FEATURE: New Dawn Fades: Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures at Forty-Five

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New Dawn Fades

Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures at Forty-Five

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THERE are plenty of…

PHOTO CREDIT: Lex van Rossen/MAI/Redferns

interesting features around Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. Ones like this and this are well worth reading. I am going to bring in a couple. The reason for this is that the debut album from Joy Division turns forty-five on 15th June. Recorded and mixed over three successive weekends at Stockport's Strawberry Studios in April 1979, with producer Martin Hannett, many consider this album to be one of the best of all time. I will end with a couple of reviews. There are some features that are expansive and detailed that are worth uniting. Giving a clear impression of Unknown Pleasures. How it came together and the impact it has had. I will start out with Irish Times. They celebrated, what they called, an accidental masterpiece on the fortieth anniversary of Unknown Pleasures in 2019:

“Unknown Pleasures seemed to have arrived through a slipstream, from another time and place. And though it could be enjoyed as both a bleak pop revue and an exorcism (ultimately unsuccessful) of singer Ian Curtis’s demons, the LP was above all profoundly mysterious. All these decades later there’s a case that it remains fundamentally inscrutable. You may think you’ve got its measure – but you’re never quite there, never really all the way in.

“Unknown Pleasures once sounded like the future – its genius is that, four decades later, it still sounds like the future,” says John Robb, Manchester musician, rock journalist and author of The North Will Rise Again: Manchester Music City 1976–1996.

Melancholy

“It is a remarkable and astonishing record made by a band who had no idea how good they were, with a singer who didn’t live long enough to see how important they would become. Its bass-driven soundscapes utilise space, emotion and melancholy in ways the generations of bands are still trying to unravel.”

Robb cuts to the heart Unknown Pleasures’ dark charm in describing it as the sound of the future glimmering over the horizon. Steeped in the social-realistic science fiction of JG Ballard and raised amid the infinite greys and browns of postwar greater Manchester, Joy Division had transcended punk and gone somewhere sadder and scarier.

They did so in part thanks to the expressive lyrics of Ian Curtis, lines delivered with the lights out, words recited from the heart, during the late-night sessions at Strawberry.

“To the centre of the city where all roads meet, waiting for you/ To the depths of the ocean where all hopes sank, searching for you,” Curtis sang on Shadowplay, a fever-dream striplit by halogen street-lighting and the flash of passing traffic.

“I could have lived a little better with the myths and the lies,” continued the narrator on She’s Lost Control. “When the darkness broke in, I just broke down and cried.”

Foreshadowing

She’s Lost Control was about a woman with epilepsy Curtis had met at the Macclesfield job centre where he worked. She died during an epileptic fit and, with Curtis himself diagnosed with the condition, the track is both a requiem and also a foreshadowing of his own future (he died by suicide in May 1980). But it chills even outside of that context, as a mediation on how ill-prepared we all are when life throws its worst at us.

Curtis’s unflinching lyrics were counterpointed by Bernard Sumner’s minimalist guitars and by the funereal stomp of bassist Peter Hook and drummer Stephen Morris. To this was added Peter Saville’s instantly iconic cover sleeve, based on the zig-zag radio frequency of a dying star.

“Unknown Pleasures may very well be one of the best white, English debut LPs of the year,” wrote the group’s future biographer Jon Savage in Melody Maker the week of its release. ”Without trying to baffle or overreach itself, this outfit step into a labyrinth that is rarely explored with any smidgeon of real conviction,” said the NME. Soon it was agreed that Joy Division had created a masterpiece.

Everyone in Manchester knew they were the best band in the city. I saw them play and sometimes they were s**t but most times they were great

All of this the band achieved, as already pointed out, largely by accident.Their ambition had been to make a cacophonous punk record in the vein of their idols Buzzcocks and The Sex Pistols. But Strawberry Studios, bankrolled by members of soft pop ensemble 10CC, was the domain of control freak producer Martin Hannett. He took care that Unknown Pleasures was his vision as much as Joy Division’s.

Eating glass

Hannett was an eccentric taskmaster. He taped, during the sessions, the sound of breaking glass, someone eating crisps (which he then played backwards) and the chilling clunk and shudder of the antiquated Strawberry Studios lift. “[Joy Division] were a gift to a producer, because they didn’t have a clue,” he would reminisce. “They didn’t argue.”

After the fact, though, they groused at length. “The production inflicted this dark, doomy mood over the album,” guitarist Sumner complained. “We’d drawn this picture in black-and-white, and Martin had coloured it in for us. We resented it.”

Joy Division were not at that point regarded as potentially one of the most significant British groups of their generation. Nonetheless, they were perceived as the Manchester band most likely to step up and break out.

“Joy Division were such a great band,” Jez Kerr of contemporaries and label-mates A Certain Ratio would later state. “Everyone in Manchester knew they were the best band in the city. Ask anyone from that era who was the best band in Manchester and they all say Joy Division. I saw them play and sometimes they were s**t but most times they were great. It’s the mark of a good band that starting out you can be crap but at other times totally brilliant.”

Hannett was introduced to Joy Division by Tony Wilson, a local scenester who had signed the group to his label, Factory Records. The Factory story is closely bound up with the north of England punk movement. But it also boasts several unusual Irish connections. Many of Factory’s most famous releases – including the 1979 Factory Sampler EP, and Joy Division’s timeless single Love Will Tear Us Part – were pressed at the Carlton Productions vinyl pressing plant on the John F Kennedy estate on the Naas Road.

Friendship

Wilson, meanwhile, maintained a lifelong friendship with Meath football manager Sean Boylan. They had met when Wilson’s family was holidays in Dunboyne, where they struck up an enduring connection.

“Tony fell in love with our family and everyone around Dunboyne,” Boylan would recount. “So he came every Christmas. He came at Easter. He came at summer. He came at Whit. Every break there was he came, even when he went to Cambridge . . . Once you were a friend of Tony, that was it.”

Joy Division were also a huge influence on early U2. Hannett recorded the Dubliners’ seven-inch 11 O’Clock Tick-Tock, imbuing it with a Factory-ish veneer of monochrome angst. A Day Without Me, a single from U2’s debut album, Boy, was, moreover, partly a lament for Curtis (albeit one U2 had debuted in uncompleted form prior to his death).

Its black-and-white sleeve shot of Booterstown railway bridge was perceived as echoing Joy Division’s famous photoshoot at Epping Walk bridge in Hulme. Bono would later tell Wilson that U2 were ready to take the Manchester’s group’s place.

“Bono once said to me, he [Ian Curtis] was the best,” Wilson remembered. “‘I was always the number two, but he was the best. But you know, I’ll do it anyway. Now he’s gone.’ But I think Bono did do it. I mean, I’ve never been a massive U2 fan, but when I saw him, that wonderful performance at Live Aid, I thought, well, there you are.”

Wilson was a dedicated schmoozer, it’s worth acknowledging. As portrayed by Steve Coogan in Michael Winterbottom’s 24-Hour Party People, he seemed to enjoy the spotlight more than his bands did. Still, he wasn’t a shill – and he gave Joy Division the freedom they required.

Extraordinary

What they, and Hannett, did with it was extraordinary. “I was such a fan of punk I thought all good music would end at that point, nothing would top the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Jam etc,” recalls Tom Dunne, radio presenter and Something Happens frontman. “Then Unknown Pleasures arrived. I found it jarring initially. It was so unlike what had come before. I didn’t take to it at once. But slowly it crept into me. Ian Curtis singing those lonesome, plaintive words drew me in. He was mesmeric. There was an intensity about them.”

Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Stephen Morris and Peter Hook of Joy Division. Photograph: Harry Goodwin/Rex Features

If Joy Division matter now more than ever, it's because they capture the depressed spirit of our times

Listened to today, what’s most striking is how contemporary Unknown Pleasure feels. It really hasn’t aged at all.

“If Joy Division matter now more than ever, it’s because they capture the depressed spirit of our times. Listen to Joy Division now, and you have the inescapable impression that the group were catatonically channelling our present, their future,” wrote Mark Fisher in his 2005 essay collection Ghosts of My Life.

Unknown Pleasures would inevitably be overshadowed by Curtis’s death. He hung himself in the kitchen of the Macclesfield terraced house he shared with his wife and baby daughter 11 months after the album’s release. Joy Division had just completed their second LP, Closer, and were planning a tour to America.

Curtis was just 24. He had married young and become a parent barely out of his teens. And while he had a sincere and thoughtful streak – as manifested in lyrics that referenced Ballard and Burroughs – he was a young man in a successful band.

An affair with a Belgian music journalist left him crippled with guilt. But it also stoked resentment towards his wife, Deborah, and the opportunities denied him by dint of his responsibilities towards her and their daughter. The heavy medication he was required to take for his epilepsy didn’t help.

I will come to some reviews now. There are so many tributes to the album and features about it. Going into detail about its brilliance. I hope that this feature gives you a better impression and understanding of Joy Division’s debut album. Unknown Pleasures is considered one of the greatest albums ever. If some in 1979 were mixed in their reception, things have changed now. Some noting that there was bleakness and this nightmare sound running through the album. Not sure how to take it. In the years since, the reviews have been unanimously positive. This is what NME noted in their review:

“Joy Division’s reputation has grown with every year after their abrupt and tragic end in May 1980, when Curtis hanged himself in his Macclesfield home on the eve of the band’s first American tour. It’s a story told in full in the forthcoming Anton Corbijn biopic Control, an intoxicating mixture of musical triumph and personal tragedy. But it’s the music alone we’re here to talk about, as both studio albums (along with the posthumous compilation ‘Still’) are receiving timely reissues complete with extra CDs of live material.

The band’s debut ‘Unknown Pleasures’, originally released in 1979, is simply one of the best records ever made, and is still powerful enough to floor you 28 years on. With an almost dub-like, spacey atmosphere sculpted by studio genius Martin Hannett, the band’s sound – Peter Hook’s rumbling basslines, Barney Sumner’s eerie guitar shrieks and Steven Morris’ machine-like drumming – was almost the polar opposite of the punk music which had brought them together after a Sex Pistols show in 1976.

The album’s raw power is still gripping, most notably on the haunting ‘Day Of The Lords’ and ‘She’s Lost Control’, which Curtis, who was epileptic, wrote in sympathy after hearing that a girl he

knew with the same condition had died.

‘Closer’, released just months after his death in 1980, is an appropriate epitaph for Curtis. With personal problems and his medical condition causing him extreme pain both physically and mentally, the likes of clattering opener ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ and the harrowing ‘Decades’, which both refer to psychosis and mental breakdown, offer compelling evidence that this was a man at the end of his tether. Even the most upbeat moment is chilling – ‘Isolation’’s icy synths adding a sinister edge to what is essentially an electropop tune.

‘Closer’ almost touches the same heights as the band’s debut, but lacks an anthem – but then the contrary bastards did decide to release the peerless ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’ as a stand-alone single instead, just because they could.

The remaining members regrouped after Curtis’ death and, as New Order, went on to change the alternative rock landscape again after investing in a sampler. But that’s another story entirely. The happy ending here is that, thanks to the astonishing, timeless, awe-inspiring music, Ian Curtis, Tony Wilson and Joy Division will all live forever”.

I am going to end with a review from AllMusic. It will be interesting to see how others react to the upcoming forty-fifth anniversary of Unknown Pleasures. On 15th June, I am sure that we will get a lot of new perspectives about a classic debut album. Joy Division followed Unknown Pleasure with 1980’s Closer. Even though I did not discover the album until fairly recently, I can recognise that it is an astonishing debut. A hugely influential album. If you have not heard it then I would advise that you spend time with it:

“It even looks like something classic, beyond its time or place of origin even as it was a clear product of both -- one of Peter Saville's earliest and best designs, a transcription of a signal showing a star going nova, on a black embossed sleeve. If that were all Unknown Pleasures was, it wouldn't be discussed so much, but the ten songs inside, quite simply, are stone-cold landmarks, the whole album a monument to passion, energy, and cathartic despair. The quantum leap from the earliest thrashy singles to Unknown Pleasures can be heard through every note, with Martin Hannett's deservedly famous production -- emphasizing space in the most revelatory way since the dawn of dub -- as much a hallmark as the music itself. Songs fade in behind furtive noises of motion and activity, glass breaks with the force and clarity of doom, and minimal keyboard lines add to an air of looming disaster -- something, somehow, seems to wait or lurk beyond the edge of hearing. But even though this is Hannett's album as much as anyone's, the songs and performances are the true key. Bernard Sumner redefined heavy metal sludge as chilling feedback fear and explosive energy, Peter Hook's instantly recognizable bass work was at once warm and forbidding, and Stephen Morris' drumming smacked through the speakers above all else. Ian Curtis synthesizes and purifies every last impulse, his voice shot through with the desire first and foremost to connect, only connect -- as "Candidate" plaintively states, "I tried to get to you/You treat me like this." Pick any song: the nervous death dance of "She's Lost Control"; the harrowing call for release "New Dawn Fades," all four members in perfect sync; the romance in hell of "Shadowplay"; "Insight" and its nervous drive toward some sort of apocalypse. All visceral, all emotional, all theatrical, all perfect -- one of the best albums ever”.

Released on 15th June, 1979, we are not far from the forty-fifth anniversary of Unknown Pleasures. Songs like Shadowplay and She’s Lost Control still sounds so powerful and haunting to this day. So arresting and compelling, there are few albums that have the same legacy and significance as Unknown Pleasures. Once heard, this is an album that will…

NEVER be forgotten.

FEATURE: Oh England, My Lionheart: Kate Bush and the Importance and Relevance of Home

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Oh England, My Lionheart

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at her family home, East Wickham Farm, on 26th September, 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Chris Moorhouse/Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images 

Kate Bush and the Importance and Relevance of Home

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WHEREAS so many major artists…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush working hard in the studio in 1985/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

have travelled the world and spent years living in different countries, Kate Bush is someone who has always very much been rooted in England. She has spent time with family in Ireland. Her mother, Hannah, was Irish. The Bush family travelled to Australia and New Zealand. She has been all around the world during her career. I think that people think of Kate Bush as a quintessential English woman. Despite the fact her D.N.A. goes deeper and she has travelled far and wide, for the most part, she has not moved beyond the south of England. I have been thinking about the importance and relevance of home to Kate Bush in terms of her career, sound and her and this image we have of her. I am going to be writing about her first three albums – 1978’s The Kick Inside and Lionheart; 1980’s Never for Ever – following a recent MOJO spread that was written by author Tom Doyle. Kate Bush was born in Bexleyheath is a town in the London Borough of Bexley, which is located in Greater London. It is situated in the historic county of Kent. Her family lived at East Wickham Farm in Welling (Welling is an area of South East London, within the London Borough of Bexley and the boundaries of Kent). She had that balance of being on the edge of London and the city but having the countryside and something all the more peaceful at her feet. I want to look more at her later career and how home and a permanent base was important after 1993. I guess Bush’s upbringing and the stability that she saw was important when it came to how her career and recording changed in the 1990s onwards. Not common among her peers, even before she released her debut album, she had this safety at home. A financial security and a very fostering family. A beautiful house in an ideal part of England, I also think that the way she experienced homelife as a child and teen affected how Bush would act and run things as a producer.

