an emotional time. Our father was choked up with tears in that moment. To be in the skyscraper looking down on Times Square with the king of the Big Apple was a moment to be made in a movie. We spoke with Jay and we shared stories about the grind of our music careers,” says Momo. Two years later, the group was signed to the hip-hop legend’s just as legendary label: Roc Nation.

Infinity Song has grown from there. Jay Z’s words of wisdom has helped them along the way. “I’m appreciative of Jay Z’s instincts to stay true to ourselves like a prophet that we needed to hear in order to stay true to ourselves.” Abraham described. It’s not a transferrable message that is really based on instinct, and all these years later for us to have those words resonate deeply in us and be empowered by those words is quite special.”

Empowerment comes from everywhere – not just experiencing the hustle or connecting with Jay-Z. The group’s name is spiritually based, Israel told The Aquarian. “Infinity is another name for God. Infinity Song basically means living life as instruments of God.”

The last 12 months have been otherworldly, as well. One of Infinity Song’s most popular tracks is off of this year’s Metamorphosis EP. Already a staple for them, “Hater’s Anthem,” is a cathartic breakthrough. “I feel like it’s not only ironic but also very literal. I wrote the song as a a comparison to my peers on the internet,” Momo shared. “It was an ugly space internally and it was festering and making me feel very dissatisfied with my life. Before I wrote the song, I wanted to be honest about what I was feeling. It’s probably the ugliest things that I felt, but I knew that I was not the only one feeling dissatisfied with life. I knew I could do better but didn’t know where to start. This song was a confessional, but I love to write in a satirical way.”

Infinity Song created something truly special for 2023 and is sure to continue to for years to come thanks to everything from the instruments they use to their amazing vocals. Looking towards the future, the band wants to get back in the studio and make more music, but there could possibly be a tour in the works, as well. The possibilities seemed endless as we brought our conversation with Infinity Song to a close. “Next year we are going to be some kind of tour. We don’t really know exactly what’s going to be next,” Abraham said”.

PHOTO CREDIT: John N. Adams III

Let’s move to this year. In an exclusive interview with BET, Infinity Song chatted about their Roc Nation journey and proving that Black artists thrive in the evolving landscape of mainstream and Indie Rock. I am excited to see where they head this year and how far they can go. They are a phenomenal musical force. They do have a lot of fans here in the U.K., though they are not played as much as they should be. Hater’s Anthem was a huge song from them last year:

“Black Gen-Z youth are more musically agnostic than ever. They aren’t trapped enjoying or creating art in music genres considered “Urban.” There isn’t a better example than the rise of popular Black artists in contemporary rock stateside. Rock music may have once historically marginalized the ethnicities that originated the genre. In recent times, contemporary artists leaning towards mainstream and indie rock have gained unprecedented popularity. Acts including Steve Lacy, Meet Me At The Altar, Hemlock Springs, and many more have proven that Blacks can succeed within the genre over the past few years. More recently, the Roc Nation signed group Infinity Song proved that point through genre-busting rock fusion.

“I think right now people are looking for something special, something unique, looking for alternative ways of thinking and alternative ways of creating,” said Thalia “Momo” Boyd, who makes up the group alongside siblings Victory, Abraham, Angel, and Israel. “We have things like AfroPunk and we have Black people feeling more and more comfortable with expressing themselves in ways that were considered a little bit weird growing up or ways that weren’t necessarily represented.”

Based out of New York by way of Detroit, Infinity Song spent years in the Big Apple hustling and performing. The group would get their big break when someone sent a video of Victory singing in Central Park to The Book of Clarence writer/director Jaymes Samuel, who connected Infinity Song to Roc Nation head Sean Carter, a.k.a. Jay-Z. Following an audition with the rap icon/mega mogul, the rest was history.

“One of the first things Jay Z ever told us was to be ourselves and let the world catch up,” explained Israel about the group that signed with Roc Nation in 2016. “I think that’s really indicative of his heart with us and what our relationship has been; especially in the most formative stages in the beginning. It was really just him wanting us to be authentic and our own individuals while expressing ourselves genuinely.”

The first release from Infinity Song under their deal with Roc Nation would be 2020’s Mad Love, which included standouts like the titular song and “Far Away.” A band full of musicians, it’s easy to see how much music they’re influenced by, from Fleetwood Mac to Tame Impala and Lil Yachty. According to Abraham, Infinity Song has deep roots in understanding history by growing up in the church alongside being exposed to gospel, classical, and jazz music. Their musical background primarily revolved around choral music due to their sheltered upbringing. More contemporary styles like hip-hop and R&B came as they got older, giving them a musical advantage.

“That delayed gratification helped because that music becomes secondary to your creative process,” explained Abraham. “Gospel, jazz and classical are foundational genres. When you come to understand those, then you get to understand the overarching genres of pop, rock and hip hop.”

Around the release of Mad Love, Infinity Song began releasing covers of classic songs from Fred Hampton, The Beatles, The Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder, and Tracy Chapman, among others, through various social media platforms. However, their cover of Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 song “Dreams” became their most popular cover then.

“It wasn’t the only catalyst that pointed us toward soft rock but it was one of those things that affirmed that the genre could be an avenue for us,” Israel said. “So “Dreams” is just a really special song for us all around. It means a lot to us.”

The cover is also featured on their latest EP, Metamorphosis, which dropped in October 2023. However, the album’s most popular single, released months prior, “Hater’s Anthem,” has become viral gold across social media. Featuring hilarious tongue-in-cheek lyrics like “And when I'm ninety-nine and wasted time / And you lived out a happy life / I still will have the peace of mind / To know if I wanted to try / I could have left you all behind / I could've crossed the finish line” felt incredibly fresh.

“Hater’s Anthem”'s insightful message of insecurity and jealousy makes sense in a social media-driven society where judgment is everywhere. It led to a huge moment, with the song and accompanying video reaching 7 million views on TikTok alone. Meanwhile, the romance-influenced track from the EP “Slow Burn” is growing at around 9.6 plus views on Instagram. For Infinity Song, they haven’t even scratched the surface of the success they’re aiming for.

“We’ve always loved these songs and we’ve always had the highest amount of faith in them,” explained Israel. “They’re always a pleasant moment when these things happen but, we’re not always completely shocked.”

The lack of surprise in the overall success of Infinity Song displays a level of faith in themselves as a collective and what they represent. It’s why they’ve been granted high-profile performances on major television shows like The View and The Today Show. Their music serves as a guiding light that reassures themselves and their fans that embracing uniqueness is acceptable but also enjoyable and desirable.

“It really strikes a chord with my heart when I see Black people,  Black teenagers or older Black people of any age message us and say that this is something that they’ve been looking for and that they have not seen this until now,” explained Momo. “I feel very successful when all people message us with those sentiments but it just hits harder when somebody who looks like my 15-year-old self says that because I think I would’ve needed somebody like me when I was 15”.

If you are unaware of the magnificent Infinity Song, then do make sure that they are on your radar. I am going to end with Soul Bounce and their review of Metamorphosis. One of those albums from last year that stuck in the mind the first time you heard it, for anyone who has not played the album yet, do spend some time with it. This is a group that I really love and feel have many more years ahead of them:

“The wait is over for Infinity Song’s sophomore project Metamorphosis. Led by the title track, their viral single “Hater’s Anthem” and a fresh cover of the Fleetwood Mac classic “Dreams,” the talented siblings make their mark in the soft rock space.

Metamorphosis follows their debut album Mad Love, which was released in 2020 and introduced audiences to their smooth harmonies and strong vocals. At that time, the family act had five members – Abraham Boyd, Angel Boyd, Israel Boyd, Momo Boyd and Victory Boyd, who also has a solo career. For this new collection, Victory steps aside to let her brothers and sisters shine.

The project is sonically reminiscent of iconic groups like The 5th Dimension and The Mamas & The Papas with tracks like “Metamorphosis,” “Slow Burn” and “No One Comes Close.” The guitar riffs and kick and snare drum-driven melodies on “Pink Sky” and “Hater’s Anthem” channel the vibes of ’60s and ’70s light rock.

The group’s distinctive harmonies and captivating vocals lend themselves beautifully to an impressive cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams.” They own the remake with their bass guitar-driven a cappella harmonies on an added outro. If you’re going to tackle a beloved classic, you’d better bring it, which Infinity Song does.

The Boyd sibs round out the new project with another remake of a classic with their version of gospel great James Cleveland’s “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired.” It is a clean rendition that gives a nod to their gospel music influences and their Christian faith.

Metamorphosis expands Infinity Song’s catalog with a solid effort that shows their range. Anchored in soft rock, it’s also giving folk, pop and inspirational music. Regardless of genre, Infinity Song is here to simply soothe souls”.

Go and follow Infinity Song. They should be heard by everyone. Go and investigate their music. A truly sensational sound that is like nothing else. I hope that they get the opportunity to tour in the U.K. at some point. There are a lot of people over here that would love to see. Nobody should miss out on the beautiful music that Infinity Song…

PUT out into the world.

____________

Follow Infinity Song

PHOTO CREDIT: @yourpillowbook 

Official:

https://infinitysongmusic.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/infinitysong

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/infinityssong

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/2PZThLYBW7XtcYVzQms8oM?si=w6xuk5VRQvuBGnykFfRNuw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5NHF6qpTaC0SbEqgV56BEg

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/infinityssong/

FEATURE: Spotlight: Abby Sage

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Abby Sage

_________

I am going to bring us…

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Alexander for 1883 Magazine

more up to date when it comes to Abby Sage. The Canadian-born, Los Angeles-based artist is someone you should know about. I will come to an interview from 2022, as it makes for interesting reading. We also get to learn more about this amazing rising artist. I will end with news that Abby Sage has announced a debut album. One that you will certainly want to look out for. First, here is some background from Primary Talent that takes us up to 2022:

“Abby Sage has a voice that demands attention. A tender soul with an observational eye, this pop artist seems able to tap into her innermost feelings, all while helping to express the lives of those around her. An empathetic spirit, she recalls the flamboyant theatre of Florence + The Machine, as well as the hushed intimacy of Clairo. Someone who is rapidly making waves on both sides of the Atlantic, she remains humble and softly spoken, burning with a subtle intensity.

Brought up in Toronto, Abby Sage was obsessed with music as a kid. Memorizing Disney themes and staying hooked to the radio, she started writing cute little ditties as a pre-teen. Indeed, her first song was about falling for Harry Potter’s schoolyard nemesis, the blonde-haired bad-boy Draco Malfoy. “Music was always the dominating factor in my life,” she says, “I just didn’t really realize it was an actual thing I could do, necessarily.”

As she grew, Abby continued to write. Few outside her closest friends had any idea of her talents, initially refusing to let people hear her sing. “The turning point was meeting new friends in Toronto. I began to record things, and make new songs, and gradually I began to recognize that this would be something I could take out of my room and pursue.”

The sessions continued, with Abby honing and refining her skills. Moving to LA, debut EP Fears Of Yours & Mine arrived in 2021, an incredible six-tracker brimming with potential. Hushed opener “Smoke Break” gives way to the pop potency of “Fever Dream,” while “Wasting Away” shows astonishing maturity. “I wanted to write about my own experiences,” she says. “That project was really cathartic, and I got a lot out of it.”

But now she’s ready to switch it up. Abby’s mother is British, and a visit to London saw her encounter the production team MyRiot. Real names Roy Kerr and Tim Bran, they immediately saw Abby’s incredible potential, and used their experience – garnered from smash hit sessions alongside the likes of Aurora, Halsey, IDER, and Rae Morris – to help her.

Relocating to London solely to focus on the project, she would travel on the tube into the studio each day, watching the crowds rush on and off the carriages, wondering where their lives were leading them. “I love music that dives into other people’s minds. Often, it’s only after writing those songs, that I’ve realized how closely connected to me they were. Everything you create is somehow connected to you.”

All of this culminated in her most recent offering, 2022’s The Florist EP, a project that represents a real shift, an evolution in her artistry. Moving away from the first-person perspective of Fears Of Yours & Mine, Abby instead drew from her unfamiliar surroundings opting for a more observational writing style. “I feel like a lot of my favourite artists move from project to project. It’s cool to move between those spaces, so you can compare and contrast as you evolve.”

Focusing intensely on her future, Abby Sage is ready to speak directly and eloquently to her audience. A rare, rare talent, she’s the quiet voice that speaks an undiluted truth. “Everyone is in motion, whether they know it or not,” she says. “It’s always there, deep inside of us”.

Promoting the exceptional E.P., The Florist, Sheesh got to know Abby Sage better. I do think that this year is going to be one where she truly breaks out and reaches around the world. This is an artist that needs to be on everyone’s radar. Such a huge talent with a distinct talent. She has some incredible tour dates set out already. Heading across North America and Europe, Sage plays London at The Lower Third on 24th May. If you get the opportunity to go and see her than make sure that you do:

“Abby Sage has a ruthless authenticity. As a fellow brit-music obsessed anemic, talking with her was one of the most seamlessly genuine and fun interviews I’ve had. Her latest release, “Backwards Directions,” follows Abby Sage’s two previous singles “The Florist” and “Pool Party.”  “Backwards Directions” sees Abby Sage continuing to amaze with sheer sonic beauty alongside an earnest vision that draws listeners deeply in.

With her highly trusted team of creatives, Sage has crafted an art that beams originality, both visually and musically. Alongside London-based producers Roy Kerr and Tim Bran, Abby Sage is ready to speak directly and eloquently to her audience. A rare, rare talent, she’s the quiet voice that speaks an undiluted truth. I am immensely grateful for the opportunity to speak with her about creative intimacy, the youthful angst of suburbia, and Scandinavian children. Get to know Abby Sage below:

Let's just dive into where you started roots-wise. Where are you from?

I'm from Toronto originally, but didn't really grow up there. My family moved when I was pretty young to the Bay Area, but we would go back to Toronto, Canada every summer (which I always thought was lovely). That is where I technically started with music, mainly because my dad played in a bunch of bands there when I was growing up and I was always curious. Before that point, I was putting out little snippets on SoundCloud, as one does.

Toronto and the Bay Area are relatively different culturally, would you say your influence is from Canada or more California?

That’s interesting because when I was in Toronto, we were pretty much in the thick of the city, whereas in the Bay Area, very suburbs. So I did have the youthful angst of a suburban child. My mom is from the UK, so I spent a lot of time there too. I feel music-wise, I pull a lot more from the UK style.

Who are your favorite UK inspired artists?

This is a recent one, Her name's Nilüfer Yanya. I think she's so sick, super super sick. She does things that are a little bit darker, and I love that. Of course, Amy Winehouse is my got-to as well. Last time I was there I met with someone who worked on a lot of her early stuff with her, and I just picked his brain for the whole hour. It was insane.

I would have lost my mind for sure.

I really did.

With this new album, did you find yourself branching out from your current style? Are you still looking for your sound? Tell me more about that.

It's definitely different in that I’ve genuinely figured myself out more. The first project was very telling of situations that I was currently in and the reflection on that. Whereas the new project is more observational in a way. I did this one in London, spending a month there in January, and finishing it there. I was just on my own for a while, and I feel as though you listen a lot better when you're really on your own. During that process, I did find a sound that I love so much; it feels really good to find.

Live music-wise, do you have any plans? What’s your gauge on performing?

I love it. We just played a show with Suki Waterhouse a few months ago in San Francisco, which was insanely cool. I do love playing live, and definitely want to do more of it. It really is the most immediate way to connect, and my biggest enjoyment of it all is seeing people face-to-face and their response.

And what are you excited for in the future?

I'm just excited to build a visual brand on top of everything. It feels really special when you hone into exactly how you want to present your music, whether that's on stage or just a video or something else. Aidan Dick (who does all the visuals with me) and I are in the midst of creating a little short film as well. On top of that, I've also been drawing my own merch line, and it helps that I have a heat press and a screen printer to actually make it too. I feel like that's a cool way to represent your music as well, through personalized merch”.

There are a few more interviews and features I want to check off and include before wrapping up. Vents Magazine chatted with Abby sage in November about the new single, Milk, and news of her debut album. This year is going to be a very exciting one for this simply tremendous artist:

“Word ‘round industry campfire has it that you’re gearing up for the 2024 premiere of your debut album – Yet another big congrats! Can you give fans a hint or three as to what they can expect with your debut LP?

Thank you! It’s far more reflective and vulnerable than my previous work. While The Florist was observational work, everything I’ve written in the last year feels so much more introspective and about me. And part of that too was keeping the body of work I was trying to create in mind. To me, a debut album feels like a true introduction to ‘you’ as an artist, and I wanted to introduce myself properly through these songs.

What does your touring/performing dance card look like in the coming weeks and months?

I just finished a lovely run with Gus Dapperton. I spent a few days in New York to relax and now I’m at the airport ready to go home and rot in my bed for a while.

Who inspires you musically?

Feist, Portishead, Nico to name a few.

You were born in Toronto and are now based out of Los Angeles. How do those seemingly disparate roots inform you as an artist and as a person?

I don’t feel a deep closeness to LA but have loved my years here, but I don’t necessarily feel that with Toronto either since I didn’t spend much of my life there. I’ve lived in a few different places so far but I’m very much still figuring out where I want to plant my roots for the next little while.

How is Milk similar to some of your past music? How is it different?

I think in general my writing always has a through line. I like to deliver messages in my music in subtle ways. I like the idea of an audience interpreting these songs in a way that feels true to them without needing to come back to me to find the meaning. That said, with “Milk” being one of my more introspective tracks I wanted to make sure I was able to show some more of ‘me’ than usual in a way that was comfortable for me, and I think we did that really well with the music video”.

Back in November, Abby Sage was interviewed by Her Campus. Having released the amazing single, Hunger, Sage talked about the songwriting process for it. She also revealed the hardest part of being an artist. And what it is like being a woman in the music industry. I would advise anyone who has not heard Abby Sage and her music to give her a listen as soon as possible:

“HC: Can you describe the creative aspect a little more?

AS: I love being very hands on with it, so me and a friend have been making a lot of papier-mâché for this project. We kind of view the period of this project as a theater kid resurrection. It’s a lot of breaking the fourth wall and showing the process behind the visuals and how things move behind the scenes a bit more.

HC: Could you describe your songwriting process for “Hunger” and how it has been different from previous songs?

AS: I think with “Hunger,” I definitely knew I wanted to write for a while, but I never had the nerves. I think the big difference is that this year, I felt brave enough to write a song like this and it just felt like a good time to be honest and make that introduction. It’s definitely one of the more personal songs I’ve released.

HC: What message are you trying to express through the song?

AS: I think a lot of it is how, in a lot of people’s lives, sex kind of gets dumbed down to something that is shameful. I think that the big message of [the song] is removing that shame because sex is such a natural and beautiful thing. So I think that the message is just to treat everyone as a beginner in some capacity and not be afraid of something that is beautiful. The visuals behind the music video have a message as well, with my journey of sex with others and then the respect I have for myself.

HC: How does your personal experience from your life drive your music?

AS: I think, especially this year, just spending a lot more time on my own, I felt a little bit more introspective. I think that for this project, specifically, I definitely looked at a lot of instances in my life and kind of built the songs around those.

HC: Can you describe this new project a little bit more?

AS: I think it took me a while to realize that all the songs were connected. But once I did, it just made so much sense to me where a lot of it follows. What I learned throughout my life, within childhood, and up until now in this point, this project basically just deconstructs a lot of the knowledge that has been passed down to me and what I choose to take away and what I choose to ignore. So yeah, it’s just about learning and growing and everything just piecing together during those very developmental stages.

HC: What do you think is the hardest thing about making it as a musician, especially being a woman in the industry?

AS: I think there’s a lot of expectation on artists to wear so many hats these days. It’s not necessarily just about the music anymore, but I feel lucky that I love to do a lot of the visual side of it too. But I think that it is quite a different landscape now where there is more expectation on artists to do everything. As for being a woman, it’s kind of just more of a respect thing. I think that it’s maybe a little bit harder to make that space for yourself. But, I think if you lead with honesty and truthfulness in everything you do, then there isn’t a massive difference”.

Abby Sage’s The Rot is out on 1st March. You can pre-order it here. The Los Angeles-based artist is taking her music on the road. An artist you simply cannot miss out on, it is going to be well worth getting her debut album. It will showcase her incredible gift. I will try and catch Sage when she comes to London. I can imagine that her live performances are sensational. The Line of Best Fit spotlighted Abby Sage’s new single, Obstruction, last month. They gave us some more information about The Rot:

“The track, along with the rest of her debut album, was produced by MyRiot (Halsey, London Grammar, AURORA).

When asked about the inspiration behind the single, Sage shared, “In "Obstruction", I wanted to personify a pestering thought. I think it was an important song for me to release a memory I had been holding on to for a while. It’s a thought that doesn’t leave you no matter how hard you try. It shows up in your living room, in your day-to-day tasks. I wanted to use very literal and realised language to describe the process of getting rid of it, ‘cut it out with a knife’… That felt like such a beautiful visual to me, physically cutting out a memory with a sharp knife.”

The accompanying music video echoes the sentiment, as the conflicting duality of the push and pull between holding onto a memory or killing it off comes to life. She explains, “When I tried to picture what a video for "Obstruction" would look like, I always imagined the setting of me having dinner with a personified version of the memory, the puppet, and going through those inner monologue motions. We dance, we fight, but ultimately I kill it off and mourn the memory but finally learn to let it go.”

Tracklist:

1. Milk

2. Three Floors, Three Doors

3. Jude

4. Phantom Arm

5. Hunger

6. Soak

7. Obstruction

8. Little Dove (interlude)

9. Back & Bone

10. The Rot”.

If you are new to Abby Sage, go and check her out. She is a phenomenal artist that has a long future ahead. I have recently discovered her work, though I am now compelled to follow her further. Go connect with Abby Sage on social media and check out The Rot when it arrives. It is clear that this amazing artist is going to go…

VERY far.

____________

Follow Abby Sage

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Alexander for 1883 Magazine

Official:

https://abbysage.komi.io/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/applesage/

TikTok:

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

Bandcamp:

https://abbysage.bandcamp.com/

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4aej3kKLxSLM0WauTSfZ7k?si=tGvfbLYeReKeLzm3EReHvw

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7X2fnJzFD1glW5cLfBG67Q

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/AbbySageMusic/

FEATURE: Between Hounds of Love and The Sensual World… Kate Bush’s 1987

FEATURE:

 

Between Hounds of Love and The Sensual World…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush being presented with the Best British Female Artist award by Ray Davies at the 1987 BPI (BRIT) Awards/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images

Kate Bush’s 1987

_________

EVEN though there are…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with David Gilmour and Peter Gabriel at Amnesty International’s Secret Policeman's Third Ball at the Palladium on 26th March, 1987/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport

not many photos of Kate Bush from 1987, it is a year that is pretty interesting. She released her fifth studio album, Hounds of Love, in 1985. The Sensual World arrived in 1989. Between then, apart from recording a new album, there were things happening. It was a period of transition for Kate Bush. 1987 was the final full year she was in her twenties. I guess, in terms of activity, there was a mix of post-Hounds of Love success and this new chapter with her sixth studio album. Thanks to this invaluable website for providing timeline around Kate Bush. Specifically in this case, what she was doing in 1987. I know that the greatest hits collection, The Whole Story, came out in 1986. The following year was when the VHS version arrived. That was my first exposure to Bush and her first single, Wuthering Heights. It seemed that 1987 was one of moving on but also recognition:

“Despite reservations by Kate herself, EMI resolves to release a video compilation of The Whole Story. Again, sales are enormous. The worldwide commercial success of the album is greater than that of any of her earlier albums.

Meanwhile, Kate dives into the recording of a new studio album.

To date, the main part of Kate's creative activity since the middle of 1986 remains a mystery.

February 1987

Kate appears at the 1987 British Phonographic Industry Awards, and this time wins the competition for Best Female Singer, despite the fact that the album for which she won was released more than a year earlier.

Kate also wins in the same category of the U.S. College Music Awards, and accepts the award in a brief comic film shot at her home in England.

Kate records an original song for the Nicholas Roeg film Castaway, called Be Kind to My Mistakes.

Bush must have been doing something through 1986. She was releasing singles still, though how much of The Sensual World was written and recorded is unknown. I can imagine a tour might have been speculated. There was a bit of success in the U.S. 1986 – which I shall cover in another feature soon –, which was quite interesting. Some personal appearances, involvement with Comic Relief, plus promotion around Hounds of Love. I suppose there was that transition from one album and the next. Rather than leap straight into her next album from 1986, it was a moment for a bit of calm. This being Kate Bush, she was still pretty busy! That British Phonographic Industry Awards win is both strange and deserved. Hounds of Love came out in 1985, so it is a bit odd that it gets recognised all that time later. That said, you still get that sort of delay at award shows now. Albums and songs out for a long time get rewarded. Kate Bush was also involved in the charity single, Let It Be. As part of the Ferry Aid group (a collection of artists from the U.K. and U.S.), I wrote about this before. The single was released following the Zeebrugge Disaster. On 6th March, 1987 the ferry MS Herald of Free Enterprise had capsized, killing 193 passengers and crew. It was a strange charity cause. It involved The Sun newspaper and a strange cover version choice! Even so, Kate Bush got involved!

That song for Castaway, Be Kind to My Mistakes, came after Bush turned down a role in the film. It starred Oliver Reed. The role eventually went to Amanda Donohoe. Given the nature of the role (which was quite sexual) and appearing opposite Oliver Reed, it was probably a smart idea that Kate Bush refused! Despite there not being new music and lots of activity through 1987, there was this continuation of charity work. As you can see below, Bush made this iconic appearance with David Gilmour:

March 28/29, 1987

Kate performs Running Up That Hill and Let It Be live with David Gilmour at Amnesty International's Secret Policeman's Third Ball concerts.

March 1987

Kate does some session work for the second album by Go West, called Dancing on the Couch: she sings backing vocals on the track The Kind is Dead.

Kate also writes and records a song called This Woman's Work for the John Hughes film She's Having a Baby, which is finally released in February 1988.

late 1987

Kate agrees to lend her name to a new vegetarian campaign launched by the Vegetarian Society to publicise excessive cruelties within specific areas of the meat trade”.

Kate Bush News recently reported on there being a new version of the Go West song being released. Featuring Kate Bush on backing vocals, many fans might not know about it. Whether it was Peter Gabriel, Roy Harper or Go West, Bush did make some appearances as a backing singer (I forgot to mention Prince too):

“In 1987, English pop duo, Go West, issued their second studio album which featured the single The King is Dead with Kate on backing vocals. The story goes that Kate’s guitarist, Alan Murphy, was working on the album with the band in Denmark and asked Kate if she could do some vocals on the track. Kate obliged by sending tapes over to them to work with. Apart from her repeatedly singing the song title behind much of the second half of the track, at 1 minute 45 seconds Kate belts out:

“You let me in behind the lies, but you’re no use to me life size…”

This month, Chrysalis Records have reissued the album in a deluxe package on CD/DVD and on vinyl record and it features a new previously unreleased version of the song, The King Is Dead (12″ Long Vibe Piano Mix). We can hear more Kate backing vocals, in particular a striking moment at the 4 minute 37 seconds mark!

From vocalist Peter Cox on the band’s official site: “At one point Richard said that it would be great if we could get a female backing vocal on the song ..someone like Kate Bush’. Al (Murphy, guitarist) had played in Kate’s band for many years and said, ‘Why not just ask Kate?’ He called her – she graciously agreed, and we sent her the multitrack tape. It was quite the moment when we heard what she had done – we hadn’t given her any notes or guidance, just let her do her fabulous thing.” Richard Drummie of the band continues: “This song is about meeting a hero and your established perception of them being different from the reality. That’s not their fault.. ‘no one’s to blame.. but it immediately appeared as a poignant situation we could write about. We wrote the song really quickly”.

That pivotal moment of Kate Bush writing This Woman’s Work happened in 1987. After turning down a film role, this was a case of her giving her music to film once more. Perhaps more keen to be the other side of the camera, again, many may not know that This Woman’s Work was in a film before it turned up on The Sensual World. Kate Bush also allowing her name to be used for the Vegetarian Society campaign. If we had to sum up 1987, it is very much one of Kate Bush giving. A lot of charity work. Some interesting songs and creative bits. I remember the VHS for The Whole Story coming out. It was sort of the start of a very fascinating year. There was award recognition and some great little things she was involved with. After a hectic year in 1986 promoting Hounds of Love and finishing that off, there was this bridge before hew new album, 1988 would see her more immersed in The Sensual World. Kate Bush turned thirty in July 1988. I suppose there was thins feeling that, in the last year of her twenties, she would give as much back as possible. Bush was always charitable, yet it seemed 1987 was as much about giving something back. After enjoying so much success, we got to see this very benevolent and caring side. It was an interesting year to go into. Things would ramp up from 1988 and into 1989. Some real variety and standout moments, Kate Bush’s 1987 definitely…

HAD its highlights.

FEATURE: Revisiting… Lola Kirke – Lady for Sale

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Lola Kirke – Lady for Sale

_________

AS her new E.P…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ward & Kweskin

comes out soon, I wanted to look back at Lola Kirke’s 2022 album, Lady for Sale. Country Curious is going to be an exiting new project from an artist not known and played as much. Released in April 2022, Lady for Sale is a terrific album that more people should know about. Before ending with a review for the amazing Lady for Sale, there are a couple of interviews that I want to come to. Rolling Stone spoke with an artist embracing and utilising the drama of Country for her 2022 album. An acclaimed actor herself, Lola Kirke employs and deploys her incredible talents and emotional range through the album. It is a remarkable work that more people should listen to:

“WHEN SHE WAS an infant, Lola Kirke had a nurse who would sing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” to her as a soothing gesture. She would later encounter the song in a new way in Jumpin’ Jim’s Ukulele Country music book, which she received as a teenager learning to play the ukulele.

“It was my first instrument, because I’m a white girl who grew up in the mid-2000s — we all got ukuleles,” Kirke jokes during a Zoom call with Rolling Stone. The singer-actress, who’s starred in Mozart in the Jungle and Gone Girl, is currently in New York, but has also been spending long stretches in Nashville over the last couple of years.