Kate Bush has amassed a heap of demos and recordings at her family home. With her brothers Paddy and Jay hugely interested in music and introducing her to so many different sounds, she also found a patient and encouraging audience in her parents. Her doctor father, Robert, was particularly encouraging and would listen to her perform at home. He played piano and was a big influence when it came to Kate Bush taking up the instrument. That nurturing and warm environment was crucial. Kate Bush did not really have the opportunity to record albums at home until she was established and could afford to. Even so, she was not moving far. Recording in London studios, really the only time she broke that rule was recording Lionheart in France in 1978. Perhaps more relaxing and picturesque than AIR Studios in Central London, there were issues in France. I think, for its faults and griminess, the locality to her family home and a sense of convenience was important. Bush spent time living with her brothers and had a flat in London. She has never really moved too far from where she grew up. Home and family has been at the heart of everything she has done. From that safety net and art-filled home when she was a child and teen, Bush always made sure she was never too far from that focused centre. It is also interesting how conduct and hospitality at home impacted her. A very warm and welcoming family who were at hand to greet musicians and guests with tea and a warm smile, that definitely would have made home and attractive place to record and create. Also, when Bush started producing from 1980’s Never for Ever, she brought a lot of that parental warmth and support to the people she worked with. Always running through her blood.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush at the grand piano at Studio Two, Abbey Road, London on 10th May, 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Rapport

1982’s The Dreaming changed things a lot. Even though she recorded at studios through London and lived in the area, it was exhausting and a tough period. Solo producing and packing so much into the album, there was not a lot of time for rest and any real bonding with her musicians. Even though that did happen, perhaps more time and budget would have been beneficial for so many reasons. When she could afford to build her own studio for Hounds of Love (1985), she put it right by her family home at East Wickham Farm. I know that that blossom and safe environment meant she could have support from the family and build her own recording and creative environment. Home once more being vital. At that time, prior to the album being released, there was hospitality and support from her family. Bush – who was still in her mid-twenties – was providing that same sort of support and warmth to her musicians. I often think of Kate Bush and her home. Right now, as we speak, the fact is that she does not need to travel. She can record at home. Everything around her can feed directly into her music. Life has changed since she recorded Hounds of Love. She now has a grown-up son, Albert, who is in his twenties. I wonder whether there was ever temptation for her to move to another part of the world. You feel like being rooted and remaining relatively close to where she was born and grew up was always the plan.

After Hounds of Love, it was clear things had changed for the better. How beneficial and enriching it was to be around family. To have control and say when it came to the studio and her environment. The next two albums, The Sensual World and The Red Shoes, saw Bush record at professional studios. A lot of The Sensual World was recorded at Wickham Farm Home. She also recorded at Windmill Lane (Dublin, Ireland) and Angel (Islington, England). Again, a connection to her family and ancestorial home. Having one foot in Ireland and the other in England. The Red Shoes took her to Abbey Road. That was released in 1993. During the recording of the album, Bush’s mother died (in 1992). She also was in a new relationship with Danny McIntosh. Feeling tired and in need of a career break, as soon as that album came out, Bush was more than ever committed to home. Bits of Aerial (2005) were recorded at Abbey Road though, as has been the case from there, home studios have been dominant. Having that stability. Not having to move between studios. She had started her own family too. It is wonderful reading features and interviews with Kate Bush from 2005. Unlike past interviews where she was in various locations and was pushed from pillar to post, album promotion was largely taking place from her home. People would be invited in. Bush would welcome with food and drink. Much like her mother and father in the 1970s and 1980s, Bush was embodying them when she was promoting at home. I don’t think Kate Bush would have released any albums after The Red Shoes if she could not record at home. The lure of professional studios and commuting had gone.

Aerial is a double album where home is at its heart. Lyrics and lines that reference her mother and domesticity. The garden and nature. Memories of the past and the comfort of home. It has always been vital to her. Receiving such love and support from her parents when she was a child through to years aspiring of being an artist, that has been held in her heart. The need to be close to home and have that base. 2011’s Director’s Cut and 50 Words for Snow. Bringing collaborators and artists into her home studio. I always get the impression that travel and exposure was an unwanted by-product of the music industry for Kate Bush. If she could have remained local or not travelled as much she would have been happy. I am sure that she did enjoy The Tour of Life and seeing people around the U.K. and Europe. Promotional trips to the U.S., Australia and Japan. It was all important. All the same, it took Bush from the studio and writing. Even when she was writing in London flats and elsewhere, one always get the feeling that she was not as happy and inspired as she was back at East Wickham Farm. Returning there for Hounds of Love, it might have ignited something in her. By 1993, when she was thirty-five, I think there was this resolution that she was going to set down foundations and keep home close to her. She had been traveling and going from place to place since she was a teen, but she always felt that pull and importance of family and being in and around where she grew up. Even since 1993, her moves have not been drastic. A home studio means she does not commute and can have a solid base. So many people she has interviewed in years since 1993 – including Tom Doyle – have reported her legendary hospitality. The fact that she is both this huge artist and impressive figure but also down to Earth and accessible. I have been thinking about it a lot. Kate Bush and home. Wanting to lead a more normal and modest life. Somewhere she feels more settled and inspired. Thinking back to that 2022 interview with Woman’s Hour where she was speaking from home on a landline. How unshowy and relatable that was! Distinctly Kate Bush! From the teen posing at her East Wickham Farm home in 1978 to right now, a sixty-five year old Kate Bush not living too far away from that place, I do wonder what the future holds. There is a lot of love out there for Kate Bush. We all want a new album, though one can appreciate how a quieter life would suit. Not wanting to do promotion and put out new work. Who knows. I have been pondering Kate Bush as someone who has always moored herself towards family and home. That magnetic and epicentre that remains to this day. Kate Bush really is this unique blend of musical deity and…

A homegrown and grounded queen.

FEATURE: Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. at Forty

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Glory Days

Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. at Forty

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ONE of the biggest and most important albums ever…

IN THIS PHOTO: Bruce Springsteen performs on 24th July, 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Ebet Roberts/Redferns

Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. turns forty on 4th June. A 1984 commercial success that soon became a classic, Springsteen recorded Born in the U.S.A. with his E Street Band. He worked alongside producers Chuck Plotkin and Jon Landau. Compared to albums like 1982’s Nebraska – which Springsteen was recording at points during the same time as Born in the U.S.A.-, his seventh studio album contains more uplifting, brighter, Pop-focused songs. The synthesizer very much at the fore. In terms of its themes and inspirations, Born in the U.S.A deals more with topics like working-class struggles, disillusionment and patriotism. The iconic album cover was taken by legendary photographer, taken by Annie Leibovitz. Born in the U.S.A. has often been selected as one of the best albums ever. Topping the charts in nine countries when it was released in 1984, it has sold over thirty million copies worldwide. It is one of the best-selling albums in history. Even though Bruce Springsteen has released other classic albums – such as 1975’s Born to Run -, nothing quite compares with Born in the U.S.A. Some may disagree. I think, it terms of its depth, impact and accessibility, Born in the U.S.A. is his pinnacle. It is surprising there have not been more features written about the album. More podcasts and documentaries about it released. As it is approaching its fortieth anniversary, I wanted to spend time with it.

I will come to a couple of detailed reviews. As you can imagine, the reviews in 1984 were hugely positive. It has only got even more praise and platforming in the years since. As Born in the U.S.A. has impacted and influenced other artists and made its way into popular culture and the wider landscape. Stereogum saluted this work of brilliance back in 2014. Marking thirty years of Born in the U.S.A. I hope there is more celebration to mark forty years of a gigantic album:

“For you to remember the first time you heard Born In The U.S.A., you have to be above a certain age. It’s just one of those albums. Once it was out there, it was ubiquitous. That tends to happen when you produce seven top ten singles from one album, or when a record goes platinum, let alone fifteen times over. The latter distinction means that Born In The U.S.A. sold about 15 million copies in America, a number that seems like total and complete fantasy compared to the anemic record industry of today, and one that ranks it within the top twenty or so highest selling albums, ever, in this country. This is not the kind of situation where you are still able to hear a record entirely on its own original terms, with remotely fresh ears. Even if you somehow all your life avoided hearing its title track, or “Dancing In The Dark,” or “Glory Days,” Born In The U.S.A. is the sort of work that, by virtue of its sheer magnitude and inevitable overexposure, comes with a whole lot of years of baggage down the line.

As of today, that would be thirty years of baggage, to be exact. Three decades on, Born In The U.S.A. has a shifting and at times conflicted legacy. In pop history, it’s simple enough — it’s one of the defining records of the ’80s, the one that jettisoned Springsteen to true superstar status. It’s one of those albums that’s never hard to find on a rack at Target or whatever, next to Thriller or Dark Side Of The Moon or Metallica. Those albums that I guess somebody somewhere will always feel like buying, the sort of stuff that’s never really out of style because it’s at such a level as to be beyond trends altogether. In Springsteen terms, it gets a little more complicated. Born In The U.S.A. is the Springsteen album for a certain generation of fans, and something else for those who came before or after. Every now and then I’ll talk to an older fan who still grimaces at memories of Born In The U.S.A. as the album where Bruce got too big, too pop, perhaps even sold out — if that’s still a thing you can really do when you were already on the covers of Newsweek and Time in the same week a decade prior. They’ll value the preceding six albums in a different way, maybe considering them more authentic. With a career as long and varied as Springsteen’s you’re bound to get those sorts of divides in a fanbase. Even something as widely beloved as “Backstreets” has been played frequently enough at Springsteen’s shows that it’s someone’s holy moment and someone else’s cue to go buy another beer. The dividing line always struck me as a bit more severe with Born In The U.S.A. tracks, though. Maybe you’re enraptured when “Dancing In The Dark” inevitably pops up in the encore, maybe you head to the parking lot early. (But if you’re the latter, I’m not sure we can be friends.)

Before we get too far down this rabbithole, it might be necessary to issue a disclaimer. I’m already on record, in a few places, about the extent of my Springsteen fandom, and the resulting amount of thought I put into his music. It’s only in the last year or two, however, where I’ve begun to listen to Born In The U.S.A. more than any of this other work. I don’t know what would be in second place, but it isn’t close. There are days when it’s my favorite Springsteen album. There are days when I think it’s a perfect album, and other days when I’m a bit more sensible and realize that if “My Love Will Not Let You Down” had taken the place of “Cover Me,” and if “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart” had replaced “Glory Days,” then it would’ve been perfect. (And, still, there are other days where I realize those maybe still wouldn’t fit, even if they’re brilliant.) And then, just about everyday, “Dancing In The Dark” is pretty much my favorite song ever. What I’m getting at here is that we’re dealing with a bias on my part.

But, more importantly, I’m also getting at the fact that I’m one of those Springsteen fans who grew up with Born In The U.S.A. as something that was just in the air, the most ever-present material from an ever-present artist, and it’s only in recent years where I’ve started to get truly obsessed with the thing, where I’ve learned to find personal resonance in an album that’s too easy to take for granted due to its inherent ubiquity. The weird thing about an album so readily ranked in the “Classic” category by every other rock retrospective of one form or another, is that people can just start to think of it as This Thing That Happened, a piece of work from some distant time and place that has little meaning to them. This is the territory in which an album like Born In The U.S.A., against most logical expectations, could become underrated.

Back around the time Springsteen released Magic in 2007, he was well into a career resurgence following a mixed bag of a decade in the ’90s. There were many factors to this, but one of them was that he’d attained a certain hipness in the ’00s; as Stephen M. Deusner put it in his review of Magic, Springsteen had replaced Brian Wilson as the “indie ideal.”

Bands like the Gaslight Anthem, the Hold Steady, and the Killers bore the influence sonically, where others like the National and the Arcade Fire were perhaps more so thematic descendants. Without fail, when people talk about Springsteen’s influence on pockets of this century’s generation of indie-rock, it’s easiest to draw the line back to Darkness On The Edge Of Town or Nebraska (especially in the case of Dirty Beaches).

Born In The U.S.A. gets a little less credit, but at times it feels like perhaps the most important Springsteen record when it comes to newer artists being influenced by his work. Given the age of some of these musicians, this is the one that would’ve been new when they were kids, just getting into music; chances are, it was the formative one. They would’ve been the young fans for whom this was their Springsteen album. Before they went all Sandinista! on Reflektor, Arcade Fire’s anthemic qualities seemed more in the lineage of Born In The U.S.A.-era Bruce, the themes of The Suburbs a mash-up of stuff like “My Hometown” and “Downbound Train” with Darkness and The River. Tellingly, when Win Butler chose his fourteen favorite Springsteen songs for Rolling Stone in 2010, most of them were from the ’80s. Butler might’ve gone onstage to play Nebraska’s “State Trooper” with the man himself, but when it came time for Arcade Fire to cover the Boss, they chose “Born In The U.S.A..” At this point, “I’m On Fire” seems destined to live on as a standard of sorts. You’ve got everyone from Mumford & Sons to Chromatics covering it. Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon, long the Springsteen acolyte, has been known to perform it solo, while his band’s own “High Lonesome” quotes/references the song”.

I am going to round off with a couple of the reviews for Born in the U.S.A. It is a shame there have not been more deep dives into the album. Anyway. This is what Pitchfork wrote when they reviewed Born in the U.S.A. in 2021. They show the appreciation of a bold, brilliant Rock blockbuster from Bruce Springsteen. An album that arrived at the apex of his career. An imperial phase as they put it. Although misunderstood by some – the title track was famously misinterpreted by so many people –, it caught fired and stole people’s hearts and minds. It still does to this day:

“As the release of Born in the U.S.A. approached in spring 1984—and with it, one of the greatest commercial ascents in the history of popular music—Bruce Springsteen was feeling apprehensive. It wasn’t because of “Dancing in the Dark,” which he added last-minute after his manager convinced him to write one more surefire attempt at a hit. It wasn’t because of the title track, a booming anthem whose chorus could be misinterpreted as a rallying cry for Reagan-era jingoism. And it wasn’t because of the cover art, a photograph by Annie Leibovitz that could be mistaken for a man urinating on an American flag. It was because of a song called “No Surrender,” and, in particular, its final verse:

Something felt off as he sang these words. Who could be so blindly optimistic? During the tour for Born in the U.S.A., which spanned 16 months and brought the E Street Band to the biggest audiences they had ever played, Springsteen tried retooling the driving arrangement as a tender acoustic ballad; he rewrote the verse and changed his delivery. By the end of the run, it only appeared sporadically in setlists. “It was a song I was uncomfortable with,” he wrote years later. “You don’t hold out and triumph all the time in life. You compromise, you suffer defeat; you slip into life’s gray areas.”

So how did it wind up on the album? It wasn’t for a lack of material. Most casual fans know that as Springsteen was in the process of piecing together this full-band masterpiece, he first recorded an entirely different one: 1982’s solo acoustic Nebraska, originally intended as demos for the follow-up to 1980’s The River. But there was more where that came from. Before he landed on the dozen songs that would comprise his bestselling album, Springsteen continued down Nebraska’s folky path with story-song outtakes like “Shut Out the Light”; he worked with the band on epics like “This Hard Land” and straight-ahead rockers like “Murder Incorporated.” He wrote a goofy song about having his story told in a TV movie and a strange, apocalyptic one about the KKK. He is estimated to have recorded somewhere between 50 and 100 songs, hoping to amass enough material for one cohesive record 

IN THIS PHOTO: Bruce Springsteen on stage in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: The Picture Collection LLC

In his early 30s, and a decade into his recording career, this was a period of introspection and desperate searching. For the first time after an album release, Springsteen didn’t go on tour for Nebraska. Instead, he went on vacation, taking a cross-country road trip with a friend. The type of open-road escape he sang about so convincingly, however, ended up being an emotional breaking point. As the trip took him from Jersey, through the South, and eventually to a new home he had purchased in the Hollywood Hills, Springsteen found himself crushed by waves of hopelessness and debilitating depression: collapsing in tears, feeling isolated, losing touch with whatever momentum had kept him burning down the road all this time.

The culture around Springsteen’s music was also shifting. MTV had evolved into a legitimate arm of the music industry, and Springsteen’s new look helped him gain traction in an image-centric medium. Meanwhile, vinyl had given way to cassettes, which were now ceding to compact discs. (Upon release, Born in the U.S.A. was advertised as the first CD manufactured in the United States; previous releases were mostly Japanese imports.) Adapting to the new technology, pop radio gravitated toward electronic strands of dance music, an innovation that Springsteen found inspiring. One song on the album, “Cover Me,” was something he originally wrote for Donna Summer, and you can hear her influence in his fiery, percussive delivery. (“She could really sing,” he wrote, “and I disliked the veiled racism of the anti-disco movement.”)

Because of its monocultural success, the ’80s gloss of Born in the U.S.A. can be somewhat overstated. It is a pristine and precise record whose synth pads, massive drums, and front-and-center vocals represent the defining qualities of the decade’s mainstream rock production. But listening to it now, I am struck by how physical, how alive the music sounds. Most of the songs were recorded live by the band in just a few takes, with Springsteen shouting cues, whooping and hollering off mic. And the writing, which blends the detailed narratives of Nebraska with the tighter pop structures of The River, is as thoughtful and emotional as any of his less polished material.

It is the sound of the E Street Band, then, that makes this feel uniquely like pop music. Roy Bittan’s synth is particularly effective—a thick humidity against the train-track momentum of “I’m on Fire,” and a taught fuse serving as a secondary bass line in “Dancing in the Dark.” Drummer Max Weinberg often takes center stage, calling the shots during the turnarounds in “Glory Days” and the title track with snare hits that match the energy of Springsteen’s prolonged runner’s high. He leads the band with such a locked-in sense of motion that, in the fadeout codas to songs like “Cover Me” and “Dancing in the Dark,” their backing tracks can feel a little like electronic music. It’s a sound that 21st-century bands like the War on Drugs would reinterpret as a kind of psychedelia, and that dance producer Arthur Baker capitalized on at the time with a fascinating series of club remixes.

After the willfully unmarketable Nebraska, Springsteen’s commercial reinvention thrilled the label executives, who are reported to have risen from their seats to dance during the playback sessions. (One said—upon hearing single after single, each better than the last and all mixed by Bob Clearmountain to sound tailor-made for radio—he might have actually pissed his pants.) It was also a windfall for Jon Landau, the music critic-turned-manager whose career-long belief in the life-saving power of rock music was gratified by these aspirational songs, some of which were actually about the life-saving power of rock music. Springsteen himself, already viewing his career with the analytic lens of a critic, couldn’t help but notice what this shift represented. “I was fascinated by people who had become a voice for their moment,” he would later say. “I don’t know if I felt I had a capacity for it or just willed my way in that direction, but it was something I was interested in.”

There was one person who wasn’t so interested. It was E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt, a man with rare access to the inner workings of the artist’s brain. The pair united as like-minded outcasts growing up in New Jersey, where they bonded at battles of the bands and spent countless nights in each other’s homes, side-stepping their intimidating fathers and evangelizing the records they loved. As they embarked on their careers together, Van Zandt is often credited with helping his pal lighten up a little: arranging the ecstatic horn parts on Born to Run, suggesting the title track’s iconic riff be transposed into a major key, and helming the party-in-my-garage production on The River.

A co-producer on Born in the U.S.A., Van Zandt brings the same sense of uplift to these songs. The most joyful moment comes in “Darlington County.” When Van Zandt honks his way through the vocal harmonies—“He don’t work and he don’t get paid”—Springsteen starts to laugh: Boy, does that sound ugly, you hear him think, it’s perfect. Same goes for the mandolin part in “Glory Days,” which Van Zandt recorded impromptu into a vocal mic so that it couldn’t be edited out without scrapping the entire take.

Fitting for an album that buries its anxiety beneath a bright veneer, these moments coincided with a new tension between the two. Recording under the name Little Steven, Van Zandt was completing his own album, ambitiously titled Voice of America, and its raw sound and spirit of protest felt at odds with the commercial intent of Springsteen’s latest music. Van Zandt floated the idea of promoting their albums together on a joint tour—I love imagining the response to this proposition—and confessed to feeling a bit undervalued. Sensing a crossroads, and by now well-acquainted with his friend’s stubborn self-reliance, Van Zandt quit the band.

While Springsteen stood his ground, he wasn’t as confident as he might have seemed. With an overabundance of material, he extended his creative process beyond the inner circle, inviting friends into his home to pore over the multitude of tapes and piece together a tracklist while he went out for runs or waited patiently at the kitchen table. His engineer, Chuck Plotkin, went so far as to present an acetate copy of the record he envisioned. Landau wrote a five-page letter justifying his preferred sequence. Eventually, Springsteen took some of their advice, ignored a lot of it, and turned in his completed album.

He played it for Van Zandt, who was not a fan of “Dancing in the Dark.” The lyrics—so self-conscious, so vulnerable—were anathema to his image of rock’n’roll heaven, where everyone’s young and beautiful, forever strutting. And don’t get him started on the production. Still, his main concern was “No Surrender,” his favorite song, which was nowhere to be found. The hope, the romance, the guitars—that’s the whole point of what we do! At the eleventh hour, Springsteen slotted the song back into the tracklist, right at the start of Side B.

If this operation sounds haphazard for a noted perfectionist like Springsteen, it kind of was. To this day, he speaks about Born in the U.S.A. with a sense of discomfort. The bookending songs—the title track and “My Hometown,” the only explicitly political material that made the cut—are what he’s proudest of. “The rest of the album,” he writes, “contains a group of songs about which I’ve always had some ambivalence…. [It] really didn’t flesh out like I had hoped it would.”

But while the recordings span several years of sessions, plagued with interpersonal struggle and self-doubt, bouncing between genre and mood, built on creative compromise and commercial aspiration, overexposed and eternally misunderstood, there’s really not a dull moment. With its grab-bag nature, the whole thing explodes like an encore run—when the lights are up and there’s nothing left to play but the hits; when fatigue converts into a kind of euphoria and the energy builds until it seems a little dangerous.

That’s how “No Surrender” earns its place; the optimism is hard-won, doomed to be short-lived. “You say you’re tired and you just want to close your eyes,” he sings against the rhythm, “and follow your dreams down.” But down where? If you were to place a compass in the wide open country of this album, down is where the arrow would constantly point. It’s in the opening lyric (“Born down in a dead man’s town”), and it’s the next move for the couple in the closing “My Hometown,” who plan on packing up the family, “maybe heading south.” It’s where all the signposts of security—work, marriage, community—send the narrator of “Downbound Train,” and it’s a syllable that gets stretched into a slapstick, rockabilly hiccup in the chorus of “I’m Goin’ Down.” For many of the characters in these songs, down becomes homebase: the direction you’re cautioned to ignore when you’re at the top; the inevitable crash after any high.

The momentary bliss of “No Surrender” is followed on the tracklist by “Bobby Jean,” and while Springsteen has never explicitly confirmed its inspiration, fans have long seen it as his farewell to Van Zandt. Like all his writing about friendship, “Bobby Jean” flirts with the language of love songs—the gender is intentionally ambiguous—and, paired with a bittersweet piano melody, the sentiment is so heartbroken and earnest that it feels almost childlike. The crucial lyric arrives just before the last verse, and it’s a simple but effective choice of words: “Now there ain’t nobody, nowhere, nohow/Gonna ever understand me the way you did.” Not love me, not know me, but understand me. It’s a rare quality in a companion—especially in adulthood—and it’s a hard thing to let go of when you find it”.

I am going to round up shortly. Before that, Rolling Stone’s five-star review from 1984 is well worth illuminating. In a year when there were plenty of classic albums – Madonna’s Like a Virgin among them -, Bruce Springsteen’s masterpiece stands alongside the best of them. Recorded between Power Station and Hit Factory in New York City, we are going to be discussing and dissecting this album for generations to come. Such is its importance:

“THOUGH IT LOOKS at hard times, at little people in little towns choosing between going away and getting left behind, Born in the U.S.A, Bruce Springsteen‘s seventh album, has a rowdy, indomitable spirit. Two guys pull into a hick town begging for work in “Darlington County,” but Springsteen is whooping with sha-la-las in the chorus. He may shove his broody characters out the door and send them cruising down the turnpike, but he gives them music they can pound on the dashboard to.

He’s set songs as well drawn as those on his bleak acoustic album, Nebraska, to music that incorporates new electronic textures while keeping as its heart all of the American rock & roll from the early Sixties. Like the guys in the songs, the music was born in the U.S.A.: Springsteen ignored the British Invasion and embraced instead the legacy of Phil Spector’s releases, the sort of soul that was coming from Atlantic Records and especially the garage bands that had anomalous radio hits. He’s always chased the utopian feeling of that music, and here he catches it with a sophisticated production and a subtle change in surroundings — the E Street Band cools it with the saxophone solos and piano arpeggios — from song to song.

The people who hang out in the new songs dread getting stuck in the small towns they grew up in almost as much as they worry that the big world outside holds no possibilities — a familiar theme in Springsteen’s work. But they wind up back at home, where you can practically see the roaches scurrying around the empty Twinkie packages in the linoleum kitchen. In the first line of the first song, Springsteen croaks, “Born down in a dead man’s town, the first kick I took was when I hit the ground.” His characters are born with their broken hearts, and the only thing that keeps them going is imagining that, as another line in another song goes, “There’s something happening somewhere.”

Though the characters are dying of longing for some sort of payoff from the American dream, Springsteen’s exuberant voice and the swell of the music clues you that they haven’t given up. In “No Surrender,” a song that has the uplifting sweep of his early anthem “Thunder Road,” he sings, “We made a promise we swore we’d always remember” no retreat, no surrender.” His music usually carries a motto like that. He writes a heartbreaking message called “Bobby Jean,” apparently to his longtime guitarist Miami Steve Van Zandt, who’s just left his band — “Maybe you’ll be out there on that road somewhere . . . in some motel room there’ll be a radio playing and you’ll hear me sing this son/Well, if you do, you’ll know I’m thinking of you and all the miles in between” — but he gives the song a wall of sound with a soaring saxophone solo. That’s classic Springsteen: the lyrics may put a lump in your throat, but the music says, Walk tall or don’t walk at all.

A great dancer himself, Springsteen puts an infectious beat under his songs. In the wonderfully exuberant “I’m Goin’ Down,” a hilarious song that gets its revenge, he makes a giddy run of nonsense syllables out of the chorus while drummer Max Weinberg whams out a huge backbeat. And “Working on the Highway,” whips into an ecstatic rocker that tells a funny story, hand-claps keeping the time about crime and punishment. Shifting the sound slightly, the band finds the right feeling of paranoia for “Cover Me,” the lone song to resurrect that shrieking, “Badlands”-style guitar, and the right ironic fervor for the Vietnam vet’s yelping about the dead ends of being “Born in the U.S.A.” Though there’s no big difference between these and some of the songs on Springsteen’s last rock LP, The River, these feel more delightfully offhanded.

The album finds its center in those cheering rock songs, but four tracks – the last two on either side — give the album an extraordinary depth. Springsteen has always been able to tell a story better than he can write a hook, and these lyrics are way beyond anything anybody else is writing. They’re sung in such an unaffected way that the starkness stabs you. In “My Hometown,” the singer, remembers sitting on his father’s lap and steering the family Buick as they drove proudly through town; but the boy grows up, and the final scene has him putting his own son on his lap for a last drive down a street that’s become a row of vacant buildings. “Take a good look around,” he tells his boy, repeating what his father told him, “this is your hometown.”

The tight-lipped character who sings “I’m On Fire” practically whispers about the desire that’s eating him up. “Sometimes it’s like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull, and cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull,” he rasps. The way the band’s turned down to just a light rattle of drums, faint organ and quiet, staccato guitar notes makes his lust seem ominous: you picture some pock-marked Harry Dean Stanton type, lying, too wired to sleep, in a motel room.

That you get such a vivid sense of these characters is because Springsteen gives them voices a playwright would be proud of. In “Working on the Highway,: all he says is “One day I looked straight at her and she looked straight back” to let us know the guy’s in love. And in the saddest song he’s ever written, “Downbound Train,” a man who’s lost everything pours his story, while, behind him, long, sorry notes on a synthesizer sound just like heartache. “I had a job, I had a girl,” he begins, then explains how everything’s changed: “Now I work down at the car wash, where all it ever does its rain.” It’s a line Sam Shepard could’ve written: so pathetic and so funny, you don’t know how to react.