Kirke’s time in Nashville and deepening interest in country music is reflected in her new album Lady for Sale, which arrives this week via Third Man Records. Rather than a slick country-pop affair or sparse singer-songwriter project, Lady for Sale finds a third path, one where the aesthetics of Eighties country and synth-pop collide in tightly written, clever songs. There is the icy melodic flourish in the chorus of “Broken Families,” which features Courtney Marie Andrews, and the softer palette of steel and guitar that undergirds “Pink Sky,” and then there’s the Madonna-meets-the-Judds bounce of “Better than Any Drug.” Keen music listeners will recognize some of the reference points, but they’re also employed as ways for Kirke to frame her smart examinations of unhealthy relationships and show-business pitfalls.

“We wanted to make archetypal Eighties, Nineties country music,” says Kirke, the daughter of Free and Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke. “Through that, you would be like, ‘Oh, that’s what I’m entering into,’ and then get to these more complex ideas through what might seem like a simple exterior.”

You grew up in a family of musicians. Your dad is a well-known rock drummer. What spurred your interest in country music?

I think I was just drawn to how easy the songs were initially because there were three chords or whatever. Literally, I was like, “Oh, I can play these.” And through that ease, discovered a deeper love of country music. Also, there’s a lot of parallels with being an actress and being a country singer or singing country. So many of the women in country music, they’re telling these stories and embodying characters and also wearing costumes in a really incredible way. There was all this room for drama within country that was really exciting to me as an actor.

It’s almost like doing drag in some instances, when you think about Dolly Parton or Reba McEntire. The presentation is very dramatic and campy.

It’s great! And that is actually a greater way that you can be truthful. It’s this concept of, through the mask, you can reveal the truth. And I think that there’s something so earnest and authentic about the songs that these women who are in drag, as we’re saying, I’m so moved by so much of this music. That really appealed to me.

Your new album Lady for Sale nods to the neon hues and synth sounds of the Eighties, with touches of disco in the mix. It’s very different than your previous album Heart Head West, which had a dreamy, shimmering quality. When did the transition start to happen between those sounds?

A lot of it really started with Austin Jenkins [White Denim], who produced and co-wrote the record with me. He reflected that I’m actually a lot more fun than I’ve ever really let myself be in music, and I was like, “Huh, that’s true.” I spent a lot of time at the beginning of my music career trying to appear cool to other women, my peers — earnest and cool and serious and I’m just really not that. It wasn’t authentic to me. I also, over the course of the pandemic, really got interested in the Judds and Tanya Tucker and that period of music, which I really wasn’t familiar with prior to then, because growing up in New York City, that’s not really what I heard. I think Faith Hill and Shania made it onto the radio where I grew up, but country radio other than that was just nonexistent to me. So hearing Rosanne Cash’s Seven Year Ache and a bunch of other music of that time, I was just opened up to a new world.

Many people have an idealized version of what it’s like coming to Nashville. How did your experience compare to what you imagined?

I had kind of first gotten to know Nashville through the movie Nashville, the Robert Altman film, which was one of my favorite movies growing up. And then The Thing Called Love, the Peter Bogdanovich movie that was River Phoenix’s last, which is all about songwriters. And when I moved to Nashville, I fell in love with the show Nashville, became so obsessed I would have dreams about the characters, which was funny because I was very much watching it during lockdown. I’ve heard people say “Oh, people started moving here because they loved that show so much.” And now it’s not as local as it once was. But it comes pretty close to what I dreamed of it being. I also think that as I get older, I see that the world as I imagined it would be when I was older just doesn’t exist. I remember going to San Francisco and being like, “And at any moment Jerry Garcia will round the corner,” and it was actually “there’s a Google Bus.” I don’t think this local quality that the world once had exists in quite the same way. But I do think that Nashville, as a smaller city, kind of keeps that alive”.

1883 Magazine spoke with the British-born, U.S.-based actor-musician in 2022. I first heard Lady for Sale then. I was instantly struck by it. I am dipping into the album now, excited to hear new music from Lola Kirke. Her latest single, My House, is among her best releases. This is a tremendous artist that you need to get behind and listen to. Such a remarkable talent:

“It might seem surprising for a New Yorker born in England to turn to country music to express herself, but the longer you talk to Kirke, the more it makes sense. The Mistress America and Mozart in the Jungle actress grew up in a household full to bursting with creatives (her father is a drummer, her siblings are painters, actors and musicians), and her family relocated to the States when she was five years of age. She grew up in “the wild West Village” of Manhattan, she jokes, and as the only person in the family with an American accent, Kirke always felt somewhat of a comfortable outsider. “I think there was a great safety for me in having an American accent when everyone else in my family didn’t,” she says.

She went through a brief punk phase in her teens in an attempt to carve out more of her own identity, but evidently, it didn’t stick. “I could have played punk music, because it’s kind of easy, but I was not cool enough to play punk,” she laughs.

“My sister (Jemima, a visual artist and actress known for her work in Lena Dunham’s Girls), used to dress me for school. Her best friend at the time was this actress Paz de la Huerta, and Paz was a real punk ― she had those Sid Vicious creeper shoes,” Kirke recalls. “I wanted to be one because I thought it was colourful and pretty. When I reflect back on how I felt in high school, I think I was very easy to make fun of, and I think that because nobody else really liked it, punk felt like a safe place for me to live and something to call my own.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Sara-Anne Waggoner

Kirke was raised on rock and roll — the first song she remembers loving is Led Zeppelin’s ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’. “I was asleep in the backseat of my parents’ car, and the song actually woke me up. It sounded like somebody had broken something open,” she recalls. But, at least for now, Kirke’s home is pedal steels, slide guitars, three chords and the truth. Even if she invokes the latter cliché with more than a hint of self-deprecation. “Actually, I saw this meme the other day that was like, ‘three chords and fucking lies!,’” she says.

“There’s an earnestness about country music that I really connect to. The country music I’m listening to now, the 80s and 90s stuff that is so referenced on this record, is so exciting to me. I feel glad I discovered it when I did, because if I had listened to it growing up, I maybe wouldn’t be so impressed. There’s something about the slickness, and expertise. The other thing about country music,” she adds, “is that you can’t just make a country song. It’s so structured! Your choruses better fucking pay off, and your verses had better support them in the most cheeky, witty, concise way. It’s funny to me when people put a pedal steel on a track and are like ‘it’s a country song!’ It’s not.”

She talks about country music like a kid in a candy store, all wide eyes and wonder, marveling at every detail. She talks about acting that way, too, and there’s a huge parallel between her choices as a musician and an actor. “When I look at the women in country, there’s a real space for performance in the genre. Those women ― the Loretta Lynns and Tammy Wynettes ― are such great actresses. There’s a lot of story-telling in country,” she says, adding: “Or Dolly Parton! You don’t know anything about her home life! She wears a wig!”

PHOTO CREDIT: Sara-Anne Waggoner

Lady For Sale is certainly a partial experiment in persona for Kirke. It’s hyper-stylized, and each song seems to have a distinct character ― so much so that one could almost call it a concept album. “There’s definitely a mask element to it,” Kirke explains. “I am able to live more truthfully through the mask, and I really appreciated finding the character of Lola.” Whiplashing between untethered, fun country-pop and mournful modern melodies, Kirke explores everything from loving and longing to feminine sexuality and desire, with a breathy voice and absolutely no restraint.

Despite all the characters that Kirke brings to the album, Lady For Sale has also been a vehicle for self-discovery for her. It’s Lola, playing versions of herself. She’s still acting, but she’s using a different medium, and she’s certainly no longer interested in succumbing to the pressure of conformity, though it took writing this record for her to understand that. “There’s been a tremendous amount of getting to know myself and my instrument, so to speak. I’m typically quite a warm, earnest and jovial person. I mean, I’m also a crazy bitch,” she smirks. “But I’m not a sad person. And I think there was a trend with girls my age to be really sad with a guitar.”

Does she ever see herself prioritizing one career over another?

“This album cycle has really been eye-opening, in terms of choosing to involve myself in two of the most toxic industries that exist,” Kirke says. “I have a true passion for both of these crafts. I love singing, and writing songs, but I also love acting, and being on set. There was a spiritual beatdown that certainly happened while putting this record out. When I get out of touch with whatever it is I really love about the record, performing and touring, it can feel really confusing.” The expectation that artists should be offering themselves up as commodities over social media is a bitter pill”.

There were some really positive reviews for Lady for Sale. One of those albums I think passed some by, do take some time and revisit this gem from Lola Kirke. In their impassioned review, The Line of Best Fit noted how Lady for Sale is a confident follow-up from her 2019 debut, Heart Head West. Produced by Austin Jenkins, Lady for Sale is a wonderful listen. You can buy the album. It is an album released whilst we were still in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. For many, Lady for Sale provided a lot of comfort and release. With some incredible tour dates around the U.S., there are going to be fans that hope Lola Kirke comes to the U.K. at some point to play. She is a magnificent artist who has this very loyal and loving fanbase:

“This rebrand away from her excellent 2019 debut Heart Head West – which presented itself as more subdued with a rocking ’n’ rolling tint – is in the name of embracing self and allowing it to shine bright.

Amongst her fresh recipe of syrupy country come tales of romance lost and found. It’s undeniable that Kirke is here to have fun with her second outing Lady For Sale, yet roots it deep in the sticky feelings which come with relationships and life.

Throughout, she's toying vibrantly with empowerment be it through its exterior world in the form a workout video (“Lady For Sale”) to just embracing being unashamedly human. Kirke is pulling no punches in living life in the creative arts (Kirke also acts), including references to the OnlyFans business model being akin to the music industry and joining the content churn to be a musician.

Delectable chorus after delectable chorus soars above all else. With the melodies doing their best to push their luck – toeing the line between infectious and abrasive, it's this swinging energy under which Lady For Sale thrives. Indeed, this isn’t an album created to lay low, it begs for attention, and once you’re in its sights, it’s impossible not to do so.

Not only embracing herself but all the joy of life, each gem in the Nudie suit Lady For Sale shines bright with a different message, some darker than others. Opener “Broken Families”, featuring Courtney Marie Andrews, breaks down the familial toxicity that leads to troubled relationships. The titular track opens with the bar-room toilet graffiti influenced lyrical A-bomb “Weed is proof of God” before winding its way through the lacking respect and putting on fronts to get by in order to achieve dreams. The lushly subdued “Pink Sky”, which promises “there’s no rush / no rush / he’s howling at the moon", proves it doesn’t have to be all bright and shiny – sometimes, things need to get real for a second to make sure the train stays on the tracks.

Lyrically, Kirke moves into the top tier of writers. Even references to alien conspiracy theories from questionable lovers who take the nihilistic quote "fuck the world" a little too seriously on "The Crime" deliver a kick and punch before a kiss and a wink.

“Stay Drunk” avoids dealing with the consequences of actions, while the ‘80s call-back “Better Than Any Drug” ensures those actions keep you coming back for more with an exhaustive lyrical wink-and-smile run the Class-A list. Undoubtedly life is about seizing the day, and in the trickles of pedal steel and glowing synths, on Lady For Sale Lola Kirke encourages the exploration of mistakes while knowing that you only live once, so have some fun with it, yeah?”.

An album that I feel did not get all of the attention and focus it warranted back in 2022, Lady for Sale is the latest album from the stunning Lola Kirke. The Country Curious E.P. has been announced. It will be another important chapter from one of the music world’s most distinct talents. I really love Lady for Sale, so I wanted to recommend it here. If you have not heard the album, I would suggest you take a little time out and…

DIVE right in.

FEATURE: Turning of the Tide: Is An Historic Night at the GRAMMYs a Sign Female Dominance and Progression Will Continue Through This Year?

FEATURE:

 

 

Turning of the Tide

IN THIS PHOTO: Kylie Minogue won the Best Pop Dance Recording GRAMMY for Padam Padam on 4th February, 2024 in Los Angeles, California/PHOTO CREDIT: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

Is An Historic Night at the GRAMMYs a Sign Female Dominance and Progression Will Continue Through This Year?

_________

THE music has a long way to go…

IMAGE CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant

when it comes to making women equal and ensuring they are heard. In terms of misogyny and sexism, this is something worryingly rife through the industry. Festival headliners are still largely male. There are a lot of issues to sort out. When it comes to award ceremonies and rewarding women for their achievements, this is something that is changing. Maybe this is the first sign that female dominance is going to define this year. It is a shame reward representation does not mirror necessarily into festivals and even radio playlists. I shall come to an article from The Guardian who recently discussed women dominating music and how there has been this incredible shift. Last night’s GRAMMYs saw women taken home awards in many of the biggest categories. Aside from Taylor Swift setting records and also announcing a new album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT, it was a great night for women in musi!. Showing that male bias cannot continue. That they are dominating and, more than likely, this is going to continue for years more:

“Album of the year

Jon Batiste – World Music Radio
boygenius – The Record
Miley Cyrus – Endless Summer Vacation
Lana Del Rey – Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Janelle Monáe – The Age of Pleasure
Olivia Rodrigo – Guts
Taylor Swift – Midnights – WINNER
SZA – SOS

Record of the year

Jon Batiste – Worship
boygenius – Not Strong Enough
Miley Cyrus – Flowers – WINNER
Billie Eilish – What Was I Made For? from Barbie: The Album
Victoria Monét – On My Mama
Olivia Rodrigo – Vampire
Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero
SZA – Kill Bill

Best new artist

Gracie Abrams
Fred again..
Ice Spice
Jelly Roll
Coco Jones
Noah Kahan
Victoria Monét – WINNER
The War and Treaty

Song of the year

Lana Del Rey – A&W
Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero
Jon Batiste – Butterfly
Dua Lipa – Dance the Night from Barbie
Miley Cyrus – Flowers
SZA – Kill Bill
Olivia Rodrigo – Vampire
Billie Eilish – What Was I Made For? from Barbie – WINNER

Best pop vocal album

Kelly Clarkson – Chemistry
Miley Cyrus – Endless Summer Vacation
Olivia Rodrigo – Guts
Ed Sheeran – “-” (Subtract)
Taylor Swift – Midnights – WINNER

Best R&B song

Halle – Angel
Robert Glasper featuring SiR and Alex Isley – Back to Love
Coco Jones – ICU
Victoria Monét – On My Mama
SZA – Snooze – WINNER

Best música urbana album

Rauw Alejandro – Saturno
Karol G – Mañana Será Bonito – WINNER
Tainy – Data

Best pop solo performance

Miley Cyrus – Flowers – WINNER
Doja Cat – Paint the Town Red
Billie Eilish – What Was I Made For? from Barbie
Olivia Rodrigo – Vampire
Taylor Swift – Anti-Hero

Best progressive R&B album

6lack – Since I Have a Lover
Diddy – The Love Album: Off the Grid
Terrace Martin and James Fauntleroy – Nova
Janelle Monáe – The Age of Pleasure
SZA – SOS – WINNER

Best R&B performance

Chris Brown – Summer Too Hot
Robert Glasper featuring SiR and Alex Isley – Back to Love
Coco Jones – ICU – WINNER
Victoria Monét – How Does It Make You Feel
SZA – Kill Bill