The biggest departure from any familiar Springsteen sound is the breathtaking first single, “Dancing in the Dark,” with its modern synths, played by E Street keyboardist Roy Bittan, and thundering bass and drums. The kid who dances in the darkness here is practically choking on the self-consciousness of being sixteen. “I check my look in the mirror/I wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face,” he sings. “Man, I ain’t getting nowhere just living in a dump like this.” He turns out the lights not to set some drippy romantic mood but to escape in the fantasy of the music on the radio. In the dark, he finds a release from all the limitations he was born into. In the dark, like all the guys trapped in Springsteen’s songs, he’s just a spirit in the night”.

I will leave it there. On 4th June, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. turns forty. If you are a fan of the album, it is worth reading up about it. In terms of its legacy, background and recording. Wikipedia has some good information. A fortieth anniversary edition of the album is coming out on 14th June. I would very much everyone to order it:

“Sony Music will commemorate the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s history-making “Born In The U.S.A.” on June 14, with a special-edition release featuring new colored vinyl and expanded packaging. Arriving via translucent red LP, this anniversary edition of “Born In The U.S.A.” will feature a gatefold sleeve and exclusive booklet with archival material from the era, new liner notes penned by Erik Flannigan and a four-color lithograph. Released on June 4, 1984, “Born In The U.S.A.” had an unprecedented seven top 10 singles on its tracklist, has sold approximately 25 million copies to date and captured the pop culture zeitgeist with once-in-a-generation impact. Springsteen and The E Street Band’s accompanying Born In The U.S.A. tour included 156 sold-out performances across the globe, while tracks like “Dancing In The Dark,” “No Surrender” and “Glory Days” remain staples of their live show to this day”.

I am excited looking ahead to the fortieth anniversary of Born in the U.S.A. On 4th June, there will be a new wave of affection and interest in this album. Bruce Springsteen’s next studio album would be 1987’s excellent Tunnel of Love. A very different-sounding album, it was another huge commercial and critical success. Even though The Boss has released quite a few world-class and timeless albums, I don’t think he soared as high and punched as hard as he did…

ON the magnificent Born in the U.S.A.

FEATURE: Our Friends Electric: Dr. Robert Moog at Ninety: An Ultimate Synthesizer Playlist

FEATURE:

 

 

Our Friends Electric

PHOTO CREDIT: Jack Robinson

Dr. Robert Moog at Ninety: An Ultimate Synthesizer Playlist

_________

ON 23rd May…

it will be ninety years since Dr. Robert Moog was born. He helped shape music in a way few others have. A hugely important and influential figure. He was an American engineer and Electronic music pioneer. Dr. Robert Moog was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer, Moog Music. He was also the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog, which debuted in 1964. That was introduced on 12th October, 1964. Think about all the songs that feature the Moog synthesiser and how it shaped music - especially during the 1970s and 1980s. Perhaps not as synonymous today as it was a few decades ago, there is no denying the impact the Moog synthesizer made. Its inventor was born on 23rd May, 1934, so I want to commemorate the upcoming ninetieth birthday. I will end with a playlist of songs that feature the distinct and iconic Moog synthesizer. Before that, from the Moog Music website, here is some background and biography concerning a pioneer and key figure in the history of music technology:

“Bob’s innovative spirit continues to inspire us each day here in the Moog Factory, and we are forever grateful to be a part of this creative legacy.

It might seem like hyperbole to say that Bob Moog was destined for electronic instrument engineering.

But his lifelong curiosity with circuitry, especially the type that yielded sounds, proved prophetic. As he told Torsten Schmidt in a 2003 interview, he “got off on electronics” as a kid, especially electronics that made sound.

“And when I say electronics, it was not the electronics of today,” Moog said. “Back then, electronics was one or two vacuum tubes, a couple of resistors, capacitors and these big, fat transformers. You could put the whole thing together on the kitchen table, it was a hobby.”

Moog’s father, one of the first amateur radio operators, helped nurture Bob’s love of circuitry and sound. Instead of playing baseball, as he recalled, Moog messed around with electronics.

Born in 1934, Moog was chronologically well-positioned to get into electronic instruments. The vacuum tube, which had been around since 1906, had just revolutionized radio and film, and had already been incorporated into electronic instruments like Lee de Forest’s Audion piano (1915), Theremin (1920), Maurice Martenot’s Ondes instrument (1928), and Friedrich’s Trautwein’s Trautonium (one of the inspirations for Moog’s Subharmonicon). And by the 1930s and 1940s, audio oscillators, filters, envelope controllers, and basic effects units were in existence.

A teenage Moog attended Manhattan School of Music until the age of fourteen, an education that would later help him communicate well with musicians in the development of electronic instruments. As he recalled in a 1974 interview with Keyboard magazine, it was there that he received ear training, sight singing lessons, and instruction on the basics of music theory. He also attended the Bronx High School of Science during his teen years, and visited an area of Lower Manhattan to find parts for his electronic experiments. In 1958, Moog graduated with a B.S. in physics from Queens College and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Columbia.

By age 19, he and his father were building and selling theremins. In his foreword to Albert Glinsky's Theremin: Ether Music and Espionage, Moog described the Russian inventor Leon Theremin as the person who “virtually single-handedly launched the field of electronic music technology.” So dedicated to the Theremin was Moog that Radio News magazine actually published his design for the electronic instrument while still in college.

“I was actually making Theremins for a living,” he told Keyboard. “So from then, which was in 1954, through my entire college career, I made Theremins, and enough money to get through graduate school [at Cornell].”

“Electronic organs were just coming out at that time. I remember spending whole days at the Baldwin Organ display room in New York City: Listening, imposing myself on them, being a pain in the ass,” Moog recalled. “It had controls that were not too different from today’s synthesizer. You changed attack, switched filters in and out, switched in different octaves; all in all, not a bad instrument considering the time.”

After a failed attempt to market a musical amplifier kit, Moog serendipitously met composer Herb Deutsch in November of 1963 at the New York State Music Conference, where Moog was demonstrating his Theremin music kits. Deutsch had been using the Theremin for ear training, and the two immediately began discussing the possibilities of having synthesis at your fingertips at home.

“More or less in my spare time I built two voltage-controlled oscillators and two voltage-controlled amplifiers, and some kind of controller that could turn the sounds on and off and change the pitch and rates of modulation,” Moog said of this first modular synthesizer. “It might have [amounted to] a couple of doorbells. When Herb [Deutsch] came up . . . he just flipped when he heard what my breadboards could do. By the end of that session and the one that followed, together we had come up with the basics of a modular analog synthesizer.”

Moog Soon developed a modular synthesizer prototype...

Moog soon developed a modular synthesizer prototype, which he gave to Deutsch. It included a keyboard and two boxes: one equipped with two oscillators and an envelope generator, the other with Moog’s first iteration of his analogue filter concept.

A year later, in 1964, Moog demonstrated his modular synthesizer at the Audio Engineering Society convention, and began taking orders. Within a few years, Moog’s R.A. Moog, Inc. (the predecessor of Moog Music, Inc.) produced the Moog Modular Synthesizer models I, II, and III. And it was during the mid-1960s that pop culture began catching onto the sonic possibilities being explored by Moog, Don Buchla, and other synthesizer engineers.

The Monkees’ Micky Dolenz was one of the first musicians to bring the Moog Modular system into the popular music realm on the band’s 1967 album Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. It was also around this time that Moog’s modular system was shown at the Monterey Pop Festival. Paul Beaver began incorporating the Moog modular sound into his film scores, starting with The Trip in 1967. A year later, Wendy Carlos, who had studied at the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (to which Moog had sold modules and later modular systems), used a Moog modular synthesizer to record her revolutionary electronic album Switched On Bach. In 1969, The Beatles would use it on their final album, Abbey Road, and a year later in 1970, rock keyboardist Keith Emerson would add the modular Moog Synthesizer to his sonic arsenal.

But Moog’s realization of that early dream of making the synthesizer truly portable, in the form of the Minimoog, would have an even greater lasting influence. Suddenly, synthesizers weren’t just for experimental composers and adventurous pop musicians. Keyboardists all across the musical spectrum, from jazz fusion (Chick Corea, Jan Hammer) to prog rock (Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman), and the developing Krautrock scene exemplified by Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, were not just using the synthesizer on recordings, but demonstrating its strengths as an expressive live instrument—one that was every bit the sonic equal of the guitar.

The synthesizer even found its way into the world of disco by way of Giorgio Moroder’s electronic disco recordings. Modern ambient music, particularly with Tangerine Dream and Brian Eno, also came of age as the Moog and other synthesizers became culturally ubiquitous. Beyond these popular music movements, Moog’s commitment to giving musicians the tools they needed to sonically express themselves indirectly helped give birth to modern electronic music through the underground movements of Chicago House, Detroit Techno, and New York City’s Hip-Hop scene.

And yet, across his decades of work, Moog remained characteristically modest and low-key, giving credit to the musicians who used his instruments in ways he hadn’t imagined back in the early 1960s. Like his contemporaries Don Buchla, Dave Smith, and the folks from the Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center, Moog lived to see electronic music develop from a curiosity in electrical engineering and avant-garde composing to a worldwide artistic culture. Rather fittingly, it’s still a creative tech culture in a constant state of innovation, which is something Moog would surely appreciate”.

On 23rd May, we mark ninety years since the birth of Dr. Robert Moog. From its humble beginnings, it went on to change music forever. If you want to know more, there is a great book, Analog Days: The Invention and Impact of the Moog synthesizer, that was published back in 2004. Later in the year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Moog synthesizer. I am going to wrap up there. I hope that radio stations give a little salute to Dr. Robert Moog on 23rd May. Play some classics that feature his crucial invention. Without the Moog synthesiser, who knows what the music world would have lost out on. The Moog synthesizer arrived in 1964 and made…

A gigantic impact.

FEATURE: Shades of Cool: Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

Shades of Cool

Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence at Ten

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PERHAPS one of or Lana Del Rey’s…

PHOTO CREDIT: Geordie Wood

more underrated albums, I am looking ahead to the tenth anniversary of Ultraviolence. That turns ten on 13th June. I think that it is a brilliant album that warrants more love and focus. I shall come to some positive reviews of it. In terms of Del Rey’s career, Ultraviolence arrived a year before Honeymoon. Different albums in terms of their tone and subjects, the album covers are also starkly different. Whereas Honeymoon is in colour and gives impressions of Del Rey in the 1950s/1960s down by the beach, Ultraviolence is a black-and-white portrait where Del Rey looks like pensive and thoughtful. Maybe many assume that Ultraviolence is quite inaccessible or darker. It is a beautiful album with a few of Lana Del Rey’s best songs. It reached number one in the U.S. and U.K. Singles like Shades of Cool and West Coat make it a modern classic. The reviews were positive, though there were a couple that were a bit more mixed. Ten years after its release, Ultraviolence still holds this strange pull and power. If some think Ultraviolence was a point where Lana Del Rey was repeating herself and there was a sense of predictability, others feel her third studio album was too dark. Maybe glamorising domestic violence or not dealing with it in a proper way. I think some of the reviews do not find the beauty, cinema and potency in Ultraviolence. I feel retrospective reviews would be different. I would advise people to check out interviews from 2014. Rolling Stone, FADER and NPR all featured her. I am going to start with a 2019 retrospective from Medium:

“I shared my body and my mind with you. That’s all over now.”

That’s how Lana Del Rey opens her sophomore release Ultraviolence back in 2014. This bold declaration is also her first statement since her 2012 release Born To Die. In those two years, Ms. Del Rey had established herself as an eccentric enigma, whose affinity for rich, old men, cocaine, and hopeless romanticism broke pop’s meticulous formula for success. Her submissiveness contrasted sharply to the empowerment-based music that most women in pop chose to do at the time. She became a countercultural icon in the entertainment industry. She also became the poster child for controversial pop stars of the 21st century.

It’s rare for any artist, let alone a woman of pop, soaked in such an absurd amount of controversy and infamy, to release an equally polarising and bold sophomore follow-up. However, once again, Lana Del Rey proves that she’s anything but predictable. Her enigmatic personality, combined with a now refined sense of character and production, fuelled this album to become her best-selling LP yet. It also immortalized it as one of the most memorable moments in music for 2014. Everyone may not have liked Ultraviolence, but everyone most certainly had an opinion.

Ultraviolence is interesting, in that it’s an album where one can discern the very real and tangible control she exudes regarding the narrative. There are three songs that showcase this the best.

Cruel World, in my opinion, is one of the best non-singles of her discography. In her words, it’s a song that sets the basis for the rest of the record. Her particularly strong vocal performance and uniquely chaotic yet melancholic string-based production set the scene, not for Ultraviolence the album, but rather, for Ultraviolence — The Movie. The raw emotion and anger she exudes contrasts wildly to the ‘damsel-in-distress’ persona of Born To Die. Lyrically, it’s one of those rare times where her character actually manages to end a bad relationship. Sure it still borrows many of Born To Die’s themes, including prostitutes, drugs, God, and money, to name a few. However, this time, she is in control.

Money, Power, Glory is one of the more flashy tracks on the album. A sarcastic interpretation of the holy trinity, the song is a 4 minute and 30-seconds long snarky response to all the critics and journalists who dragged her in op-eds and articles during her Born To Die era. Lana sums it up herself best, saying,

“I felt like all that anybody was going to allow me was maybe, if I was lucky, was money, and power, in the form of infamy, rather than fame.”

The media repeatedly showcased Lana as superficial, materialistic, and privileged. Rather than fight fire with fire, Lana chose to embrace the narrative the world had given her. If that was all that she was going to be given, might as well make the most of it. Once again, Lana embraces and takes over the reins of a narrative that was actively hostile to her. She is in control.

Along with her supposed thirst for money, her sensual stage persona also branded her as a sugar daddy seeker. The media and the public alike couldn’t help but speculate the various wild and sensational sexual favors she must have had to do given her meteoric rise to fame. Once again, in typical Del Rey fashion, we get one her best femme fatale performances yet with track 9, F**cked My Way Up To The Top.

Now, there is a caveat. Lana hasn’t exactly denied the validity of the title explicitly. In an interview, she mentioned,

It’s commentary, like, “I know what you think of me,” and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.

Now, technically speaking, it is false, given that said favors didn’t actually get her anywhere. That is, of course, assuming that this is true, which, given her black comedy-esque casualness when talking about it, likely means that it’s not.

Ultraviolence tells the story of a visibly abusive relationship between the singer and a man named ‘Jim’. Lana opens the song with the ways in which the female protagonist is described by ‘Jim’. ‘Deadly Nightshade’ and ‘blessed with beauty and rage’ are terms assigned to femme Fatales. Women whose external beauty and softness hid a powerful entity within. She is clearly alluding to the women in the aforementioned songs like Cruel World, where their force of will controls their fate. However, this woman is different.

At the end of the pre-chorus, we are given one of the more publicized lines of the album, where she sings,

Jim told me that, he hit me and it felt like a kiss

Some may call this the glorification of domestic violence. Some may call it a darker shade of eloquence and grace. Many believe ‘Jim’ to be a reference to Jim Beam, a brand of alcohol and making the song out to be about losing to alcoholism. Regardless, it puts her in a position with no power, despite those previous descriptions of hers. In a way, Ultraviolence is the climax of her Born To Die persona. Her blind romanticism, unsubstantiated hope, and insensitivity to obvious red flags harkens back to her 2012 classic and gives her listeners a taste of the past. This and its more digestible sequel Pretty When You Cry, in short, positioned a powerful woman in a powerless position.

Of course, these two themes aren't the only ones on the album. One of the best songs on the album (and the lead single), West Coast, is a casual beat that revolves around an innovative and psychedelic production and fleeting emotions of casual flirtation and romanticism. Brooklyn Baby is a rather upbeat, optimistic detour to the east coast, where Del Rey pays tribute to all things Brooklyn, from Beat Poetry to Lou Reed. There’s Old Money, which sees Lana return to do what she does best, break hearts. The haunting piano melody, which she borrows from the original score of Romeo and Juliet, remains a favorite among romantics. The Other Woman, her first of two covers of Nina Simone, provides a poignant ending to the standard version of the album, which sees the woman of this movie end the narrative with a return to her former power. Both vulnerable and sarcastic simultaneously, you get the feeling that no one could’ve done this cover better than her. I’ll also give a shoutout to Black Beauty, the only worthwhile track on the deluxe version and a track whose omission from the standard version will forever remain a deep mystery to me.

Ultraviolence, along with Honeymoon, remain her least recognized works of art. Despite being one of the best selling LPs of the year, few awards ever bothered nominating it, let alone winning.

However, in its own institutional way, Ultraviolence remains an album that never needed awards season vindication to succeed. This is in part due to the fact that Ultraviolence’s job was never to sell well, at least from an artistic perspective. I couldn’t help but see the parallels between this and Taylor Swift’s Reputation.

They’re wildly contrasting in terms of lyricism and production, no doubt. Yet they both share one thing. They were born out of the flames of infamy that scorched their creators. They were crafted meticulously to silence them forever. When Born To Die was released, many believed that Lana would just be another one-hit-wonder. A failed studio fabrication that yielded no return on investment. With Ultraviolence, she not only proved that the queen of alternative was here to stay, but that she was also a conniving beauty. A snow-covered volcano”.

I will finish with a couple of reviews. Although there were some three-star takes and those that pointed at flaws, there were those more positive. I do think that Ultraviolence is a dark album, though that is not a negative. It is fascinating and immersive. A departure from 2012’s Born to Die. This is what CLASH wrote in their review of the brilliant and underrated Ultraviolence:

“Lana Del Rey has always looked to ageless superstars as idols: to Marilyn Monroe, to Elvis, to players in a Great American Adventure that she was born too late to participate in. The cover to her third album ‘Ultraviolence’ goes so far as to reflect, albeit perhaps coincidentally, this era: black and white, the colour has to come from the performance, not the film it’s captured on.

Don’t let the title fool you: ‘Ultraviolence’ doesn’t dream to provoke like its A Clockwork Orange inspiration might suggest. It doesn’t prickle, or poke. Throughout, what comes through clearest is a coherency defined by the distinct reluctance to do much to unsettle a trajectory that’s taken Del Rey from complete unknown through blog-hyped ‘newcomer’ to legitimate pop superstar.

Songs, predominantly produced by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, ally themselves with expected conventions: strings sweep in, drums march with funereal weight, and Lana sings like she’s calling to the stars themselves. To those in the dirt who went too soon, those whose legacy feeds so palpably into this artist’s oeuvre; and those above us, dying slow the other side of so many light years. In this respect, ‘Ultraviolence’ marks real progression: never has Del Rey sounded so compellingly crystalline on a set of recordings.

Thematically, though, tracks can appear content to splash in the shallows. ‘Money Power Glory’, ‘F*cked My Way To The Top’: these songs of meeting aspirations via never-mind-the-nefariousness means might be conceived with a wicked tongue in cheek, with a detached role-playing perspective. But such is Lana’s gravitas that the listener immediately connects the dots between song and singer, excluding the possibility of transplanted players and relative characteristics.

But when Lana’s singing about what we all need, beyond money, power and glory, she’s amongst the best the 21st century has to call its own. ‘Old Money’ is a love song that completely floors anyone who might feel that pop can’t carry emotion like it used to, high-shined as it’s become by technology. Here, pianos chime and violins peak, while Lana’s vocal is drawn in choir dimensions, echoing with real effectiveness across the barrier separating sit-at-home audience from studio-residing artist. To be in the room must have been electrifying.

The bruises of relationships beaten down to dust take no time in blossoming: the title cut, coming in at track two of 11, speaks of hits that feel like kisses, be those of the fist-dealt or pharmaceutical variety. The song plays, too, on her coast-to-coast migration, from east to west: “We could go back to New York,” she sings, like that’d make everything, anything, the slightest bit better. ‘Cruel World’ states, “I’m so happy, now that you’re gone,” but sounds as much like its maker feels rather the opposite; and ‘Shades Of Cool’ examines a partner who can’t be trusted, just a Mad Men sync away from contemporary cultural greatness.

The very best songs are probably those that have previewed this collection, not least amongst them ‘West Coast’. In the album context it takes on greater significance, a fulcrum at track five that balances the whole into leaving a better impression than it otherwise might. The track’s all drama and damaged dreams, fractured friendships and a deep-set heartache. It also displays a rarely witnessed ability to switch tact mid-song, to alter the arrangement so that it plays almost like a mini-suite.

‘Cruel World’ does this, too. The album’s opener is Lana’s favourite, the track’s “juxtaposition of two worlds” summing up her “personal circumstances of everything going easily, and then being f*cked up”. So she tells us here.

A cover closes proceedings. ‘The Other Woman’, penned by the late Jessie Mae Robinson, is more epilogue than credits accompaniment, a gentle kiss goodbye once the bluster’s died to silence. It’s slight and beautiful, relating to Lana’s personal themes but actually doing what her own songs can’t: it successfully casts Lana as the removed observer rather than the direct experiencer. It’s a role that suits her well, too, as she sounds so much freer here than on several of the preceding tracks.

What there’s not is a number that will arrest the attention like ‘Video Games’ did – but then, Lana had the element of surprise on her side. The sometimes haphazard diversity of previous album ‘Born To Die’ has gone, too, at the expense of including a great but mismatched song like the more hip-hop-inflected, A$AP Rocky-starring ‘National Anthem’ (far and away this writer’s favourite from its parent record). To some, this will make for a collection that suits its monochromatic cover: several shades of the same themes, neatly hung together but lacking lasting resonance.

But of course, to others ‘Ultraviolence’ will stand as the first Lana Del Rey album that really embraces its format, which aims for definitive statement status and only falls short through its self-imposed restrictions. It encapsulates much that the press, that her public, feel Lana is about – from the Hollywood nostalgia to the gentle snipes at those who’d prefer to write about her looks than her art. (“They judge me like a picture book,” she sings on ‘Brooklyn Baby’, surely a dig at some journalists’ past coverage.)

For all its lows-inspired highs, ‘Ultraviolence’ is not quite the complete picture. But should a true director’s cut of this beguiling artist come at the next time of asking, she’ll realise a timelessness that so many of her influences had to die for.

7/10”.

I will end with a review from AllMusic. It is interesting that the cover for Ultraviolence is in black-and-white. Compare that to the albums it is sandwiched between – Born to Die and Honeymoon – and you get something standout. Perhaps an emotional representation of darkness and loss. Trying to give the impression of an old film. Maybe signalling a departure from her earlier albums, Ultraviolence does warrant new ears. It is a modern classic in my view:

“The maelstrom of hype surrounding self-modeled Hollywood pop star Lana Del Rey's 2012 breakthrough album, Born to Die, found critics, listeners, and pop culture aficionados divided about her detached, hyper-stylized approach to every aspect of her music and public persona. What managed to get overlooked by many was that Born to Die made such a polarizing impression because it actually offered something that didn't sound like anything else. Del Rey's sultry, overstated orchestral pop recast her as some sort of vaguely imagined chanteuse for a generation raised on Adderall and the Internet, with heavy doses of Twin Peaks atmosphere adding a creepy sheen to intentionally vapid (and undeniably catchy) radio hits. Follow-up album Ultraviolence shifts gears considerably, building a thick, slow-moving atmosphere with its languid songs and opulent arrangements. Gone are the big beats and glossy production that resulted in tracks like "Summertime Sadness." Instead, Ultraviolence begins with the protracted, rolling melancholia of "Cruel World," nearly seven minutes of what feels like a sad, reverb-drenched daydream. The song sets the stage for the rest of the album, which simmers with a haunted, yearning feeling but never boils over. Even the most pop-friendly moments here are steeped in patient, jazz-inflected moodiness, as with the sad-eyed longing of "Shades of Cool" or the unexpected tempo changes that connect the slinky verses of single "West Coast" to their syrupy, swaying choruses. Production from the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach might have something to do with the metered restraint that permeates the album, with songs like "Sad Girl" carrying some of the slow-burning touches of greasy blues-rock Auerbach is known for.

A few puzzling moments break up the continuity of the album. The somewhat hooky elements of "Brooklyn Baby" can't quite rise above its disjointed song structure and cringeable lyrics that could be taken either as mockery of the hipster lifestyle or self-parody. "Money Power Glory" steps briefly out of the overall dreamscape of the album, sounding like a tossed-off outtake from the Born to Die sessions. Despite these mild missteps, Ultraviolence thrives for the most part in its density, meant clearly to be absorbed as an entire experience, with even its weaker pieces contributing to a mood that's consumptive, sexy, and as eerie as big-budget pop music gets. Del Rey's loudest detractors criticized her music as a hollow, cliché-ridden product designed by the music industry and lacking the type of substance that makes real pop stars pop. Ultraviolence asserts that as a songwriter, she has complete control of her craft, deciding on songs far less flashy or immediate but still uniquely captivating. As these songs shift her sound into more mature and nuanced places, it becomes clear that every deadpan affectation, lispy lyric, and overblown allusion to desperate living has been a knowing move in the creation of the strange, beguiling character -- and sonic experience -- we know as Lana Del Rey”.

There is actually one more feature I will bring in before wrapping it. It was published last year. It is true that Ultraviolence was Lana Del Rey’s darkest release to that point. There is such richness to be found through the album. I would encourage people to listen to it. It is one of my top five Lana Del Rey albums for sure:

“Perfect for a James Bond film”

Shot in stark black-and-white, the album cover was a Polaroid photo taken by Neil Krug, showing Lana blank-faced, standing in her driveway and dressed in a casual white T-shirt. As Krug told Complex, “The cover needed to feel like the last frame of a 60s Polanski film, where the audience has been properly traumatized, and this is the last thing they see before the credits roll.” It was a perfect match for the music: every song on Ultraviolence is slow to midtempo, flowing seamlessly into the next with a sad, melancholic feel.

A soft rock track centered around an electric guitar and wobbly synth, “West Coast” was the first sign of Lana’s new direction. Released two months ahead of Ultraviolence, in April 2014, it was, Lana told Radio.com, “inspired by Eagles and The Beach Boys”, while her “mind and roots were in jazz” – reference points which can all be felt in the song. With an unusual structure that relied on two different tempos (slowing down drastically for the chorus, which gave the track a laidback, ethereal feel), “West Coast” found Lana ignoring the conventional rules of songwriting, moving away from the sort of arrangements and lengths that would guarantee radio play.

Unique among the songs on Ultraviolence, “Shades Of Cool,” co-written with her regular writing partner, Rick Nowels, found Lana singing in a higher register than usual. Hailed by Rolling Stone’s Caryn Ganz as being “perfect for a James Bond film directed by Quentin Tarantino,” the song received a suitably cinematic video treatment courtesy of director Jake Nava. When Lana steps out of a brightly lit swimming pool as the guitar solo peaks, the turquoise of the pool and the red of her lips are so saturated as to create a beautiful symbiosis of music and art.

“Two minutes later, he died”

Taken from a slang term in Anthony Burgess’ novel A Clockwork Orange, Lana picked the album’s title because, as she told BBC News, “I like that luxe sound of the word ‘ultra’ and the mean sound of the word ‘violence’ together.” Further exploring such juxtapositions on the album’s title track, Lana included a reference to The Crystals’ Phil Spector-produced song “He Hit Me (And It Felt Like A Kiss)” in the original lyrics, though she later stopped singing that line live, telling the BBC, “I don’t feel comfortable with that lyric anymore.”

The fourth single from the album, “Brooklyn Baby,” was intended to be a collaboration with Lou Reed, but the former Velvet Underground frontman died before it could come to fruition – though Lana had traveled to New York to meet the singer. “I took the red eye, touched down at 7am… and two minutes later, he died,” she told The Guardian. The finished track still referenced him, however, in the lyric, “Well my boyfriend’s in a band/He plays guitar while I sing Lou Reed.”

“Whatever people think of you becomes a facet of your psyche”

“Hands down” Lana’s favorite song from the album, as she told radio station 96.5 TIC, was “Cruel World,” a six-minute slow-burner built on wah-wah guitars and reverbed vocals, and which was recorded in one take with her guitarist Blake Stranathan. Elsewhere, however, “F__ked My Way Up To The Top” best summarises her usual approach. Though never released as a single, the song remains important for understanding Lana’s lyrical content.

Her songs often speak of passionate but dysfunctional relationships with older men, and of being the other woman. With “F__ked My Way Up To The Top” she admitted to an autobiographical theme the likes of which feature on many of her records, telling The Fader: “I had a seven-year relationship with the head of this label, and he was a huge inspiration to me. I’ll tell you later when more people know. He never signed me, but he was like my muse, the love of my life.”