Best folk album

Dom Flemons – Traveling Wildfire
The Milk Carton Kids – I Only See the Moon
Joni Mitchell – Joni Mitchell at Newport (Live) – WINNER
Nickel Creek – Celebrants
Old Crow Medicine Show – Jubilee
Paul Simon – Seven Psalms
Rufus Wainwright – Folkocracy

Best pop duo/group performance

Miley Cyrus featuring Brandi Carlile – Thousand Miles
Lana Del Rey featuring Jon Batiste – Candy Necklace
Labrinth featuring Billie Eilish – Never Felt So Alone
Taylor Swift featuring Ice Spice – Karma
SZA featuring Phoebe Bridgers – Ghost in the Machine – WINNER

Best pop dance recording

David Guetta, Anne-Marie and Coi Leray – Baby Don’t Hurt Me
Calvin Harris featuring Ellie Goulding – Miracle
Kylie Minogue – Padam Padam – WINNER
Bebe Rexha and David Guetta – One in a Million
Troye Sivan – Rush

Best R&B album

Babyface – Girls Night Out
Coco Jones – What I Didn’t Tell You (Deluxe)
Emily King – Special Occasion
Victoria Monét – Jaguar II – WINNER
Summer Walker – Clear 2: Soft Life EP

Best song written for visual media

Barbie World from Barbie the Album, Naija Gaston, Ephrem Louis Lopez Jr. and Onika Maraj, songwriters (Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice featuring Aqua)
Dance the Night from “Barbie the Album, Caroline Ailin, Dua Lipa, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, songwriters (Dua Lipa)
I’m Just Ken from Barbie the Album, Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, songwriters (Ryan Gosling)
Lift Me Up from Black Panther: Wakanda Forever — Music From and Inspired By, Ryan Coogler, Ludwig Göransson, Robyn Fenty and Temilade Openiyi, songwriters (Rihanna)
What Was I Made For? from Barbie the Album, Billie Eilish O’Connell and Finneas O’Connell, songwriters (Billie Eilish) — WINNER

Best African music performance

Asake and Olamide – Amapiano
Burna Boy – City Boys
Davido featuring Musa Keys – Unavailable
Ayra Starr – Rush
Tyla – Water – WINNER

Best alternative music album

Arctic Monkeys – The Car
boygenius – The Record – WINNER
Lana Del Rey – Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd
Gorillaz – Cracker Island
PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old Year Dying

Best alternative music performance

Alvvays – Belinda Says
Arctic Monkeys – Body Paint
boygenius – Cool About It
Lana Del Rey – A&W
Paramore – This Is Why – WINNER

Best rock album

Foo Fighters – But Here We Are
Greta Van Fleet – Starcatcher
Metallica – 72 Seasons
Paramore – This Is Why – WINNER
Queens of the Stone Age – In Times New Roman…

Best rock song

The Rolling Stones – Angry
Olivia Rodrigo – Ballad of a Homeschooled Girl
Queens of the Stone Age – Emotion Sickness
boygenius – Not Strong Enough – WINNER
Foo Fighters – Rescued

Best rock performance

Arctic Monkeys – Sculptures of Anything Goes
Black Pumas – More Than a Love Song
boygenius – Not Strong Enough – WINNER
Foo Fighters – Rescued
Metallica – Lux Æterna”.

I do think that the tide is turning. Normally, award ceremonies struggle to acknowledge and celebrate women. After years of such fantastic music from them, there have been no excuses anymore. The GRAMMYs is the latest example of how women are ruling across so many genres and areas. If there are some genres where they are under-represented and nominated – Rap being one; female producers not being nominated -, then that is going to change before too long. Things are not rosy and celebration across the board. Whilst the GRAMMYs showed that some of music’s biggest and most successful queens have been recognised, that is not to say that things are fixed. In fact, rather than the GRAMMYs being a major shift towards equality and women feeling seen in the industry, it is at least a moment that will start to turn the tide. A knock-on affect that hopefully will spread through all levels of music. The Guardian recently wrote how there is this hopeful new era for women in music – against a backdrop of a recent parliamentary report in the U.K. that makes for disturbing reading:

“Gaining greater stature and confidence in the industry, the story is not repeated at either the very bottom or the very top of the business. Female recording studio technicians and session musicians still have harrowing accounts of the obstacles and insults they have faced at work, while the most influential labels and music publishing companies are top-heavy with men.

An oppressive emphasis on the physical appearance of female artists made their life particularly hard, the parliamentary committee report found, analysing evidence gathered by a parliamentary inquiry that began last summer.

Limited opportunities to advance in the industry and persistently lower levels of pay are also hurdles, while racial discrimination holds back many black women from taking up influential roles in the music business, the findings suggested.

Most worrying was testimony about an enduring “culture of silence” that means women are often expected to sit next to known abusers at industry events. The only alternative is a potentially career-ending showdown. “Much of the evidence we received has had to remain confidential, including commentary on television shows and household names,” the report read. “That is highly regrettable but demonstrates the extent of the use of NDAs [non-disclosure agreements].”

IN THIS PHOTO: Ellie Goulding

Goulding is one of the prominent performers to use her secure position to speak out. Explaining the unpleasant environment that female artists can encounter, she recalled “a slight feeling of discomfort” whenever she walked into a studio to find she was alone with “one or two men”.

“There are still few women in really powerful positions in the record companies, considering at least half the consumers of music are women,” said Smith, “There used to be a teaboy route up through to the top of a record company, but if you were a 17-year-old girl, would you really want to be there with no status and all that male banter? It’s good that the music schools are now training women for these roles, because it would be hard for a young woman to put up with all that male stupidity. You can see why so many of them say ‘I’m out.’”

And the numbers don’t lie. There has been a huge surge up the charts. In 2022 only two female musicians cracked the top 10 of biggest songs, with Kate Bush reprising the success of her 1985 single Running Up That Hill, on the back of television’s Stranger Things, and pop singer Cat Burns making an impact with Go.

It is the same heartening story in America. A study by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative found that the share of women involved in last year’s hits in the US had increased to 35%. The number of female artists has reached the highest since 2012.

“Whilst work continues towards achieving full representation for women across the music industry, 2023 has been a brilliant year for women in the Official Charts,” said the BPI’s Twist. “There is a more diverse range of recording artists than ever achieving great success with the backing of their labels. This should be celebrated, but without complacency, and our work in the music industry continues to ensure that this becomes the norm”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Coco Jones won the GRAMMY for Best R&B Performance for ICU/PHOTO CREDIT: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

It has been wonderful seeing all the reaction to the GRAMMY wins. This sign that music from women is dominating. I guess it only tells some of the story. Some of the more commercial women are rightly being acknowledged. If you look at the wave of other female artists across music who struggle to get headline slots and festival places; those who have to struggle to get onto radio or to be taken seriously; those who feel safe and secure in the industry, it is evident that we have a long way to go. The music industry still has a big problem with misogyny and inequality. This is not going to be corrected anytime soon. What high-profile ceremonies like the GRAMMYs show is that women near the very top are ruling. I hope this is a sign that women throughout music should be respected and given more opportunity. You can feel things starting to change. Going through this year, we need to call to account any incident where women are being overlooked. Tackle misogyny and abuse through this industry. Ensure that pay is levelled and that more women are given roles in executive positions – especially for Black women, who are a group vastly under-represented. If now has never been a better time for women in the industry in terms of recognition – though the bar has been extremely low for decades now -, that is going to increase and build. There does need to be an industry-wide trickle-down where every issue and inequality is tackled. Ensuring that it is not only elite female artists getting credit and reward: this kudos and celebration needs to extend much more extensively. I am hopeful. The GRAMMYs shows that the tide is turning now. It will be a long time before we can truly say that sexism and misogyny has been eradicated, yet every bit of good news is reason for encouragement. We definitely need to see more of this…

THROUGHOUT this year

FEATURE: Spotlight: The War and Treaty

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

The War and Treaty

_________

A GRAMMY-nominated duo who…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alysse Gafkjen for Rolling Stone 

have been on the scene for a while but are getting a lot of spotlight and buzz now, The War and Treaty should be on your radar. Their latest album, Lover’s Game, was released last March. They are a terrific husband-and-wife duo consisting of Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter. I guarantee you will love what they are doing. I want to come to a few interview from The War and Treaty from last year. To give you some depth and background about this amazing musical force. I will start with some biography from their website:

“Founded in 2014 by the husband-and-wife duo Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter, The War And Treaty has emerged as one of the most electrifying new acts in American music. Recently earning their first ever GRAMMY nominations for Best New Artist and Best American Roots Song for “Blank Page,” they also received this year their first ever Duo of the Year nomination from the Country Music Association, Vocal Duo nomination from the Academy of Country Music, plus recognition by the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Grand Ole Opry, and the Americana Music Association including earning AMA Duo/Group of the Year for the second straight year. 

With a lionhearted sonic blend, both roaring with passion and tender to the touch, The Tennessean notes, “they are unlike any other act in music.” The War And Treaty’s major label debut album Lover’s Game (Mercury Nashville), was met with critical praise with Associated Press claiming, “The colossally talented pair continue their commando, no-limits journey to the top of the music world.” Drawing respect across the board, they have gone on to appear as top-flight collaborators including the latest “Hey Driver” with Zach Bryan.  

The War And Treaty has captivated audiences across the globe from North America to Europe, Australia and beyond, while headlining their own shows and opening for a diverse group of living legends: Al Green, Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, Jason Isbell, John Legend, Lauren Daigle, and Van Morrison among them”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Austin Hargrave

I am going to move onto an interview from The Guardian. The story of how Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter found one another and started making music together is amazing:

“He was a wounded Army veteran, she was a failed R&B star. Together they’ve transmuted trauma into powerfully uplifting gospel and country music – and John Legend is set to film their love story

Michael Trotter did his very best to stop Tanya from falling for him. I’m a screwup, he told her. I’ve already got a divorce in my 20s, I’ve been to war twice, I’m wounded. I am not a catch. “She just looked at me and said, ‘Are you done?’” says Michael. “‘Because I’m going to tell you what I see. I see a king. You just need the right kind of queen.’”

The resulting partnership, both marital and musical, has proven her right. See the Trotters in a room together and you almost feel sorry for other couples. Watch them on stage, as the War and Treaty, and you’re transported into the heart of their relationship. Their Glastonbury debut last year had the devotional fervour of a revival meeting, and their fourth album, Lover’s Game, released this month, bursts with emotion, inspired by the gospel and country sounds they have both loved since childhood.

It is a creation of great experience and even greater joy. Last year they opened for John Legend’s tour; their own love story is so epic that Legend is now making it into a movie.

Michael is an army veteran who suffers with depression and PTSD and for whom music is therapy. Sometimes he will sit and write several songs a day just to process his feelings. “I’m thinking of one right now,” he says. The US had just invaded Iraq when he enlisted at 21; he was stationed in one of Saddam Hussein’s former palaces in Baghdad. When fellow soldiers died, he sang tributes to them on a piano he found there. “I was very blessed in the leaders I had,” he says. “They all encouraged me in my music-making. They saw I had a different calling.”

His service completed, he met Tanya Blount in August 2010, when they played the same festival in Maryland. Tanya was on her second musical career – her first had peaked in her teens, when she appeared opposite Lauryn Hill and Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act 2 and signed a deal with Sean Combs’s record label to become an R&B star at 16. “I knew at eight that this was what I wanted to do,” says Tanya.

But she took a break from the business after an unsatisfactory experience with Bad Boy Records. “I’d been in a pretentious world for pretty much most of my teens and 20s,” says Tanya. “In R&B, hip-hop, nothing’s what they say it is. The car’s not theirs, the chain’s not theirs. Everything is rented.”

Michael, by comparison, was candid to a fault. They fell for each other at first sight. “I remember her saying: ‘I’m not looking for a bank account, I’m not looking for a six pack,” says Michael. “And I jumped for joy because I don’t have neither.”

The sound they arrived at as a duo is the product of relentless work and ruthless honesty. “We’d be doing eight hours of rehearsal at home, and if the song didn’t move us we’d trash it,” says Michael. “If we’re not feeling teary, or some emotional connection, it’s not worth it.” Some of their most upbeat choruses hide the couple’s trauma in plain sight. Five More Minutes was named for the day in 2017 that Michael had decided to end his life and Tanya asked him to stay with her just a little longer”.

Maybe now only starting to get the credit they fully deserve, The War and Treaty will find a whole new wave of fans this year. I hope that they manage to come to the U.K. and Europe to tour. Holler caught up with The War and Treaty last year. With Michael and Tanya coming from very different backgrounds/paths but having this instant connection, harmony and incredible talent, this Gospel-Country-Soul duo are going to making music for many years to come. I think that they warrant a lot more exposure on radio and in the music media:

“Though the pair hadn’t yet met, Michael had already spotted Tanya in the movie and, rather fortuitously, her head was turned when she heard him perform at a local festival.

By 2014 the new couple had formed The War and Treaty and started to experience the highs and lows of a music career. Over the years, their sound evolved, carrying them through to recognition worthy of securing great opening slots for the likes of John Legend, Al Green and Brandi Carlile.

Despite the pandemic pausing their progress, Michael still suffering from PTSD and Tanya getting heavily ill from Covid - which continues to affect her vision and energy – the War and Treaty are anything but quitters. Instead they became stronger, lauded by the Grand Ole Opry, the Country Music Hall of Fame and the Americana Music Association, who made The War and Treaty their 2022 Duo/Group of the Year.

Now they have a new, major label album, Lover’s Game, produced by none other than Dave Cobb, a headlining tour and plans to conquer the world with buckets of charm and harmonies. Just listen to the hugely soulful ‘Have You A Heart’ and the sweeping drama of ‘Blank Page’. Or hear their country side on ‘Yesterday’s Burn’ where Michael channels his idol, Kenny Rogers, and ‘That’s How Love Is Made’ which they’d have loved Dottie West and Kenny to have duetted on.

We spoke to the genial and self-deprecating Tanya and Michael from their Tennessee home, and on the eve of this latest part of their journey, to delve deep into how they work, why they’ve chosen this genre, and what makes them tick…

How did you get paired with the amazing Dave Cobb as your producer on your new album?

Michael: We’ve known each other since about 2017. We’ve always threatened to work together, and Universal provided the opportunity to make that threat a reality. I’m so grateful that they did. To work with Dave is so much fun, and we actually ate more than we worked. That’s the honest to God truth. His wife is a wonderful cook and we ate tapas one night and spaghetti another night. We just ate a lot of food and really enjoyed each other’s company.

Aside from that, we were there for him. Dave lost his mom last year and we didn’t care any more about the music. It was all about Dave Cobb the person and not the producer. We were able to see another side of him, and that allowed Tanya and I to fall more in love with Dave and vice versa for him. We are friends and we take care of one another.

Tanya: Dave encouraged us to trust ourselves; that what we already were doing is what we should do in the studio. We try not to make things perfect because nothing is perfect, no-one’s perfect and he kind of had the same approach. He just said get in there and do what you guys gotta do, then walked out the room.

‘Angel’ is a song about love entwined with religion, and I wonder if you’re both at the same place in your faith?

Tanya: We are on the same wavelength of what we believe. Our faith is the compass to take us where we go, we pray together, cry together, we have dreams together, manifest things together. So we believe the same things and that’s a big part of why we’re able to move forward as a couple and a unit. People see the unity first and feel our faith.