“F__cked My Way Up To The Top,” however, is ironic: it’s Lana taking power out of the public’s hands by claiming to be everything they may have said she is. Speaking to Complex, she said, “I know what you think of me, and I’m alluding to that. You know, I have slept with a lot of guys in the industry, but none of them helped me get my record deals. Which is annoying.” Other songs on the album, such as “Money, Power, Glory,” follow this same theme, with Lana embodying a public persona, enacting the Carl Jung theory that, as she told The New York Times, “what other people think of you becomes a small facet of your psyche, whether you want it to or not.”

In replacing the hip-hop drums and vocal samples that dominated Born To Die with laidback basslines and dreamy guitar riffs, Ultraviolence emerged as a more stripped-back, simpler album than its predecessor. Exceptionally produced dream-pop at its finest, there isn’t one individual standout song on its 11 tracks – rather, Ultraviolence is an atmospheric work designed to be listened to in its entirety, engulfing you in its beautifully dark, cinematic mood”.

On 13th June, it will be ten years since Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence was released. If some critics were not completely on board in 2014, I think that there have been reviews since that have been a bit kinder. I wonder whether anything special will happen for the tenth anniversary. It deserves some new inspection and features. An intoxicating and powerful album, you put it on and are soon…

LOST in its grip.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Lenny Kravitz at Sixty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Mark Seliger

Lenny Kravitz at Sixty

_________

ONE of my favourite artists…

the legendary Lenny Kravitz turns sixty on 26th May. The New York-born musician has created more than his fair share of classic songs. I think I first heard his music when his second studio album, Mama Said, was released in 1991. Since then, I have been following his career. His latest album, Blue Electric Light, is out on 24th March, To mark the upcoming sixtieth birthday of the wonderful Lenny Kravitz, I have assembled a playlist with some of his best songs and interesting deep cuts. I hope that it helps introduce a few new people to his music. Before I get there, AllMusic provide some biography about the incredible Lenny Kravitz:

“A staunch believer in the enduring power of classic rock, Lenny Kravitz refashions familiar fuzz guitars, soulful rhythms, and psychedelic melodies into sleek, sinewy modern rock. Quickly eschewing the neo-hippie vibe of his 1989 debut Let Love Rule, not to mention the gossamer gloss of his first big hit "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over," Kravitz landed upon a combination of heavy guitars and stylish flash on 1993's Are You Gonna Go My Way. It was a sound that powered a trio of Grammy-winning Y2K-era hits -- "Fly Away," a cover of the Guess Who's "American Woman," and "Again" -- that solidified Kravitz's stardom and served as the template for the records he released over the ensuing decades, from 2001's Lenny to 2024's Blue Electric Light. 

The son of Roxie Roker -- an actress famous for her role as Helen Willis on the '70s sitcom The Jeffersons -- and NBC News producer Sy Kravitz, Lenny Kravitz was surrounded by music as a child, exposed to everything from radio pop to jazz and classical. As a teenager in Los Angeles, he was drawn to rock & roll, finding particular inspiration in Prince. Initially, he attempted to launch a career under the pseudonym Romeo Blue, recording a full demo in Hoboken, New Jersey with engineer Henry Hirsch, incorporating elements inspired by John Lennon, Bob Marley, and the Velvet Underground.

While shopping his demo, Kravitz met actress Lisa Bonet on the set of A Different World, a sitcom spinoff of the cultural phenomenon The Cosby Show. Kravitz and Bonet became a couple around the time he signed with Virgin Records in January 1989. Reverting to his birthname, Kravitz released Let Love Rule in September 1989, with its title track earning play on MTV and modern rock radio. It was enough to gain the attention of Madonna, who had Kravitz co-produce and co-write "Justify My Love," a provocative and sultry single that became a number one hit for the superstar in 1990. It wasn't the only extracurricular activity for Kravitz: he produced, played, and co-wrote the bulk of Vanessa Paradis' eponymous 1991 debut album.

By the time he released his second album, Mama Said, in April 1991, Kravitz had separated from Bonet -- the pair divorced in 1993 -- and this sophomore set was fueled by heartbreak, as evidenced by "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over," a Curtis Mayfield-inspired tune that went to number two on Billboard's Hot 100. Slash, his old high school classmate, played on the album's "Always on the Run," the first sign that Kravitz was running with rock royalty. Soon, he appeared on records by Mick Jagger and David Bowie, and co-wrote a tune with Steven Tyler and Joe Perry for Aerosmith's Get a Grip album. These classic rock sounds flourished on Are You Gonna Go My Way, a 1993 album that turned into Kravtiz's mainstream breakthrough thanks to the rock hits "Are You Gonna Go My Way," "Believe," and "Is There Any Love in Your Heart."

After stumbling with Circus -- the 1995 album's lead single "Rock and Roll Is Dead" failed to crack the Top 40 -- Kravitz righted himself with 5, a 1998 album that tempered his classic rock inclinations with slight electronica inflections. At first, 5 didn't cause many waves but its fourth single, "Fly Away," became a major hit in early 1999, reaching 12 on Billboard's Hot 100 on its way to winning the Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. A cover of the Guess Who's "American Woman," cut for the soundtrack to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, became his second big hit of 1999; it also won a Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, as did "Again," a new song added to his 2000 Greatest Hits compilation.

Lenny, his sixth solo album, appeared in October 2001. Benefitting from the momentum generated by 5, it reached number 12 on the Billboard 200 and spawned the singles "Dig In," "Stillness of the Heart," and "If I Could Fall in Love." "Dig In" earned the singer his fourth straight Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. A seventh full-length, Baptism, arrived in 2004 heralded by the single "Where Are We Runnin'?" It peaked at 14 on the Billboard 200 and also featured an appearance by rapper Jay-Z on the track "Storm."

After starting a residential, commercial, and product design company called Kravitz Design, he recorded a funky version of John Lennon's "Cold Turkey" for Amnesty International's 2007 benefit compilation Instant Karma. In February 2008, he returned with the studio album It Is Time for a Love Revolution, accompanied by the singles "Bring It On," "I'll Be Waiting," and "Love Love Love." It proved to be one of his highest-charting albums to date, reaching number four on the Billboard 200.

Kravitz made his acting debut in the Academy Award-nominated 2009 film Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. As he was filming his next role -- a spot in the eagerly awaited adaptation of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games -- he released his ninth album, Black and White America, in the summer of 2011. Reprising his role of Cinna in the second Hunger Games movie in 2013, Kravitz wouldn't return to the studio until the following year. He released his tenth studio album, Strut, in September of 2014. It marked the launch of his own Roxie Records label, named in honor of his mother. Anchored by the disco-rock single "The Chamber," Strut debuted at 19 on the Billboard Top 200.

After a four-year break, Kravitz returned in September 2018 with Raise Vibration, a socially conscious production that found him exploring themes of political division, racism, and positivity in the face of turmoil. The single "Low" featured a posthumous vocal collaboration with Michael Jackson and yielded a deluxe remix collection later in the year. It peaked at 43 on the Billboard 200. In 2019, he embarked on the Here to Love Tour and returned to acting, appearing in the 2022 comedy Shotgun Wedding. A single, "TK421," arrived in October 2023 as the first song released off his twelfth studio album, 2024's Blue Electric Light”.

I am looking forward to seeing how the world marks the sixtieth anniversary of Lenny Kravitz. There will be a lot of love for him I know. I have always had so much respect and love for his music, so I hope that he puts out albums for years to come. So brilliant and consistent, there is something in Kravitz’s music for everyone. It is also annoying that the man has hardly aged at all! It has been a pleasure compiling a playlist of his work. Ahead of his sixtieth birthday, it is a chance to…

SALUTE him.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Dan Whitlam

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

Dan Whitlam

_________

THE wonderful…

Dan Whitlam is an artist that everyone needs to get behind. I am quite new to his work. I have been introduced to him by BBC Radio 6 Music as they recently played his music. I have also seen an interesting interview with NME – one I shall source from soon. I am going to get to some interviews soon. In terms of Whitlam’s style, he is more of a Spoken Word artist. Someone setting poetry and moving words to music. With some Hip-Hop flow in there, he definitely stands out from his peers. I am not normally a fan of Spoken Word in music, yet it makes more sense and is more affecting if not mixed into other genres I feel. I want to start out with some biography and background from Curtis Brown:

“Dan Whitlam is a poet, spoken word artist, rapper and actor from South London.  He has gained notoriety from his music videos on TikTok which narrate the lives of 20-somethings through spoken word and rap.  His soulful voice and poignant lyrics have quickly made him one-to-watch.

His poetry has been featured on BBC Radio 4, Radio 1 and Radio London as well as in a series of successful shows performed in venues around London.  This has earned him a place as one of the most ‘intriguing’ up and comers in the UK alternative hip hop scene (Jess Iszatt – BBC Radio London/ Radio 1)”.

In fact, I shall concentrate on parts on the NME interview. I want to look back earlier in the year. Paper People, one of Dan Whitlam’s most powerful singles to date, was released back in February. CLASH shared new of a song from a remarkable talent. An artist who can bring his acting experience and discipline into his music. As much a poet as an artist. Someone who deserves more airplay and attention:

“South London artist Dan Whitlam has shared powerful new track ‘Paper People’.

The performer uses social media to spread his music, sharing ideas and demos online. Blending UK rap aspects with spoken word, Dan Whitlam embraces creativity as a means to overcome trauma – he was stabbed when he was 16 years old, and suffered a collapsed lung.

Word is already out on this brave talent, whose first UK tour has sold out – including shows in Manchester, Bristol, and London’s historic Union Chapel.

Out now via Needwant, ‘Paper People’ blends his evocative rumination on the fragmentation of a relationship to downcast, atmospheric production from Oscar Moose.

House of a deeper than deep shade, check out the poetry behind ‘Paper People’ after the jump.

I don’t know if we can be friends. 

Not like you imagined anyway. 

Cos…

That would mean writing over what we were. All those rose tinted days. 

And, turning it into something less special

and slightly more mundane. 

A lower level, of pain where you no longer want me as your lover. 

But, wanna hold onto my best bits while your chest hits the arms of another.

I don’t think we can be friends.

But then everyone says it will get better with time. 

A cruel irony cos…

the thing about time is it takes time”.

It does surprise me that there has not been more focus on Dan Whitlam. I wanted to spotlight him now in the hope that his name and music reaches new ears. The fact big stations like BBC Radio 6 Music have played his songs is early indication that he is the real deal. An artist who is going to go on to bigger things. Lots of live dates will be in the diary. I think that Dan Whitlam is someone who ranks alongside the best new British artists coming through. He is hard to compare with anyone else. Perhaps that is a good thing. Maybe touches of Loyle Carner or Antony Szmierek. I think comparisons are also good, as you can see how these other artists have progressed. The venues they have played and the success they have had. Dan Whitlam is perhaps more Spoken Word than Hip-Hop, yet he manages to seamlessly blend music, poetry, an incredible backdrop and a commanding and affecting vocal that takes you inside the song. I want to me to an NME interview. It is the only recently and detailed interview with Dan Whitlam. I cannot think of too many Spoken Word artists coming through right now. It has always been a style that has been marginalised or seen as a less commercial and marketable. Dan Whitlam can change that:

“Social media presents us with an infinite number of options when it comes to consuming music. But how much of what we see stays with us for longer than the time it takes us to scroll to the next thing? How does art that requires patience and time survive in a climate governed by fast moving mediums? Yet, arguably, there is a growing appetite for art that challenges this status quo, and spoken word artist Dan Whitlam is at the forefront of this wave.

Interestingly, Whitlam’s weapon of choice has been TikTok. Bringing content that is not purpose-built for the doom-scrollers into their domain is bold, yet his music has been a huge success on the app, with the Londoner building an impressive following of over 100,000. Although Whitlam’s tracks might lean towards the melancholic, they are always beautifully juxtaposed by his warm, baritone vocals which serve as the perfect vessel to grab the attention of anyone that happens to be scrolling by.05

Spoken word wasn’t always confined to the screens in our pockets; back in 2002, Def Poetry Jam took it across around the world. The TV series was a place where up-and-coming poets shared the stage with legends like DMX and Mos Def. Seeing some of the biggest artists in hip-hop at the time perform poetry on primetime television gave a global audience an entirely new perspective on a genre that had previously existed outside of the mainstream.

Since then, spoken word has largely remained on the periphery, though acts like George The Poet and Kae Tempest have made groundbreaking progress over the last decade. Whitlam’s current success suggests he could join them. The ability to distill the universal experiences of lovestruck twenty-somethings across the world on tracks like ‘Quick Intimacy’ and ‘Exit Sign’ are what have gained him such a loyal following.

PHOTO CREDIT: Loan Nguyen

What was your upbringing like?

“I was born in London, then I straight away moved to Russia. I grew up in St Petersburg and then I was there for about five years, and then I moved to Turkey and grew up in Istanbul until I was 11 before coming back to London. Musically, I had influences like Tarkan from Turkey, and all these sounds which were very different from mainstream Western culture. In Turkey, my mum got ill so we came back to London, and then she sadly passed away when I was 11.”

What is it about the performing arts that you were drawn to?

“I’ve got Tourette’s [syndrome], and at first whenever I was on stage it would just go away, and there was a feeling of ease being up there. It’s so ironic that when more eyes are on you, you feel more free. I think being in the spotlight is nice, isn’t it? Whether it’s your friends laughing at your jokes or being on stage, it’s a nice feeling. I enjoyed reading someone else’s words and it continued from there. Then, I started writing my own words and I was like, ‘Oh this feels even better.'”

You said you wanted to make poetry more accessible, but what does that actually look like?

“I think the overriding topic of spoken word on social media is that it’s ‘cringe’, it’s dead, it’s not an art form people like, apart from this tiny little percentage of people who really enjoy it. First of all it would be to try and make it – and I hate using the word – ‘cooler’, but that’s what it is.

“In schools, they should start realising that rap is rhythm and poetry, and start teaching work from more mainstream or relatable people, you know? Dissect Kofi Stone, or dissect Chance The Rapper… Tupac wrote this incredible poetry book. Make things more about day-to-day issues going on now, because people get interested in stuff that’s happening to them, rather than stuff that happened in 1650, you know?”

How do you manage to make your music work on a platform like TikTok, which is typically geared towards instant gratification?

“The answer is I don’t know. But I hope it’s because there is some sort of validity in what I’m putting out there, and people are enjoying what I’m doing. What people keep saying to me is that [my music] grabbed them in the moment. A lot of the time people say that they don’t like poetry; I hated poetry at school simply because it was either like poets from a long long time ago that I found no kind of comfort or relatability.