What were your roles in writing the songs on this album, like ‘Ain’t No Harmin’ Me’?

Tanya: Michael is definitely better with melody and lyrics, because he gets everything at the same time. I’m inspired much slower than Michael – for every song I write he’s already written 10. Then he comes to me and says what you think about this song I wrote? And I hear something that needs to change and we’ll come to an agreement to keep it like it is or change it.

He’s prolific. He probably wrote more than 100 songs during the pandemic. I stopped counting! Our music director was laughing the other day because he has over 750 songs in his database from Michael, and only he’s been our music director for five years. We’ve been married for 12 years so just imagine the songs I have in my head!

What’s been your biggest challenge, personally and as a duo?

Tanya: Early on we had to get on the same page about where we wanted to go musically. Then we somehow just stumbled into Americana – we didn’t even know it was a genre, we were trying out different things we loved and hearing our voices on different things.

The challenge – the beauty of what we do – is where I feel limited with my vocals and my voice, Michael picks up and takes it even further. It’s the same with him, and we finish each other’s sentences for lack of a better way of explaining it, that’s what we’ve done for each other.

Maybe Americana was tailor-made for you – this all-encompassing, multi-style genre?

Michael: I prefer to not be boxed in! I love being all over the place, I’m all over the place anyway. I’m all over the place in my marriage, in my finances. One day I’m broke, the next day I’ve got money. As long as they get my name right I don’t care!”.

I will come to a review of Lover’s Game soon. Before that, there is another interview worth bringing in. Country Now spoke with The War and Treaty about their journey to their new album. Not only is their music career extraordinary and inspiring. Where Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Trotter started and how they found one another. It is no wonder there is something cinematic about their finding one another. You can feel and hear their experiences, struggle and sense of discovery through their music. Putting so much of their own story and lives into every note. Such power and beauty from their voices:

“Lover’s Game was produced by Dave Cobb in his Savannah home studio and marks their first major-label release under Mercury Nashville. The War and Treaty spent time sifting through over 100 songs that they had written within the last two years, before landing on the final 10-song track listing for Lover’s Game.

Bottom of Form

Ahead of the official release, fans got a glimpse into the project with songs like “That’s How Love Is Made,” “Ain’t No Harmin’ Me,” “Blank Page,” “Dumb Luck,” and the soaring title track, “Lover’s Game.”

The infectious melody of the title track sets the tone for the authenticity that follows in the rest of the chapters. The couple revealed that the inspiration for the beginning line of the chorus actually stems from an essential part of their recording process.

“Margarita, hot chicken, strawberry wine / Looking for your lovin’ to be mine, all mine,” they sing.

“We recorded the record in Savannah, Georgia, and we didn’t have like that ‘margarita hot chicken, strawberry wine’ line. So Dave Cobb, who fed us to death while we recorded this record, he threw that in there,” Tanya explained. “I never had hot chicken before, so when we were doing it, I was like, I gotta be authentic. I need to go and find a place with some hot chicken. So, you know, I went and got some hot chicken and it’s just an ode to Nashville and our experience here. It was just a lot of fun recording that record, too.”

While discussing their path in life that led them to create such a stunning list of new songs to add to their catalog, the pair opened up about the beginnings of their love story. When they first met, they were both homeless and jumping from place to place among many different people until they landed in Richmond, VA.

“We were living in a transitional house. We didn’t realize that next door, it was a transitional house that we were sharing and we were on food stamps, you know, we had our little baby with us and this is probably not even five years ago…maybe seven years ago,” Tanya explained. “So when I think about it, it doesn’t seem that far removed, you know, from my thinking now. I get up every morning when I’m home and I go out on the back of our porch and I’m just reminded of how good God is, how good it is to be able to have the strength to get up every day and be resilient and just be reminded of this gift that we have. It’s a gift, and it’s not for us, you know, it’s to be given to everyone that listens to it”.

I will finish off with Saving Country Music’s review of the extraordinary Lover’s Game. It is an album from last year that got a love of love, yet I don’t think it was shared and discussed as much as it should be. If you have not heard the album then make sure you do. I guarantee that it will stay in your mind long after you have heard the final song:

“Though well-beloved by elements of the Americana community for years, and the Opry faithful from having proven their prowess in the circle so many times, The War and Treaty has heretofore struggled to find an audience beyond niche programming. The hope was pairing the duo with producer Dave Cobb and exploring all of their influences in a more diverse and robust manner may result in the wider audience The War and Treaty’s talent undeniable deserves by capturing the electricity of what they do live. Lover’s Game just might pull that off.

The album starts off with the braying guitars and upbeat tempo of “Lover’s Game,” which gives the album an immediacy and Southern rock flair to suck you right in. “Ain’t No Harmin’ Me” is one of a host of Gospel entries from the album, but one that is far from preachy, and combines the spirit of blues and Rick Rubin-era Johnny Cash for an enthralling experience. If you want to hear what The War and Treaty are capable of when they let their country influences come to the forefront, get a load of “Yesterday’s Burn”—a song that went viral when they first performed it on the Opry.

One challenge for really all married singing duos is how sometimes songs where they stare lovingly into each other’s eyes and coo affectionately can take on a very sappy, Captain & Tennille vibe if you’re not careful. There are a couple of moments like that on this album, like the falsetto-laden “The Best That I Have” with its mom rock vibes, complete with a Golden Girls reference. Where the first half of the album shows a lot of great energy and diversity in sound, the second half defaults into the duo’s comfort zone, and may challenge the attentiveness of the audience.

What never gives out though, and makes Lover’s Game engaging throughout is the personal nature of the material. This album feels like the lives of Michael and Tanya Trotter set to music. This even includes “Dumb Luck,” which surprisingly is one of the few tracks not written by the duo, but by producer/songwriter Beau Bedford, despite feeling outright autobiographical to them, making references to Opry performances.

And most importantly of course, The War and Treaty is one of those duos that could sing the phone book, and blow the crowd out of their seats. But in this day an age of ever-present singing competitions and Chris Stapleton, this isn’t entirely novel. Marrying their voices with songs that can resonate beyond the enchantment of the performances themselves and appeal to broader parts of the country and roots world is what makes Lover’s Game feel like such an important work.

Country music has always been, and will always be a push and pull of both yearning for purity in the genre, while also wanting to be inviting to a wide sphere of influences and perspectives. The War and Treaty is just the kind of diversity country music needs—one with roots in the genre from the Gospel and blues influences in their sound, respect for country’s origins and institutions, while also instilling a level of talent that is frankly unparalleled by peers, and perfect for proving why being too rigid with genre borders can result in the loss of valuable voices.

No matter what you call them, The War & Treaty belong. And if the rest of the musical world is too busy to invite them into the fold, country music should be more than happy to have them”.

I am going to finish up now. The incredible The War and Treaty have just received GRAMMY acknowledgment and are set to have one of their biggest years yet. Go and follow this amazing duo. Last year, The War and Treaty became the first Black duo to be nominated for the Country Music Association Award for Duo of the Year. They were also the first bBlack duo to be nominated for the Academy of Country Music Award for Duo of the Year. I am looking forward to seeing the upcoming biopic about the GRAMMY-nominated duo’s story. If you are not following them already, do make sure that you add this wonderful name…

TO your playlist.

___________

Follow The War and Treaty

Official:

https://www.thewarandtreaty.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/thewarandtreaty/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/warandtreaty

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6HhV0jtMMK5HYnYgG0xgtz

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5csm28Wss38xCghjzUhj9g

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/TheWarandTreaty

FEATURE: New Waves: The Use of AI Compositional Tools That Reduce Studio Costs and Foster Creativity

FEATURE:

 

 

New Waves

IMAGE CREDIT: Irenebination

The Use of AI Compositional Tools That Reduce Studio Costs and Foster Creativity

_________

I have published features…

 PHOTO CREDIT: ThisIsEngineering/Pexels

in the past that talk about various styles of music we do not hear anymore. Certain sounds that are rare for various reasons. One of the most recent features discussed Steely Dan and Donald Fagen. How there are hardly any artists today where you can hear their influence. Not such an obscure artist(s), why do we not hear anything Dan/Fagen-esque in modern music?! Some suggested the sheer studio costs put people off. Maybe the creative and intellectual levels needed to write such music. I would argue people could pen something similar to a Donald Fagen song that was really great without having to be exactly as good. In terms of composition, I feel that people could have ideas and starting blocks that could form into these fully-formed songs. Maybe time in the studio experimenting would take a lot of money and time. Is the sheer cost of recording at professional studios with musicians limiting creativity?! Not that there is anything wrong with small studios or D.I.Y. recording. Indeed, some of the very best albums can be made for very little. In terms of doing something bigger and more involved, I guess you need quite a few musicians. If you had to do fewer takes and had the compositions fully realised before they get to the studios, then that would help creativity and future inspiration. Rather than using AI to completely replace artists, one of its benefits is that there are algorithms and options where you could put together notes, lines and full compositions into a demo and then present to musicians. This is nothing new you’ll say, yet AI offers something more detailed and comprehensive. Rather than it being mere building blocks, you could work together these compositions that just need to be repeated in the studio – still costing a little but not as much as doing endless takes.

IN THIS PHOTO: Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen in 1977/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Walter/WireImage/Getty Images

There are programmes and software like AIVA, that allow anyone of any level to create songs in a variety of styles. There has been a lot of discussion about AI in music over the past year or so. We have seen entire songs and albums generated by AI. There are definite disadvantages of AI in music around authenticity and quality. Songs through AI that do not sound that good or lack the human depth and nuance. I think we are a very long way away from AI being able to replicate musicians or replace them. Artists fear they can have their voices used without permission. That we will have a scene of AI music. This real nervousness around technology in music. There are benefits to AI. Think about The Beatles’ final song, Now and Then, which was released last year. That was a John Lennon demo that featured the other three Beatles. AI was used and made it sound like a full and proper band collaboration. AI can give you tools to produce like a professional. Rather than replace those essential people, it allows options for artists who want to self-produce or do not have the budget for a producer. Thinking about the fact that some bands and sounds should have modern-day torch-carriers but do not. I wonder whether studio fees and a daunting hill to climb puts people off. AI does make it more likely that artists today can create quite layered songs with incredible musicianship. They do not need to spend weeks in the studio. This LinkedIn feature discusses AI-composed music and its benefits:

“Introduction

The fact that artificial intelligence can produce music is exciting and scary at the right time for many people. With technological advancement, AI has left no stone unturned and is now doing wonders in the music industry. AI has significantly grown in music composition! Thanks to the development of sophisticated algorithms and the rising availability of large datasets. The algorithms use machine learning techniques to analyze unique music patterns and generate new compositions.

Through this newsletter, let us explore how these algorithms work in a symphony to hit the right notes of the music.

PHOTO CREDIT: Blaz Erzetic/Pexels

AI Algorithms Composing Tunes

Data Collection:  The process starts by collecting massive amounts of music data, including audio recordings and user-generated compositions. This data gives the algorithm a diverse range of musical styles and genres to learn from.

Machine Learning Models: Deep learning is the most common machine learning approach in music composition. These are designed to process sequential data and learn temporal dependencies, making them suitable for capturing musical patterns over time.

Model Training:  The algorithm is trained on the collected music data to analyze the patterns and structures in the music. The model learns the relationship between notes, chords, rhythms, melodies, and other musical elements.

Creativity and Generation: The trained model can generate new musical compositions, take input in melodies or notes, and use this knowledge to develop music further. The generation process is often guided by specific parameters or constraints set by the composer or the user, such as genre, mood, tempo, or musical motifs.

Evaluation and refinement: Not all generated compositions will be musically appealing. Therefore, AI composers often use evaluation metrics or feedback mechanisms to check the quality of the generated music. They may compare the AI-generated music against a large corpus of existing human-created music to ensure that the generated output aligns with established musical norms.

Repetitive Improvement: The AI algorithms meticulously improve by analyzing feedback and user interactions and refining their output over time. This process of continuous learning enables the algorithm to produce increasingly better compositions.

Collaborative tools: Some AI music composition tools are designed to assist human composers rather than replace them entirely. These tools can provide suggestions, harmonizations, or variations based on the composer's input, helping to speed up the creative process and inspire new ideas.

Conclusion

While technology is continuously evolving, AI is becoming an essential tool in the creative process for musicians and composers worldwide. However, it's important to note that while AI in music composition has demonstrated impressive capabilities, it still faces challenges in fully understanding and replicating the complexities of human musical creativity and emotion”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Wallace Chuck/Pexels

It is important to make a distinction. I do think that AI creating entire albums and tracks seems rather pointless. I would not want to buy any albums where all the music was made by AI. I know that there are plenty of albums that are made digitally. Electronic albums that have been created by machines. I mean AI replacing instruments and voices. This attempt to replace humans. With some saying they cannot write and record certain types of music because of the incredible studio costs and time to get the sound write. AI tools and algorithms can allow composers and artists to exactly hear what is in their heads. In terms of incurring studio costs, when musicians know that what a composer wants, they can record their part remotely. I favour musicians in the studio though, rather than having AI replace their parts, a remotely-recorded take would be fine. It takes me back to my concern that there are certain groups and artists (like Steely Dan or even The Beatles) where you cannot really hear their influence today. Not the more experimental side of them anyway. This valuable and hugely rich sound of music that is stuck in the past and is begging for modern-day revival. I can understand that there are limited budgets. I don’t feel a lack of talent is the reason for an absence of certain sounds and updates on older artists who should be adopted by new artists. AI is a way of inspiring melodies and harmonies. A way of building compositions and cutting costs because of the reduced studio hours. Then, once a composition or song is worked up by AI, it can then by played by real musicians. Rather than AI being used to replace existing artists or revive deceased ones, the technology is so useful as a way of working up demos and almost-realised full features before working them in a studio. Even for non-musicians like me, is makes compositions and songwriting a lot easier and more intuitive. Let’s hope more and more artists do use AI this way and we will see a revival of older and wonderful sounds…

PHOTO CREDIT: Thapelo Boateng/Pexels

MISSING in the present day.

FEATURE: Definitely/Maybe: Potentially Great ‘Lost’ Album Title Tracks

FEATURE:

 

 

Definitely/Maybe

IN THIS PHOTO: An outtake from the cover shoot of Oasis’ 1994 debut album, Definitely Maybe/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Spencer Jones 

Potentially Great ‘Lost’ Album Title Tracks

_________

I was recently thinking about…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Mirrorpix

Kate Bush’s second studio album, Lionheart, and how there was a track recorded during the sessions that was called Never for Ever. Producer Andrew Powell confirmed that the track was recorded but never used, as Bush felt that her vocal was not great. This terrific and beautiful song that never made it onto the album of the same name – Never for Ever was released in 1980 and co-produced by Kate Bush -; I wonder why it was recorded for the session of Lionheart. Whether it was going to be a Lionheart song or Bush was already thinking to her third album and wanted this title track. In any case, the fact that Never for Ever is the only Kate Bush studio album without a title track seems like this gap. A great what-if regarding Never for Ever and what a title track would have sounded like. It got me thinking about other amazing albums that could have had potentially epic title tracks. It is good when an album has a title but no title track. It seems disconnected, though that sense of detachment is something I love. Even so, there are some classic albums that never had title tracks that I feel could have been something awesome. One turns thirty later this year. Oasis’ Definitely Maybe was a classic of 1994. Whereas future albums had title tracks, their genius debut album did not. I often think of that album title as a throwaway. Maybe a response to a question. It seems very Beatle-esque. More on that band later. Oasis, unashamedly indebted to The Beatles in a huge way could have penned something Beatles-like with a Definitely Maybe title track. A big anthem that could have opened the second side of the album – expand the album from eleven to twelve tracks and have Definitely Maybe nestled between Supersonic and Bring It on Down – and added yet another gem to one of the best albums of the 1990s.

In terms of women in music and female-fronted bands, there are some examples that spring to mind. Even though more quite a few Björk albums do not have title tracks, I feel that 2004’s Medúlla befitted one. That word is Latin for ‘marrow’. That may not seem like fertile ground for lyrical and musical inspiration, though Björk could have used that word to refer to the marrow of the planet. Of plants and living things. A sweeping and fascinating track that could have closed the album. I know that Medúlla is a long album as it stands. However, I often think of her album titles and the potential title cuts that could have been written. A couple of music queens have album titles begging for title tracks. Tori Amos’ Under the Pink recently turned thirty. That title could refer to sexuality. Femininity and womanhood. I am not exactly sure why the album was called Under the Pink, yet there is that tantalising what-if regarding a title track. Again, at nearly an hour and thirteen tracks, would it be excessive or bloated having another track in there?! I think an Under the Pink track would have been really interesting. I guess that Beyoncé’s Lemonade is explained and explored through the album. Its title referring to making something good out of a bad situation. That struggle in terms of race and gender. Identity and political struggle. Rather than it being too revealing, an extra track on her 2016 masterpiece would be wonderful. A song called Lemonade could have various meanings and, as such, her lyrics could dig into a variety of subjects and avenues. The acidic lemon sting or the heroine making lemonade out of lemons. Mixing childhood metaphors and taking that word in other directions, I did half-expect Lemonade to have a title track when the album was annoucned.

I will come onto The Beatles and some other classic albums. First, there are some other older and newer classic albums I muse as to what a title track would have sounded like. Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks is his 1975 classic that could have increased its tracklisting to eleven and had a powerful and stirring title track. What about Joni Mitchell and her 1979 album, Mingus? There is Nirvana’s Nevermind (1991), Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours (1977) and Radiohead’s Amnesiac (2001). I know some albums without a title track do mention the title in another song. It is a subjective thing, though most of us listen to classic albums that do not have a title cut. Why do artists not include one?! Maybe the title doesn’t suggest anything good. There may be that thing of the album being non-thematic. The title track might make the album narrative too limited or defined. It is pretty curious. I think that The Beatles’ Revolver is an album that begged a title track. Most of their albums had title tracks, though perhaps their first never did. I suppose the gun-themed word might be too violent or restrictive. I feel a Revolver track could have sounded perfect on the album. Thinking about it, the album’s predecessor, Rubber Soul (1965) is without a title track.

Whilst there have been discussions and features about this very subject before, it is something not as dissected as I’d imagine. The fact Oasis’ Definitely Maybe turning thirty is one of the biggest anniversaries of this year got me thinking about what a title track could have consisted of. How epic would it have been. My mind also went to other albums from 1994 without title tracks: Pulp’s Different Class (1995); Beck’s Odelay (1996) – though the word is repeated through the album song, Lord Only Knows -; The Chemical Brothers’ Dig Your Own Hole (1997) and R.E.M.’s Out of Time (1991). Looking at some suggestions online and more modern albums like Britney Spears’ Blackout (2007), Billie Eilish’s debut album, WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? (2019) had potential title tracks (or at least in fans’ minds). There is no title track on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (1973) (an album, annoyingly, that most shortened to ‘Dark Side of the Moon’!). There are ample examples of albums where the title is mentioned in other songs, thus people feel that that is an adequate connection. The Corrs’ Talk on Corners ( 1997) is mentioned in the track, Queen of Hollywood. There is actually an album by The Title Trackers called Lost Title Tracks that mentions a few. The inclusion of The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. (1972) made me realise that this album, plus 1968’s Beggars Banquet, 1971’s Sticky Fingers and even their Beatles rip-off, 1967’s Their Satanic Majesties Request (pretty much their version of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band from the same year) does not have a title track! If you have any suggestions or ideas of title tracks that could have slotted onto classic albums currently without them then let me know. Sadly, in the days of A.I., that sort of request can be fulfilled pretty quickly. It is best kept in the imagination. It takes me back to Oasis’ Definitely Maybe and whether the band had a title track in mind. Would it have been any good?! I guess we will never know. Do have a think about missing title tracks from classic albums and let your…

IMAGINATION run wild!

FEATURE: Without You Without Them: Reacting to the News of boygenius’ Indefinite Hiatus

FEATURE:

 

 

Without You Without Them

IN THIS PHOTO: Phoebe Bridgers (left), Lucy Dacus (right) and Julien Baker (bottom) have announced that boygenius is going on an indefinite hiatus/PHOTO CREDIT: Hobbes Ginsberg for The New York Times

Reacting to the News of boygenius’ Indefinite Hiatus

_________

YOU get bands who go on hiatus…

and artists that step away and take time out for various reasons. One of my favourite groups out there, boygenius, have announced they are to go on hiatus for the foreseeable future. Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus have their own solo careers, but they are at their best when together. Because last year’s the record was such a brilliant album (and one of my favourite from 2023), it is quite sad that the supergroup are taking some time away. I think many were looking forward to a second studio album from them this year maybe. Pitchfork reported on the news that the beloved trio are on hiatus for the foreseeable future:

“Boygenius played two acoustic sets last night at the Smell in downtown Los Angeles. During the shows, they said, “We’re going away for the foreseeable future,” and Boygenius’ representatives confirmed to Pitchfork that the group is going hiatus.

Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus formed Boygenius in 2018, sharing their self-titled debut EP that year. The trio was relatively inactive in the years that followed, with each member releasing a solo album of her own: Bridgers issued Punisher in 2020; Baker released Little Oblivions in February 2021; and Dacus shared Home Video in June 2021.

Boygenius made their triumphant return last year with their debut album, The Record, and a companion EP, The Rest. The full-length got nominated for Album of the Year, Best Alternative Music Album, and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical, at the 2024 Grammy Awards. In addition, the single “Not Strong Enough” got nods for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance, while “Cool About It” is up for Best Alternative Music Performance. The Grammys take place on Sunday, February 4, in Los Angeles.

I am going to finish off with a playlist of boygenius’ best songs and deep cuts. I can understand why boygenius might want some time away and are keeping the reason a bit secret. They have their own solo careers to think about, though we hope this is not the end. So incredible is their connection and live performances, fans of the trio hope that they come back together again. Tomorrow in Los Angeles, we will discover if they walk away with a GRAMMY. That might be one of the final public outings for them as a trio for a long time. Though the boys are going to be, as many have punned, out of town for a while, let’s hope that they will be roaring back, Thin Lizzy-style, very soon. Their political and social awareness. How they stand up for the lights of others (especially the L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community) and their conscientiousness is much needed. Their sisterhood and strength! Together with their combined musical brilliance makes them such a standout act. I have loved them since they released their self-titled E.P. in 2018. Their latest E.P., the rest, came out late last year. I think a lot of people that after the record came out, that there would be extensive touring and follow-up. I predicted they would be at Glastonbury this year – which I guess can’t possibly happen now. With such an amazing album up there, maybe many were looking ahead to future music. They could well be back but, as boygenius have been together for a long time, it is understandable they will want to do their own thing for a bit.

I am a particular big fan of Phoebe Bridgers, so it would be great to see a follow-up to 2020’s remarkable Punisher. Lucy Dacus put Home Video out on 2021. Julien Baker put out Little Oblivions in 2021. All three albums possibly rank as their best solo efforts. When combined for boygenius, something even more remarkable was released last year. There is no denying that Baker, Dacus and Bridgers are among the best and most consistent songwriters of their generation. Artists who are hugely important and have their own fanbases. I will look to see how they progress and move through this year. Everyone hopes that boygenius can come back together in the coming years. It is clear that there is a love of love between them, so there is no sense of them breaking up or wanting to go in different directions. It is fantastic to have had them in music. The best modern-day supergroup and, more than that, three like-minded but different artists who work together beautifully and harmoniously. If it is the end for boygenuius, we can cherish the peerless music they have given us. If there is more sometime in the future, it is definitely something to hold onto. It is clear that the music scene will never be quite as special and distinct…

WITHOUT them.

FEATURE: Mirror Mirror: Why Pet Shop Boys’ Claims Ageism in Music Doesn’t Exist Is Especially Ignorant

FEATURE:

 

 

Mirror Mirror

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna during her current Celebration Tour

Why Pet Shop Boys’ Claims Ageism in Music Doesn’t Exist Is Especially Ignorant

_________

MAYBE they are referring to the popularity…

IN THIS PHOTO: Pet Shop Boys (Neil Tenant and Chris Lowe)/PHOTO CREDIT: Alasdair McLellan

of albums by artists over the age of fifty but, in a new interview from The Guardian, Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tenant has suggested ageism in music does not exist. Maybe he was meant to say that records are timeless and, therefore, ageism doesn’t exist in terms of legacy and modern relevance. New albums by older artists survive decades, whereas artists like Pet Shop Boys are still hugely popular:

“Tennant famously worked at Smash Hits pre-Pets, and this begs a Hits-style question: what does their new album smell like? “That is a good Smash Hits question,” says Tennant. “It’s not citrony or sweet. I think it’s slightly more musky.”

Nonetheless is a marked development from their last Parlophone record, 2012’s beautiful but melancholy Elysium, a slightly defeated collection about becoming invisible as older men and musicians, also made in the wake of the deaths of Tennant’s parents. In 2022, the Pets helmed a Palace fashion advert alongside Joan Collins, now 90; a Loewe advert starring Maggie Smith, 89, recently went viral. Madonna, 65, is no longer lambasted for ageing, but triumphantly touring her Celebration retrospective. Have attitudes to older people changed in the past decade?

“Weirdly, music ceased to be ageist,” says Tennant, as various chocolate cakes arrive and the pair produce an astonishing amount of crumbs. “Young people are listening to their parents’ records. It’s all up for grabs.” He credits YouTube. “You could have a fond memory of seeing the video for Strawberry Fields Forever on Top of the Pops in 1967, and then you never saw it again. But I could look at it now. Something happened then. It all existed at the same time.” They crashed into this last year when Drake released a song with an unlicensed quotation of West End Girls, which Tennant found out about through a young nephew: “He was quite impressed, actually.” It got sorted after a cross tweet. “They were very helpful and apologetic,” says Tennant. Did they get paid? “Oh we certainly did.”

He ventures a theory. “I think pop stars have managed to do what we used to think only old blues musicians could do – turn into sort of ‘authentic’, classic … I think the public accept that. You could call it nostalgia, but I think it’s a desire to witness an authentic movement recreated. Age doesn’t seem to matter any more because the music doesn’t seem to have aged”.

It is incredibly ignorant to suggest that ageism does not exist in music. Maybe not so much for men but, for women, it is something that affects them. Chuck D recently spoke about ageism Madonna received during her Celebration Tour world extravaganza. Laura Snapes’ short-sighted assessment that Madonna is celebrated and not slammed because of her age is strange! So many people have taken to social media to troll her. She has received so much criticism for ‘not acting her age’ and trying to recapture the past. Even though the tour is wildly popular, its star attraction is not immune to ageism. Same for Kylie Minogue. Her latest album, TENSION, is one of her best. Even given her success and legacy, she has had to fight against ageism. Even though she has said it is not cool to be ageist now, that does not mean it’s non-existent! Minogue knows this. So how can we say music is not ageist?! BBC Radio 1 was accused of being ageist by James’ Tim Booth. Belinda Carlisle has also said she had faced ageism. Is it ambiguous when we look at the word, ‘ageism’/’ageist’. In terms of sound and relevance, I don’t think that the scene is obsessed solely with young artists and anyone over thirty is seen as washed-up and irrelevant. I do think that artists over fifty especially are still subjected to ageism and have to battle to get heard. This is especially true for women.

IN THIS PHOTO: Belinda Carlisle/PHOTO CREDIT: Nick Spanos/The Guardian

In terms of women over the age of thirty, there are artists fighting against dusty ageism. This post from 2022 suggests how there is a tide starting to turn. Even though there is a tonne of ageism still in 2024 – it is very much available to view online if you think it has disappeared! -, at least there is a bit more flexibility towards featuring female artists over thirty:

“The pressures of an industry obsessed with youth applies to both men and women, but of course with women it’s particularly brutal. The entertainment business – from music to Hollywood – has always fetishised the “ingénue” (just look at the backlash against Billie Eilish when she unveiled her new ‘womanly’ look on the cover of Vogue, age 18, or the vitriol directed towards a just-turned-18 Millie Bobby Brown when she started dressing sexy). It is profoundly depressing to think that Smash Hits reviewed a 35-year-old Madonna with the headline, “Calm Down Grandma!” in 1992.

And then there is the question of motherhood: record label bosses worried about investing in an artist who might only have a year or two before they want to have a baby, while singers like Paloma Faith and Jessie Ware have revealed how mercilessly inflexible the business can be for touring mothers.

Faith has revealed she knocked four years off her age (from 27 to 23) after she read an article that described KT Tunstall as old – at just 27. Anastacia said she was 23 when she was actually 30. As Madonna said in a 2016 speech accepting a Billboard Woman of the Year award: “In the music industry…to age is to sin”.

But, in the last two years, there seems to have been a shift, with a crop of female musicians breaking into the business in their thirties. Lizzo’s name-making sleeper hit Truth Hurts (originally released in 2017) entered the charts in 2019 when she was 31. Rina Sawayama released her breakthrough album SAWAYAMA in 2020 aged 30. And that same year Jessie Ware – who almost quit the music industry after becoming a mother – released the most successful album of her career, What’s Your Pleasure, aged 35. In January Priya Ragu made the BBC Sound of 2022 poll – a poll journalists use to identify each year’s shiny new generation of musicians – age 36. And Self Esteem – who used to lie about her age – was in February nominated for a Brit in the Best New Artist category at the age of 35, writing on Twitter, “In an industry obsessed the with youth of women, I’m galvanised as fuck by this.”

If the tide is genuinely turning, then I am relieved. Yes, youth and a breathlessly fast ascent is an easier story to sell (to my editor, to the reader, in a headline), but interviewing a young star is always hard work. Not only is it difficult to tease out anything particularly enlightening from the average teenager (and nor do you want to mine them for unprocessed trauma), I always feel a little concerned about immortalising opinions that will surely change three times over in the course of their early twenties through quotes that will forever sit somewhere on the internet. Last year when I interviewed a 17 year-old “viral star” on Zoom from the middle of his messy teenage bedroom, he seemed so vulnerable the experience genuinely felt wrong.

And I am relieved for their sake too. Fame is always easiest to navigate once you’ve already grown up away from the spotlight – you only have to chart the rise and fall of most Hollywood child stars to see why. Last week, Lizzo spoke to Vanity Fair about how her arduously slow route to success meant that “I was almost 30 when all this shit started popping up on me. I had a chance to fuck up as a teenager and in my 20s.… I’m so glad I had a chance to grow up and then get hit with all this shit”.