“I think it’s about having an attention-grabbing hook: in the first three seconds you say something big, bold and relatable – that’s how I work. I try and say things that are quite universal.”

Why do love and loss feature so heavily in your writing?

“After losing my mum at a young age, I’ve always had a mad respect and adoration for the women who come into my life, whether they’re friends, lovers or family. Love naturally is so entangled within that, and I write really passionately about it because potentially I didn’t have a lot of that when I was growing up. Breakups happen, love and loss happens; people find comfort in how I write about the latter so candidly.

“In the beginning when I put [music] out, I was like, ‘This is way too personal’. But then it takes one person to be like, ‘Wow, I felt this way too – I didn’t know that you felt that way as well.’ Traditionally, men have been put down in terms of being so open. A lot of artists do this, but I think a man speaking about things so openly and being vulnerable is going to breed nothing but positivity.”

Is there anything that you’d like to write more about that you haven’t yet?

“Yeah, my mum, that’s one thing for sure, I don’t think I ever will though. I wrote a poem about me getting stabbed, and it took so long because I was like, ‘I wanna get everything right.’ I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do my mum justice, so I don’t think I’ll ever write [about her].

“I’ve got another tour coming up, and I’d love to write a few more upbeat things. At my live shows at the moment, everyone is very engaged, but I’d love to see people lose their head a little bit and have the best time”.

I know that the more live performances Dan Whitlam undertakes, the more his magic and incredible music will travel. I was hooked the first time I heard him. The Our Mind E.P. was released earlier in the month. It is phenomenal. Ever since releasing the single, Exit Sign, in 2021, Dan Whitlam has released some stunning and unique music. His debut E.P. will lead to bigger things. A debut album and a headline tour. I love his music videos. He is the complex artistic package. I do hope that more journalists feature interview with Whitlam. He want a wider exposure and celebration. If you are unfamiliar with him and his amazing blend of Spoken Word and Hip-Hop, then you need to check out Dan Whitlam…

AS soon as possible.

___________

Follow Dan Whitlam

Official:

https://www.danwhitlam.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/danwhitlam

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@danwhitlam1

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/danwhitlam

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@danwhitlam4110

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4t4zanmCp0GBomHaX5hXt8?si=nznUDaZvTNaSBCXzG_3HqA

FEATURE: Eat the Music: The Artistic Brilliance of Kate Bush’s Album Covers and International Versions

FEATURE:

 

 

Eat the Music

ART CREDIT: Nick Price

The Artistic Brilliance of Kate Bush’s Album Covers and International Versions

_________

I have covered this before…

PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

in another feature, though I thought that it was worth revisiting. There are artists who have a knack for putting out incredible album covers. Not just in the country that the act comes from. You also get these amazing international versions. Kate Bush is certainly an artist who has been responsible for some of the most striking, individual and enduring album covers ever. Although the U.K. originals are great, I also love some of the international options. I have seen a few posted on social media. In fact, the main image for this feature is the Japanese version of Never for Ever (the Japanese promotion is pretty awesome too). Even if the cover design is not altered or radically changed, seeing the cover with foreign language and other symbols brings something from the imagery. There is a curious case of The Kick Inside. That is Kate Bush’s 1978 debut album. There are quite a few different photos depending on the country. I am not exactly sure why the U.K. version, which features Bush mounted against a kite with some Eastern-influenced lettering, was not used worldwide. It is one of those album covers that perhaps is better intentionally. I am thinking again of the Japanese cover that was shot by Gered Mankowitz. That shot, of Kate in a pink leotard and the camera being focused on her face and neck – and top of her chest – is iconic. It was originally slated for the Wuthering Heights. The shot was not used because a version that was leaked and featured in the wider world showed Bush’s erect nipples. It was not the shot that would necessarily have been used. Something from that session. It was confusing. The photo could have been cropped slightly. The image that we see on the Japanese version of The Kick Inside is the photo that should have been the Wuthering Heights cover.

It goes to show that various images and photos can bring something different from the same album. People say not to judge a book by its cover. Maybe the same with an album. Even so, the cover is a portal into the music. The first image. Maybe the defining one! I feel that the album covers became truer to Kate Bush from Lionheart on. That front cover was also taken by Gered Mankowitz. As much as I like some of the international variation for The Kick Inside, the U.K. version for Lionheart is amazing. It is almost edible. If not food for the soul, it is an image that stays in the mind. It is curious that The Kick Inside was the first and last time that a wide range of photos was used around the world. I guess EMI wanted Bush to come across as this varied artist. Maybe a little rigid releasing the one cover. Perhaps some nations would not understand that kite image and its relevance. It got me thinking about how Kate Bush’s album covers would translate. How they would be interpreted by particular nations. I think that Bush had this in mind when she was thinking about the covers. Not only releasing something that was standout and would somehow define the album’s themes. It is designed so that people would look at the photo/image and it would cross language barriers. Something that was figured by EMI after the debut album. Even though I am not a fan of the covers for 2005’s Aerial and 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, they do the album justice. They are intriguing works of art and design that speak loudly.

When I see someone sharing a Kate Bush album cover or even a single cover, it makes me think about the connection and relationship between that image and the music. That Never for Ever cover springs to mind. You can read more about the album here. The 1980 album was Kate Bush’s third. A year after her extensive The Tour of Life, it was the first time producing. She produced with Jon Kelly. Maybe the cover had to be different and bolder. The first two albums are great, though Never for Ever is more fantastical, odder and beautiful. It has qualities that separate it from anything Kate Bush released. Not only her and this self-portrait. Though Lionheart has its own vibe and story – one gets a sense of children’s literature, disguise and sexuality too -, the pencil drawing from artist Nick Price was turned into this wonderful illustration. Bush would steps away from a photographic cover for Aerial and 50 Words for Snow. Even 2011’s Director’s Cut. I feel every album cover has its own personality and standout quality. The Kick Inside has this sense of movement and mystique alongside one another. International versions feature Kate Bush front and centre. The U.K. version is more about Kate Bush as an album mystical woman. A spirit or strange figure. It raise so many questions. The symbolism and relevance of the kite and the style of letting. Lionheart is the mixture of grown up and child-like. Bush young and naïve still but also hugely confident and bold. Never for Ever is more imaginative and bigger. Ideas bursting out of Kate Bush. This sense of quintessential English with the intangible, spiritual, fantasy and beyond. The Dreaming directly related to one of the album’s tracks, Houdini, but I also think that it is Kate Bush creating some mystery. Making escaping from the past and trying to break free from constraints. Hounds of Love is a mix of the literal and figurative. Her hounds, Bonnie and Clyde, are on the cover (shot by her brother, John Carder Bush), though there is also the more metaphorical representation in the Hounds of Love title track.

The Sensual World is womanly, sexy and coquettish. Seductive too. The Red Shoes has only Bush’s feet in red shoes (albeit an illustration of her feet rather than a photo). Balletic. Perhaps more literal than anything, it is also a chance to focus on more than Kate Bush. To get away from her image and the face. Less about the woman behind the album. An image that is enduring in its beautiful simplicity. That is the first not to feature Kate Bush’s face/body. She would not appear on any album cover after that. I love how there are different colour schemes and backdrops. A fresh canvas for each album. Compare the slightly misplaced and odd design of The Kick Inside and the range of international alternatives. How a teenage Kate Bush was portrayed around the world. How the U.S. photo was very different to, say, the one in Uruguay. A Japanese version of Never for Ever is stunning and highly desirable, in spite of the fact there is not much different to the original cover. I don’t think enough people have gone into depth about Kate Bush’s album covers and their significance. How each are vastly different. That bond between cover and the music. There is a lot more to explore. Single covers too. Think about Eat the Music and its recent reissue for Record Store Day. How there is something collectable and desirable about buying a physical version because of that beautiful cover. So many other single covers are extraordinary in their power and beauty – including Symphony in Blue (a Japanese single from Lionheart), Babooshka (Never for Ever) and King of the Mountain (Aerial). I get transported when I see a Kate Bush album cover! Get all these sensations and thoughts when seeing international version. Whether it is a different photo or a different language, you get something very different with each. Her album covers are representations of her art. A window into her soul. A visual connection to the music and its them. It is also a tantalising sign and signal of…

WHAT can be discovered within.

FEATURE: Second Spin: David Bowie – Diamond Dogs

FEATURE:

 

 

Second Spin

David Bowie – Diamond Dogs

_________

THERE are a couple of reasons…

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in 1974/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill

why I am spotlighting David Bowie’s eighth studio album, Diamond Dogs. It is one of his more underrated releases. Prior to his Berlin Trilogy and the introduction of the remarkable Station to Station in 1976, there was this run of albums that had mixed reviews and were vastly different to one another. 1975’s Young Americans is a great album, though it is another not considered among his best. I have seen some mixed reception to it. A year prior to Diamond Dogs, Bowie released the covers album, Pin Ups. It is interesting in places but not essential. Bowie also released the hugely acclaimed and iconic Aladdin Sane in 1973. Wanted to ditch that persona and reinvent himself Diamond Dogs isn’t necessarily a moment of identity crisis. It was another evolution and revolution from Bowie, though it is not an album one can compare alongside, say, Hunky Dory or even Low. I think that Diamond Dogs is more worthy and impressive than many critics have given it credit for. Also, on 24th May, Diamond Dogs turns fifty. It is always important to recognise Bowie’s albums on big anniversaries. I want to spend some time with Diamond Dogs. I would suggest Bowie fans grab a copy of Diamond Dogs:

“After George Orwell's widow refused Bowie the right to use 1984 as the title of his forthcoming album, he instead used the novel as a conceptual blueprint for what became Diamond Dogs. Accompanied only by keyboardist Mike Garson, bassist Herbie Flowers, and drummers Aynsley Dunbar and Tony Newman, Bowie played guitar, sax, moog, and mellotron, in addition to his contributions as vocalist, composer, arranger, and producer of the album. With the Orwellian themes as a loose backdrop, Diamond Dogs has much of the apocalyptic sense of future shock that informed Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. While the album doesn't have the musical punch or the songwriting strengths of Ziggy, its gems make it more than worthwhile. the lush strings and dominant wah-wah guitar of 1984 seem like a nod to Isaac Hayes, while Bowie's howls and snarling sax on the title track make it instantly memorable. The glam rock classic Rebel Rebel, with its edgy guitar riff and strutting 4/4 beat, is the disc's highlight, and one of Bowie's all-time great songs. amidst the imagery of a gray, totalitarian future, Bowie injected some optimism by including the nostalgic Rock 'n' Roll With Me, a good time, rootsy number that presaged his next transformation into the blue-eyed soul singer of Young Americans”.

It is lucky we are in a position to knowingly celebrate fifty years of Diamond Dogs. For years, the exact release date of the album was debated. Some claimed it was 24th April, 1974; others 31st May 1974. David Bowie’s own website set the date as 24th May, 1974 in 2014. Diamond Dogs was given a $400,000 promotional campaign in America. This included huge billboards in Times Square and Sunset Boulevard, subway posters, adverts in the press, and a made-for-television promo clip. It was a huge event. So much expectation around the album. Diamond Dogs, whilst not as critically acclaimed as some of his album, was a big commercial success. It topped the album charts in the U.K. and reached five in the U.S. It was Bowie’s highest placing in the U.S. at that point. I am going to finish with two positive reviews for Diamond Dogs. I am going to get to a couple of features in a minute. Before that, as the album has divided opinion, this Wikipedia article about retrospective acclaim is interesting. How it still does not unite critics:

“Retrospective appraisals have been mixed. AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine said that, because Bowie did not completely retire the character of Ziggy Stardust, Diamond Dogs suffers from him being unsure how to move forward. Although he praised "Rebel Rebel", he further criticised the exclusion of Ronson and ultimately concluded "it is the first record since Space Oddity where Bowie's reach exceeds his grasp". Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune gave the album a mixed review, calling it "an overproduced concept album inspired by Orwell's 1984". Eduardo Rivadavia was also mixed in Ultimate Classic Rock, questioning the presence of Ziggy, whom Bowie supposedly retired the year before. Despite the album's commercial success, Rivadavia concluded: "with decades of hindsight, Diamond Dogs now seems more like the gateway from the Ziggy Stardust era to his Thin White Duke blue-eyed soul period, and beyond".

The record has attracted positive reviews. Pitchfork's Barry Walters described the album as "a bummer, a bad trip, 'No Fun' – a sustained work of decadence and dread that transforms corrosion into celebration". He also believed it foreshadowed Bowie's Thin White Duke persona. For punknews.org, C. M. Crockford wrote that Diamonds Dogs is Bowie's "utterly most distinctive work: melodramatic, raw, challenging, and ambitious even when crammed with catchy songs". Crockford ultimately called it one of Bowie's essential releases and argued that he would "never make an album that was so obviously his own again". In a 2013 readers' poll for Rolling Stone, Diamond Dogs was voted Bowie's fifth-greatest album.

In subsequent decades, Bowie biographers have described Diamond Dogs as one of Bowie's greatest works. Cann writes: "Diamond Dogs is arguably [Bowie's] most significant album, a pivotal work and the most 'solo' album he has ever made." Although Spitz calls it "no fun", he states it was Bowie's "best-sounding, most complex record to date, and it still pulls you into its romantic and doomed world three and a half decades on". Trynka calls it "a beautiful mess", while Buckley says the album proved that Bowie could still produce work of "real quality" without Scott or the Spiders. Doggett writes it anticipated the "sonic audacity" of Low and "Heroes", while it simultaneously "capsized the vessel of classic rock". Perone argues that "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" predated Talking Heads' exploration of African rhythms and experimentation in the late 1970s. Pegg writes that with tracks like "We Are the Dead", "Big Brother" and the "Sweet Thing" suite, the album contains "some of the most sublime and remarkable sounds in the annals of rock music". He further states that Bowie's new voice on the record, a "basso profundo", particularly evident on "Sweet Thing" and "Big Brother", was a major influence on gothic rock bands in the 1980s. It ranked number 447 in NME's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

In fact, I am going to concentrate on one feature rather than two. I would also recommend people check out this feature from The Quietus. Their 2016 feature is fascinating and makes some really interesting observations. I have edited sections out of this one. Louder’s 2022 feature is remarkable in its detail. They talk about how Diamond Dogs is when David Bowie shed his Glam Rock skin. He then embarked on this expensive and dangerous tour. It was a turbulent time for him:

“Released in the summer of 1974, Diamond Dogs found David Bowie navigating the dog days of the glam-rock era – a hot and sultry period before the cultural weather broke. Having surfed and defined the pop zeitgeist about as well as any individual star since Elvis Presley, he was now cresting the last stretch of a wave as it came crashing into shore.