So many women in the music industry would argue how ageism is very much still around. Madonna has been slagged off and trolled. So many women over forty and fifty are still not played on playlists. BBC Radio 1 is not exclusively for younger artists, though there is still this segregation when it comes to stations and the age of artists. BBC Radio 2 playlisting ‘older’ artists and BBC Radio 1 for younger artists. I have heard from women in their forties and fifties who are given less airplay or taken less seriously because they are not in their twenties or thirties. The rise of TikTok artists and a wave of fresh and young Pop shows that there is still a preference for artists of a certain age. This suggestion music’s ageism has gone is very naive. It has distinctly improved. Not as rampant as it once was. Older women largely missing from festivals, especially the headline slots. I struggle to see how things have drastically improved. They haven’t. This year should be one where ageism isn’t a factor but, if you look at radio playlists, features, festival bills and beyond, you will see that the industry has an age block. It is one where women are still being victimised and ignored. If journalists are less obvious in their ageism, look at online comments and criticism of artists like Madonna and there is ageism all around. Nobody can argue against that – as there is ample evidence -, so there is no way ageism doesn’t exist. Maybe in terms of older artists having their music embraced, ageism is less prolific there. When it comes to attitudes towards older artists, particularly female performer, sadly, we have a very…

LONG way to go.

FEATURE: Not Any Tom, Dick and Harry: Ringo Starr’s Beats & Threads, and Another Important Year for The Beatles

FEATURE:

 

 

Not Any Tom, Dick and Harry

Ringo Starr’s Beats & Threads, and Another Important Year for The Beatles

_________

I have been thinking about The Beatles…

IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles (left to right: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison) in an iconic Paris pillow fight shot from 1964/PHOTO CREDIT: Harry Benson 

a lot recently. I think about The Beatles a lot all of the time. Whilst most of my neutral brain is dedicated to Kate Bush, I often have The Beatles in the background. Often, these two worlds intereact and I wonder why Kate Bush and Ringo Starr never did anything together, as they share a lot of musical and spiritual DNA. Same of her and George Harrison. Bush met and worked alongside Paul McCartney, though she did not have a lot of exposure to the other band members (once, Kate Bush said her favourite Beatles album was Magical Mystery Tour, so she appreciated the trippy and deeper cuts). You might be forgiven by being confused by the first part of the title. Tom, Dick, and Harry is used as a placeholder for unknown or unextraordinary people. In the context of Ringo Starr, the ‘Tom’ refers to a tom-tom; a crucial part of percussion kit. The ‘Dick’ is a distillation and alternative to Richard (Ringo Starr’s real name is Richard Starkey). The ‘Harry’ is a little more obscure: Harry Benson’s early-1964 photos of The Beatles in the storm of Beatlemania have their sixtieth anniversary coming. In fact, and before I get to the main objective of this feature, 2024 is another big year for Beatles fans – though, I guess every year is in some way! 1964 was a massively important year for the band. On 9th February, John Lennon, George Harrison, Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in the U.S. and, with it, ignited a fire of screaming and passionate fandom/obsession! On 10th July, the band released their third studio album, A Hard Day’s Night. The first album of entirely oriignal compositions, the film of the same name came out in the U.K. on 6th July, 1964. With the release of The Beatles’ final single, Now and Then, last year, there is still plenty to look forward to in terms of anniversaries and various bits!

There is cynicism and cries of cash-grab when we get a Beatles reissue and remaster. Whether it is the iconic ‘red’ and ‘blue’ albums coming back out or a new book about them, there is sceptical reaction from some. It can be expensive being a Beatles fan! I would say that the books that come from Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are essential. Personal perspective and very special releases that we need to keep and cherish. We are blessed they are both still with us. Any music legend like them, Joni Mitchell or Paul Simon. Those who were around in the 1960s and 1970s and changed the face of music. When it comes to the most important element of music history, I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Ringo Starr’s drums were up there. Maybe the most important part of music history. As the driving force and, let’s face it, the heart of the band – in terms of the respect from the other members, and the fact he is such a special human -, anything he comes out with is alright by me! Starr announced on his Instagram that a new album is coming out. A Country-themed album that was meant to be an E.P. but is not a ten-track release (an E.P., Crooked Boy, is also coming out, with the tracks are written by Linda Perry). Also, a book that looks very exciting, Beats & Threads, is one I feel should have a wider release. I shall explain why. Here is some more information:

“Beats & Threads, a new limited-edition retrospective hardcover by legendary Beatles drummer and global music icon Ringo Starr, is to be sold exclusively by the publishing division of Julien’s Auctions, the industry’s leading Rock ‘N’ Roll memorabilia auction house. Ringo’s latest publication is an unprecedented chronicle of over 70 years of his legendary sonic and sartorial style, dedicated to his historic drum kits and era-defining garments that made music and fashion history.

Featuring nearly 300 images capturing iconic and many never-before-seen intimate moments of Ringo’s illustrious life and career, along with the musician’s warm memories told in his own words, this immense tribute to the enduring influence and time-transcending impact of the Fab Four member is a ticket to ride through fashion and Beatles history, and gets back to why Ringo’s trend-setting threads were as signature as the beat of his drums.

The 312-page book is available for purchase exclusively online at www.juliensauctions.com. Exclusive limited editions of the commemorative hardcover book with a special colour cover of the Beatles signed by Ringo Starr are available for $500, and exclusive Ringo Starr signed limited editions of the book housed in a special designed slip-case that also includes an exclusive video of Ringo Starr will be available for $750..

All proceeds of the book sales will benefit The Lotus Foundation whose mission funds supports, participates in and promotes charitable projects aimed at advancing social welfare in diverse areas including, but not limited to substance abuse, cerebral palsy, brain tumors, cancer, battered women and their children, homelessness, and animals in need.

Comprehensive

Ringo, in collaboration with noted historian, author, speaker, drummer, and vintage drum collector, Gary Astridge, offers for the first-time the most comprehensive look at his legendary Beatles-era drum kits in a book containing decades of research-based information with curated and detailed photographs of these pieces of music history.

Accompanied by archival documentation including drum specifications, contracts with drum making companies such as Ajax Edgware, music engagement schedules and more, the book uncovers new perspectives and untold stories of Ringo’s and the Beatles’ musical and style evolution, such as the remarkable revelation of The Beatles’ “Drop-T” logo and its actual creator, Eddie Stokes that includes the only photo that exists of the late freelance sign painter of one of the most recognisable logos in the world.

Nine of Ringo’s original drum kits are presented here featuring his 1958 Ajax Edgware drum kit, 1960 Premier Mahogany Duroplastic, 1963 Ludwig Downbeat Drum kit, 1963 Oyster Black Pearl Ludwig Jazz Festival Snare Drum– considered one of his most important and utilized instrument in Ringo’s assortment of drums throughout his Beatles career and heard on most of their recordings.

Instrumental

Alongside this treasure trove of information are pages bursting with dazzling images of Ringo’s iconic clothing worn playing behind his drums, his life off and on the road, in studio and at home. From the early influence of the Beatles manager and father figure, Brian Epstein, who was instrumental in creating their early modern look of the Beatles’ iconic three-piece black suit designed by Douglas Millings and Beatle Boots to the Fab Four’s individual and most photographed styles, such as Ringo’s “Hey Jude” green pinstripe three-piece ensemble worn in the filming of their iconic performance filmed at Twickenham Film Studios on August 4, 1968, to his custom-made embellished “All You Need is Love” lavender silk tunic, these photographs capture the decades’ spirit and the Beatles phenomenon.

Ringo’s unforgettable and inimitable style was created by the designers who crafted these artisanal pieces from London’s most distinguished designers on Savile Row to King’s Road, Chelsea to the hippie floral shirts and bold colour jackets from the Hung on You boutique as well as Ringo’s insouciant choice of wearing then-wife Maureen’s red vinyl raincoat to protect himself from the inclement weather in the Beatles’ 1969 mythic Apple Studios rooftop performance of the filming of Let It Be.

“I enjoyed getting it together with the help of Gary, Scotty and Julien’s and I hope you enjoy it too! Peace and love, Ringo,” said Ringo Starr.

The release of the book coincides with Beatlemania back on top of the charts with the recent record-breaking release of the Beatles’ final song Now and Then making history and Peter Jackson’s acclaimed Get Back documentary that continues to be seen by millions of fans around the world since its premiere on Disney+. In 2023, Ringo went back on the road with a 34th anniversary tour with his All-Starr Band, released Rewind Forward, his fourth EP release in three years that includes the track Feeling the Sunlight with Paul McCartney and collaborated with McCartney on Dolly Parton’s cover of the Beatles’ Let It Be”.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ringo Starr (@ringostarrmusic)

It is great that this book has come out. It would be great if it was made widely available to fans, as it seems like one of the most important books that has been put out about the band. It is noble that money is being raised for Lotus Foundation - though I wonder if it going to be at high street stores soon. Not only is the fashion of Ringo Starr and The Beatles iconic. His kits and knowing more about his drum set-up gives a greater understanding of the songs and his genius. Rather than it being a gallery and something you can browse, there is an immersive quality to Beats & Threads. Released on 24th November, 2023, the fact Ringo Starr has just promoted the book on his Instagram makes me wonder whether Beats & Threads is still available (I cannot find any copies listed at the moment) I was sort of hoping that there would be interview from Matt Everitt and Ringo Starr. A BBC Radio 6  Music promotion of this important and fascination collection of photos. As I am writing this on 3rd February, I am not 100% sure one hasn’t been recorded. We are marking sixty years of Beatlemania, so I feel greater accessibility to archives and books like Beats & Threads is important. Paul McCartney’s 1964: Eyes of the Storm is a book everyone should get. Snapshots from Paul McCartney and his unique perspective of the mayhem and chaos that greeted The Beatles as they travelled to Paris, the U.S. and beyond. Hearing from Ringo Starr is always a pleasure, so I am looking forward to new music. I was really intrigued by the book, Beats & Threads, and it would be awesome to own it. Regular copies of the book are, I understand, were available for $80 so, if there was another round of release where one could buy the book but proceeds went to charity, then it would give even more fans a chance to own it. I am keeping an eye out in terms of the book’s availability and whether it is the signed copies available or regular ones. Incredible insight and photography from, to me, the world’s most important drummer. If the amazing Ringo Starr put Beats & Threads back into the world, then his millions of adoring fans would offer him…

PEACE and love.

FEATURE: He'll Never Make The Sweeney: Kate Bush’s Wow at Forty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

He'll Never Make The Sweeney

Kate Bush’s Wow at Forty-Five

_________

I am looking ahead…

to 9th March. One of Kate Bush’s biggest and most incredible singles, Wow, turns forty-five. Even though Bush does not mark anniversaries and would not take to social media to mark forty-five years of a classic, I know that so many fans would. Wow was a really important single. The third song from her second studio album, Lionheart, this is a track that Bush had ready long before recording the album. It is a song that could have appeared on The Kick Inside. Lionheart is an album that has never really gained the respect and love that it deserves. Many might know it for Wow alone. Rather than put out the most instant and most ‘radio-friendly’ song from the album first, Hammer Horror was released. Charting at forty-four in the U.K., it was an unsuccessful first release from an album that a lot of people were looking at with scrutiny. After the success of The Kick Inside – which had two major singles In Wuthering Heights and The Man with the Child of His Eyes -, Lionheart was quickly recorded and was not really what Kate Bush wanted or had in mind. Obviously, Wow was always going to be a single, though I often wonder why it was not the first one out. Even though Hammer Horror is a great song, maybe Bush and EMI felt that this was distinct enough from The Kick Inside. Rather than release something similar to the songs on that album, Hammer Horror is very much Kate Bush stepping into new sonic territory. Wow has elements of the sound and vibe of The Kick Inside, yet its subject matter is completely different. When it was released on 9th March, 1979, it was less than a month before she started The Tour of Life (the first date was 2nd April).

Kate Bush performed Wow live quite a few times. It was in the setlist for The Tour of Life. She also performed it during an ABBA T.V. special in April 1979. There does seem to be some confusion over the release date of Wow. Some say 5th March, 1979, whereas others say 9th March, 1979. On 5th March, 1979, the video for Wow was shown on television for the first time on The Kenny Everett Video Show. The tickets for The Tour of Life go on sale the same day (except for certain venues, which are to cause much embarrassment by jumping the gun). As we see, Bush is interviewed on 6th March, 1979 about her new single. As part of a new Arts programme on BBC 2, Musical Chairs, a documentary recording the making of the Wow video, is shown. Bush would not have time to perform Wow on Top of the Pops, so intense were the rehearsals for The Tour of Life. When The Whole Story was released in 1986, a video was made of Wow which was a compilation of Bush performing the song live. The original video for the single is Kate Bush in a blackened studio with a light behind her. It was directed by Keef (Keith MacMillan). Thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for providing detail about the track. The critical response of Wow are pretty mixed:

“Critical response

The music paper Sounds seemed a little underwhelmed by ‘Wow’: “I hear this mediocre chanteuse crooning her way through this silly song. (…) I realise that a lot of people would like to go to bed with her, but buying all her records seems a curious way of expressing such desires.” Meanwhile, The Guardian called ‘Wow’ the “undisputed highlight” of the Lionheart album. “An eerie gentle number with perceptive lyrics. The verses still sound a little muddled but get better with playing” said Record Mirror. And Melody Maker added: “The most precisely focused Kate Bush single since Wuthering Heights despite the self-indulgent lush production.”

Kate about ‘Wow’

I’ve really enjoyed recording ‘Wow’. I’m very, very pleased with my vocal performance on that, because we did it a few times, and although it was all in tune and it was okay, there was just something missing. And we went back and did it again and it just happened, and I’ve really pleased with that, it was very satisfying.

LIONHEART PROMO CASSETTE, EMI CANADA, 1978

‘Wow’ is a song about the music business, not just rock music but show business in general, including acting and theatre. People say that the music business is about ripoffs, the rat race, competition, strain, people trying to cut you down, and so on, and though that’s all there, there’s also the magic. It was sparked off when I sat down to try and write a Pink Floyd song, something spacey; Though I’m not surprised no-one has picked that up, it’s not really recognisable as that, in the same way as people haven’t noticed that ‘Kite’ is a Bob Marley song, and ‘Don’t Push Your Foot On The Heartbrake’ is a Patti Smith song. When I wrote it I didn’t envisage performing it – the performance when it happened was an interpretation of the words I’d already written. I first made up the visuals in a hotel room in New Zealand, when I had half an hour to make up a routine and prepare for a TV show. I sat down and listened to the song through once, and the whirling seemed to fit the music. Those who were at the last concert of the tour at Hammersmith must have noticed a frogman appear through the dry ice it was one of the crew’s many last night ‘pranks’ and was really amazing. I’d have liked to have had it in every show.

KATE BUSH CLUB NEWSLETTER, SUMMER 1979”.

With Full House as its B-side, Wow is one of Kate Bush’s finest singles. Reaching fourteen in the U.K., it can be considered a success. The musicians on the track are incredible. Lionheart was an album with a blend of musicians. Kate Bush wanted her band to play on the album though Andrew Powell, the producer of The Kick Inside and Wow, wanted the same musicians from her debut. In the end, Bush’s band had to be sent home. However, on Wow, we get Brian Bath on guitar and the late Del Palmer on bass. Both were in the K.T. Bush band and were among her chosen musicians. Ian Bairnson (the late great), who was on The Kick Inside, was on electric guitar. Paddy Bush, her brother – who too was on The Kick Inside -, played mandolin. With Charlie Morgan on drums and Duncan Mackay on synthesiser, it is a song that apparently took quite a few takes. Kate Bush never truly happy with her vocals, she endlessly searched for a perfect take. In 2012, The Guardian discussed how Lionheart was a rushed disappointment, though it had a clear highlight in Wow:

“Wow was the second single from Kate Bush's difficult second album, Lionheart. It was difficult not for the usual reasons – overindulgence, procrastination, artistic crises – but because it was rushed. Lionheart came out only nine months after her debut, The Kick Inside, and frankly, it's a bit of a stinker. It's fortunate she was starting out in the late 70s rather than the impatient music scene of today, or we may never have enjoyed the rich pickings of her subsequent work.

In late 1978 the 20-year-old Bush still seemed an ingenue and it was always going to be tough following an album that contained Wuthering Heights and The Man With the Child in His Eyes. She later complained she felt under pressure from EMI to release Lionheart too early, a problem she made sure she never experienced again. But Wow was always a song that stood on its own merits. It contains many of her trademarks: enigmatic intertextual lyrics, unfeasibly high-pitched vocals that fall unexpectedly to an absurd low note (the last "wow" of each chorus is particularly amusing), tantalising verses followed by a cascading chorus. Musically, Wow is typical of her early work, with pretty woodwind, piano and strings complementing a lyrical bass line.

The song, as far an anyone other than its author knows for certain, appears to be about struggling actors and the disappointments of fame. In the video its most famous lines – "He'll never make the scene/ He'll never make the Sweeney/ Be that movie queen/ He's too busy hitting the vaseline" – were expressed through her much-parodied mime-the-lyrics dancing style. The word "Sweeney" was accompanied by her firing a gun and "hitting the vaseline" by her tapping her backside. Viewers were invited to draw their own conclusions.

Bush is such a singular talent it has become too easy to dismiss her as an eccentric, peripheral figure. It was around the time Wow was released that the pastiches began, most famously by Pamela Stephenson on Not the Nine O'Clock News”.

On 9th March, it will be forty-five years since Kate Bush’s Wow was released. I do think that this is a song whose video deserves the HD treatment. One of her most distinguished and fascinating singles, it is arresting, cheeky and distinctly Kate Bush. Maybe not played as much as it should be, I hope that people revisit the song ahead of its anniversary. This entrancing and hypnotic gem is…

SIMPLY unbelievable!

FEATURE: Spotlight: Hana Lili

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Hana Lili

_________

I am a big fan of Hana Lili…

and hope that as many people as people connect with her music this year. The Welsh artist supported the Cardiff leg of Coldplay's Music of the Spheres World Tour last year at the Principality Stadium, together with Scottish group Chvrches. She has just (7th February) supported Circa Waves. This is an amazing name that everyone should know about. I am keen to get to some interviews with Hana Lili. I will start with an older interview. Going back to 2021. I will bring it up to date after that. I am interested in the NOTION interview, as they spotlighted an exciting rising talent:

“It’s been a busy year for Hana Lili. After her song “Stay” played on this year’s Love Island the young Welsh star was launched into the spotlight, picking up a legion of fans with her soulful acoustic sound. 

In October, Hana delivered her 4-track EP ‘Flowers Die in Summer’ after a year of going in and out of lockdown offered her the opportunity to knuckle down and get creative. ‘Flowers Die in Summer’ is an ethereal introduction to her mellow sound, brimming with ear candy melodies, touching lyrics and silky (self-taught) production. With the music video for “Don’t Try To Call Me” shot on her phone, it’s clear this artist revels in staying authentic, original and low-key.

Giving insight into her creative process on the track “Don’t Try To Call Me”, Hana explains: ‘I wrote this song in the middle of lockdown, all my communications we’re through my phone. I sat in my room for days on end, and the phone was the only means of communication. It was a frustrating, sad and lonely time for a lot of people. I recorded a guitar loop and sampled it. The sampled guitar riff runs through the whole song; it’s perpetual and reflects the emotions of a Groundhog Day. I wrote about the feelings of isolation, loneliness, and paranoia. Ironically it’s the most upbeat song of my EP.’ 

Notion got the chance to speak with Hana Lili about how she’s developed as an artist this past year, what song never fails to make her cry, and who – or what – would play her in a film.

How have you developed creatively over the past year?

The past year has allowed me to reflect a lot. When live shows and releasing music paused, it made me question why do I do what I do? It made me realise I just love writing songs, in the same way I did when I was 14. I think remembering that being creative is simply an enjoyable process and not all about output. The last year allowed me to enjoy the process again and remember the simplicity of being creative is just to create.

How can an artist stay original nowadays?

I think staying original comes with understanding that who I am when I’m making music in my bedroom when no one else is around is who I should stay true to as an artist. Inspiration comes from everywhere in the world, and I think that it’s something to celebrate, but staying original shouldn’t be the main focus, there should be a focus on staying true to your authentic self and not feel the pressure to adapt to the trends but also to let yourself be influenced by the world outside. It’s like a double negative, what I’m saying is a contradiction, but if it’s an automatic natural process, it will just be exactly that.

What is your biggest pinch-me moment so far?

Releasing music is always that moment for me. It’s been a bizarre year and creating and writing songs has been such an amazing outlet for me and my emotions. Also, my track ‘Stay’ was played on this year’s season of Love Island which was so unexpected and a massive moment in my career so far!

Finish the sentence: I feel happiest when…

I’m busy. When I’m performing songs to new audiences, when I release new music. This past year, although great to reflect, I’m done with the over analysing of my own emotions, and having the time to micro analyse it all. It’s catch 22. I feel like it’s been a sense of release and serenity being able to release music and perform live after such a long time without it”.

One of the best singles from last year was Hana Lili’s Small Talk. I thought that it deserved a lot more radio airtime. It is one of the best releases from this amazing artist. Women in Pop spoke with Hana Lili in November about Small Talk. She also looked ahead to this year and what she wanted to achieve:

“There is such a warmness and tenderness to the song, along with a sense of melancholy, set to a lovely indie pop sound. What was the soundscape, or feels, you were aiming for with the song?

I’m a massive fan of 90s indie music. Bands such as the Cardigans, No Doubt. I find with the production being nostalgic and slightly upbeat it correlates to the lyrics in some way. Hiding behind the melancholic feel of the track, is the earnest lyrics talking about going through a hard time and not being able to communicate that properly with others.

What was the creative process like for this song? Who did you work with and how long did the whole process take?

I always start with a trail of thought. Writing random thoughts and feelings. In the lyrical dump of that day I had “I hate small talk” written down which sparked the beginning of the song. I worked with producer Jez Ashurst and songwriter Mark Vallance and we wrote the song in that day's session. The process then involved adding production with Jez, building the track, and I layered the guitars… there’s even an omnichord tucked in the mix somewhere in the track!

Who were the artists that influenced you growing up?

I would always steal my parents CDs as a way of discovering new music. Bands such as The Pixies, Nirvana, Radiohead, No Doubt and the Cardigans.

The music industry has never been a particularly welcoming or safe space for female artists, mainly because it has been run by older, straight, white men for decades. What are your experiences and/or thoughts on gender (in)equality and sexism in music?

I’m currently working with a project called ‘Merched yn Gwneud Miwsig’ which translates to Women in Music. It’s a project where we as artists encourage girls to write and produce music,  and learn about different sectors in the industry. I’m off to North Wales tomorrow to run another camp. Being a part of the project and being able to encourage young women to produce and take on roles that may be deemed as ‘male led’ has been really cool. Seeing the young women go forth  after the camp, and start producing, writing songs or taking interest in the music industry is amazing.

Growing up and producing music, I felt this internal thought sometimes that was ‘yeah that’s not really producing though’ but in reality it was, I wrote the music and produced it all in my bedroom it was satisfying to be that independent.

‘Small Talk’ is out now, what else do you have planned for the rest of the year and into 2024?

Lots of songwriting! I’m also finishing up the next single which I’m excited to share. I’ll be playing a London show on the 15th of November in the Seabright Arms as part of the ‘The Great Escape’ First Fifty launch. Which of course will lead to playing the Great Escape next year. So there will be more shows, new music and more songwriting in 2024 for sure!”.

There is another article around Small Talk that I want to bring in before wrapping things up. If you need more convincing that the wonderful Hana Lili is worth following, then I hope that the final two interviews are enough. She is an artist that is going to have an amazing year. Do ensure that she does not pass you by. I love everything she has put out so far:

“What’s the title of your latest release, and what does it mean to you?

The song is titled ‘Small Talk’ and is about a time when I was lacking confidence and hiding behind small talk in conversation with people as a way to avoid feeling vulnerable. The song idea came to me when I was out in London meeting new people and realizing what I was doing, putting up a front in the hope that people would like me and I thought I need to stop this and be me!

What was the hardest part about putting this release together, and why?

I think it’s always the stage of finalising the song in the first place, and then letting go of the recording – basically saying “Here it is it’s finished”. The creative process is always an exciting space to be in and you always think you can make things a bit better. Then suddenly it’s time to let it go and put it out into the world.

Who produced the release, and what did they bring to it?

The record was produced by Jez Ashurst. My favourite part of making the record on the production side was when Jez and I started layering the production; adding guitars, a baritone guitar, and also an Omnicord. It’s a fun balance of adding enough new, and sometimes strange elements into the mix of the production, which is something I’ve always been a fan of!

What do you want the listener to take away from listening to your music?

If it’s something they relate to, I hope it, in some way, helps them. I find that with music that I love, it’s always an artist describing something I feel or that resonates with me so specifically that it helps me to heal and feel understood.

How does a track normally come together? Can you tell us something about the process?

I always start by writing a stream of thought about what I’m feeling that day. It’s then a process of finding melodies and putting the lyrics together, similar to playing a game of crossword”.

I am going to wrap things up in a minute. Actually, for the final interview, I am returning to NOTION. A couple of years after highlighting the Welsh artist, they chatted about Small Talk. Teasing new music in the future – I can imagine a new single will arrive fairly soon -, it is another great insight into the world and talent of Hana Lili. She is someone I can see atop huge festival stages in years to come. This is a phenomenal artist that you really do need to get involved with:

“Raised in a small seaside town on Wales’ south west coast, enveloped by a wealth of culture and history, it was there that her passion for creating music began to brew. From partaking in local folk singing competitions, to now supporting the likes of Coldplay and Tom Grennan, Hana has managed to weave the thread of storytelling—learnt from competing in folk music contests—into her artistry today. Viewing writing songs as a format to understand her emotions, it’s no surprise that her songs read like pages torn from her diary, as she navigates growing up whilst reflecting on  her childhood. Her introspective nature is paradigmatically exemplified in her single ‘Small Talk’, traversing vast emotional landscapes, hardships and realities—all to the rhythm of lo-fi elements laced with her teeming alt-pop vision. Dedicating the anthem to anxious over-thinkers, Hana expresses the emotions you are burdened with when you feel like you don’t fit in.

 Expect to witness the young artists’ sugar-sweet vocals lilted with a poignant nostalgic sensibility, which calls to 90s indie and grunge. Tentative guitar strings are plucked, whilst sliding guitar riffs swoop in occasionally, all the to the backdrop of an infectious drum beat. It feels vibrant and dreamy, like a perfect shimmery bedroom pop tune that ushers a new side to her artistry, whilst continuing her quintessential devoir to be her most authentic self.

To celebrate her latest single, we catch up with Hana to talk about her Welsh heritage, stealing her parents’ CD’s and all things ‘Small Talk’.

You’ve mentioned that ‘Small Talk’ is about hiding behind meaningless conversations to avoid being vulnerable. How important is vulnerability in your songwriting, and how do you also balance that with your music’s self-assured sound?

Writing songs is a way for me to process my emotions. It’s like a diary entry of some sort about different moments and feelings I’m going through, it’s massively therapeutic. I always tend to just write about what I’m feeling and in a strange way it becomes a silver lining being able to turn feelings of frustration, sadness or anger into a song.

You just supported Coldplay and Tom Grennan – what did you learn? How was the experience, and have they, in any way, influenced your musical journey and aspirations?

Supporting Coldplay was awesome. I think it’s a real testament to their ethos as a band, that they have local acts support them on their world tour. Being on stage is definitely my happy place, it’s where I feel most comfortable. I had so much fun supporting Tom Grennan! Performing in front of a crowd is such a fantastic feeling. I learned so much watching their shows, the energy they bring and how they connect with a crowd on such big stages.

Your music has been described as an introspective variant of indie pop and folk pop. Can you share more about the themes and emotions that you explore in your music, especially in your latest EP, Existential?

My latest EP Existential explores the inside of my mind, it’s a very introspective EP. Reflecting back, I think I had a tendency to overthink a lot in this period of writing the last EP and the process of writing these songs paved way to explore that, and ask myself why that was.

As a first language Welsh speaker, you sing in both English and Welsh. How does your Welsh heritage and language influence your music, and do you have any plans to incorporate more Welsh elements into your future work?

Growing up in Wales, I began performing by competing in the Eisteddfod which is a Welsh traditional festival held here every year in Wales. That’s definitely the point whereby I fell in love with music. I’d love to release a translated Welsh version of one of my songs. I’ll definitely get my mum to help me with that (she always checks over my grammar).

What else can we expect from you in the near future? Are there any upcoming projects, collaborations, or tours that your fans should be excited about?

I have more new music on the way! I’ve been in the studio over the past couple of months recording and finishing the new tracks which I’m excited to share. I’m also performing in London on the 15th of November at the Seabright Arms as part of Great Escape’s First Fifty launch.

You’ve received support from your local community, and your upbringing in Sully played a significant role in your musical journey. How has your small seaside town upbringing influenced your music and your connection with your audience?

Wales is such a special place to me. It’s a huge part of my heritage and the music community here really gave me the chance to develop and find myself as an artist. Performing live, writing songs and producing in my bedroom.

What advice would you give to aspiring musicians who are looking to make their mark in the music industry, especially in terms of staying authentic to their own unique sound and style?

Write about something that resonates with you. Go to shows. Enjoy the process of developing yourself as an artist. Have confidence in yourself. Oh yeah and PRACTICE your instrument!! Hahaha”.

The wonderous Hana Lili has been in my sight for a while now. I am compelled to see what she comes up with this year. Her music is so distinct and memorable. After some big supports slots this and last year, there is this faith in her music and performance ability. An incredible live artist, check out her social media and go and see her play if she is near you in the future. Make sure that you go and check out the wonderful music of…

THE one and only Hana Lili.

__________

Follow Hana Lili

 Official:

https://www.hanalili.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/hanalili__

TikTok:

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

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/hanalilimusic

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/6irpcuKNgvg9Zyy62yXC7p?si=XDCtWTI9QTSbK2xXNU8yRA

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR7wOsZ4USl91nYBGyWvcZA

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/hanalilimusic/