Diamond Dogs was a resounding commercial success – No.1 in the UK, No.5 in the US. But the album was marked down at the time. “A rather grandiose mood piece… It’s okay, you know, but is it really necessary?” was the NME’s verdict. And, retrospectively, it tends to get brushed aside in the grand sweep of things as a transitional album, marking the point in Bowie’s artistic timeline at which he was shedding his glam-rock skin and stepping into his role as the ‘plastic soul’ man of his next studio album Young Americans. (NME later revised its opinion and, in 2013, rated Diamond Dogs one of “The 500 Greatest Albums of all Time” – albeit ranked at No.447, a long way behind many of his other albums.)

Bowie himself was quick to recognise the record’s limitations. “It was not a concept album,” he told Robert Hilburn in September 1974. “It was a collection of things. And I didn’t have a band. So that’s where the tension came in. I couldn’t believe I had finished it when I did. I had done so much of it myself. I never want to be in that position again. It was frightening trying to make an album with no support behind you. I was very much on my own. It was my most difficult album. It was a relief that it did so well.”

Whatever the sense of “tension”, both musically and personally, which overshadowed the making of Diamond Dogs, the album is nevertheless a remarkably pure distillation of Bowie’s genius. Indeed, if you are looking for a collection of recordings that stands as a monument to Bowie’s across-the-board prowess as a songwriter, singer, guitarist, saxophonist, keyboard player, producer and allround media maven, there is no other album in his entire catalogue that compares to Diamond Dogs. Transitional or not, it remains as true an expression of his artistry on every front as anything he ever released.

The album was recorded in London, mostly at Olympic Studios, and Hilversum in the Netherlands, between December 1973 and February 1974. Having famously disbanded the Spiders From Mars live on stage at Hammersmith Odeon the previous July, Bowie’s first challenge was to fill the guitar genius-shaped hole left in his musical life by the departure of Mick Ronson. In a defiant display of ambition and bravado, Bowie resolved to do the job himself.

“I knew that the guitar playing had to be more than okay,” he said, looking back in 1997. “That couple of months I spent putting [Diamond Dogs] together before I went into the studio was probably the only time in my life where I really buckled down to learn the stuff I needed to have on the album. I’d actually practise two hours a day.”

Having also dispensed with the services of longstanding producer Ken Scott, Bowie’s initial plan was not only to produce the album but also to play every instrument himself – perhaps reaching the point at which ambition gave way to hubris.

Wiser counsel prevailed and he found a new rhythm section comprising session bass player Herbie Flowers (the man responsible for the swooping bass line on Lou Reed’s Walk On The Wild Side) and drummer Tony Newman (best known for his stint in the Jeff Beck Group). Pianist Mike Garson and drummer Aynsley Dunbar, who had both contributed to Pin Ups, the album of cover versions which Bowie had somehow slotted into his schedule and released in October 1973, were also brought in.

All sorts of grand ideas were floated in the build up to Diamond Dogs. Bowie had spoken of his intention to mount a “full-scale rock musical” re-telling the story of Ziggy Stardust. He’d also let it be known that he was planning to write and direct a musical production for TV of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of his favourite novels.

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie captured in the studio during the recording of Diamond Dogs/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Ochs Archives

“I’d failed to obtain the theatrical rights from George Orwell’s widow,” Bowie told the Mail On Sunday in 2008. “And having written three or more songs for it already, I did a fast about-face and recobbled the idea into Diamond Dogs: teen punks on rusty skates living on the roofs of the dystopian Hunger City; a post-apocalyptic landscape.”

And if the general fraternising that went on during the course of the sessions wasn’t enough to reinforce the connection, Bowie and his then-wife Angie (Angela Barnett) had recently moved into a grand terraced house in Chelsea where they were now near neighbours of Mick and Bianca Jagger, with whom they socialised. Indeed, according to the American singer and model Ava Cherry, who stayed in the house for a time with David and Angie, there was a lot more than socialising going on.

“Mick Jagger knew David, and I was friends with both of them,” Cherry told Bowie biographer Dylan Jones. “So all three of us used to hang out a lot, and yes we did have some fun together.”

According to Cherry, at the end of one party in New York, everyone had left apart from her, Bowie and Jagger. “So it just ended up with the three of us sleeping together. That was it. And we had a wonderful time and we had a lot of fun.”

Diamond Dogs performed disappointingly when released as a single in June 1974 (after the album was released) in the UK, where it peaked at No.21. Far more resonant and enduring as a flagship track for the album was Rebel Rebel – the song that most clearly marked both the end of an era for Bowie and the jumping off point for Diamond Dogs.

Recorded on December 27, 1973, Rebel Rebel was the first song of the sessions and the last song that Bowie recorded at Trident Studios in Soho where he had recorded the majority of his work since 1968. Released as a single in the UK in February 1974, ahead of the album, Rebel Rebel reached No.5 and remains one of Bowie’s touchstone songs.

The lyric is as pertinent today – maybe even more so – as it was almost 50 years ago: ‘You’ve got your mother in a whirl, cos she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl.’ And the riff is a masterpiece: simple, original and instantly recognisable in the way that only a handful of pop-rock riffs – Sweet Jane, Jumping Jack Flash, You Really Got Me – could ever truly claim to be. Did Bowie really come up with that and play it completely off his own bat? 

PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images

“He had the riff about seventy-five per cent sorted out,” recalled Alan Parker, a session guitarist credited for his contribution to one track (1984) on the album. “He wanted it a bit like a Stones riff and he played it to me as such, and I then tinkered around with it. I said: ‘Well, what if we did this and that and made it sound more clangy and put some bends in it?’ And he said: ‘Yeah, I love that, that’s fine.’”

Whatever Parker’s contribution to the sculpting and performing of the song behind the scenes, Bowie is the sole writer and guitarist listed on the credits. While Rebel Rebel and the title track echoed the triumphs of Bowie’s glam-rock past, the rest of the album offered a tantalising glimpse of the future-Bowie that was yet to fully materialise.

At the heart of Side 1 is the three-piece song suite Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise), which was originally intended to be the centrepiece for the would-be stage production of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It is a yearning yet chilling sequence, with lyrics rendered as a collage of bittersweet images and ideas. ‘I guess we could cruise down one more time, with you by my side it should be fine/We’ll buy some drugs and watch a band, then jump in the river holding hands.’

The sequence is notable for its intensely detailed arrangement – brought to life not least by Bowie’s contributions on saxophone and guitar. The end of the Reprise section (which runs into Rebel Rebel) has him conjuring a screeching, crunching, overdriven guitar noise that prefigured the industrial sounds that Earl Slick would later develop on Station To Station and Reeves Gabrels would take to another level on the Tin Machine albums. Bowie wrote the lyrics for these and other songs on Diamond Dogs using the ‘cut-up’ method popularised by the ‘beat’ writer and literary figurehead William Burroughs.

The comparatively jaunty music on tracks such as Rock’N’Roll With Me and Big Brother sounds like it should be part of a stage musical – as indeed it was originally intended to be. The Rocky Horror Show, which opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London in 1973, was on the way to becoming a cult phenomenon at the time Bowie was writing the album and there was a lot of musical theatricality in the air.

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie and William Burroughs/PHOTO CREDIT: Terry O’Neill/Iconic Images

There was also evidence of the looming switch of musical pace and persona that Bowie would effect on his next album, Young Americans – most obviously represented in the track 1984, which took its inspiration from the wah-wah guitar and string arrangements of Isaac Hayes’s soundtrack to the 1971 film Shaft.

“When we worked on the song 1984 he was already referencing Barry White,” said Ken Scott, who had produced an earlier recording of the song as part of the Aladdin Sane sessions in January 1973. “He wanted the hi-hat and the strings to sound like they would be on a Barry White album. He was already anticipating the sound of Young Americans.”

The faintly shocking, sci-fi cover artwork by the Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, featuring a picture of Bowie with his lower body transformed into that of a dog complete with genitalia (airbrushed from most versions at the time) became instantly iconic. Bowie got the idea after Mick Jagger told him that Peellaert was designing the sleeve of the forthcoming Stones album It’s Only Rock’N’Roll.  

“I immediately rushed out and got Guy Peellaert to do my cover too,” Bowie admitted later. When It’s Only Rock’N’Roll was released several months after Diamond Dogs, everyone assumed the Stones had copied Bowie. “He [Jagger] never forgave me for that!” Bowie said.

“Diamond Dogs scared me because I was mutating into something I just didn’t believe in any more, and the dreadful thing was, it was so easy,” Bowie said, looking back in 2008. “The Diamond Dogs period was just an extension of Aladdin Sane, which in itself was just an extrapolation of Ziggy Stardust.

“But by the time of Diamond Dogs that persona had started to feel claustrophobic, and I needed a change… Diamond Dogs was making me sick, both physically and creatively, and I was shifting into melodrama."

I am going to conclude with a couple of reviews. Punk News shared their opinions about one of David Bowie’s most divisive albums. He was clearly at an awkward moment in his career. One where he was looking to shift his past and move on. There is something chaotic, dark and often unfocused in Diamond Dogs…yet it is an album that has many highlights and is a lot stronger than people say it is:

“Diamond Dogs is famously one of the Bowie albums that's really for fans, and it's probably his most utterly distinctive work (even Low sounds like other art-rock albums of the time): melodramatic, raw, challenging, and ambitious even when crammed with catchy songs. And as he later noted it was extremely influential on the British punk scene in sound and scope. Bowie's violent, amateruishly scraping guitar playing here would be echoed in the late-70's post-punk bands and Diamond Dogs' concept of street gangs roaming London was echoed in the gleeful nihilism of the Sex Pistols. Notably Bowie made much of the album itself, including guitar and sax, and the musicianship here is unconventional, playful, a little off-kilter (one suspects Bowie was listening to Here Come The Warm Jets closely). Diamond Dogs is the goofy, abrasive place where punk and art-rock meet, dance a little, and depart.

It was never well-recieved by critics, probably because it was such a radical departure from Aladdin Sane and Ziggy Stardust, but Diamond Dogs took the rock-theater approach of "Rock n' Roll Suicide" and "Lady Grinning Soul" and ran with it. One of the important aspects of Bowie and the glam school was de-heteroizing rock n' roll and making it more dramatic, combining Elvis Presley with Judy Garland standards, and that's evident on the centerpiece "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)", a song cycle of vulnerability, sneering sex, curdling violence, and at the close effeminate, passionate need. It's one of Bowie's greatest works as a singer and he morphs from a crooning Sinatra to Lotte Lenya then a heartbroken Sandie Shaw. The music and lyrics here are a startling mix of dreaming piano, guitar, and mourning saxophone: "We'll buy some drugs and watch a band/Then jump in a river holding hands." Then "Rebel Rebel" follows and is there anything to say that hasn't been said? The best riff Bowie ever wrote on his own and a joyful coda to the glam rock world that would fade then emerge as the punk scene in 76/77.

The rest of the album by turns is changing constantly, veering from cheeky blues-stomp ("Diamond Dogs") to haunted showstopper ("We Are The Dead)" - more than his other work, Diamond Dogs is a reflection of Bowie's mercurial musical nature, never quite satisfied with one sound or idea, though the Curtis Mayfield-esque "1984" absolutely foreshadows the Philly sounds of Young Americans and would probably be more of a hit if it was't so gloomy and apocalyptic. "Big Brother" and the extremely fucked up "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family" sum up Diamond Dogs perfectly, poppy and dyspeptic than deeply unsettling.

As a Bowie fan I'd give this 5/5, but the music writer in me might knock off half a star- the music is not always as strong as the aspirations behind it and "Rock n' Roll With Me" is a pretty tedious soul song. But Diamond Dogs is essential for those who want to go deeper into Bowie and for amateur music historians eager to find early sources of punk. Bowie would do better albums in the future, including the masterpiece Low and the glorious Station to Station, but he'd never make an album that was so obviously his own again (Bowie is notably one of the great collaborators of pop music). When you listen to Diamond Dogs, you're immersed in a cruel, romantic, and feral world, one that at it's worst you still don't want to leave”.

The final review I am referencing is from Pitchfork. They reviewed the album in 2016. In spite of the fact they note it has dread and a bummer vibe, Diamond Dogs is also an album that is a “work of decadence and dread that transforms corrosion into celebration”:

“The last glam gasp of Bowie's English years, Dogs also sprawls toward Bowie’s forthcoming Thin White Duke persona, embracing Blaxploitation funk and soul, rock opera, European art song, and Broadway. The album cracked FM radio with "Rebel Rebel," an Iggy Pop-like blast aimed at America’s teenage wasteland. Recapitulating his earlier achievements while raising their stakes, it stomped on whatever good vibes remained in British rock, and cleared the stage for punk and goth. As Bowie noted decades later, the tribal "peoploids" that rummage through the album’s fantastically bleak Hunger City like the orphaned pickpockets of Oliver Twist presaged a generation of Johnny Rottens and Sid Viciouses. Dogs envisioned a no-future future just before the next breed of pop stars lived it.

As befitting a post-apocalyptic work, Dogs was born from the frustration of failed opportunities. Bowie initially endeavored to create a TV musical adaptation of George Orwell’s totalitarian milestone 1984—until the social critic’s widow refused permission. Around the same time, Rolling Stone’s London bureau arranged for Bowie and William S. Burroughs to interview each other, which introduced the singer to the author’s Nova Express. Immediately thereafter, Bowie began penning lyrical non sequiturs via that novel’s cut-up technique, and planned a Ziggy musical to be similarly shuffled each night. This, too, faltered, although it inspired new tunes. These two projects, sharing dystopian themes, fused together to form the mutant Dogs.

While all this was happening, Bowie shed the Spiders from Mars, who enabled his transformation from folky space oddity to eclectic, hard-rocking freak. The biggest break was with guitarist Mick Ronson, whose biting, formally schooled style and arrangements had redefined Bowie. Rather than replacing his sidekick, the singer handles most guitar parts himself, as well as contributing sax and electronic keyboards while solely producing this emphatically solo project. Tony Visconti—who oversaw 1970’s metallic The Man Who Sold the World while providing bass guitar—returns only to assist the final mix and fulfill the singer’s request for "Barry White strings" on "1984"; he’d later co-produce much of Bowie’s output. If you measure his albums by how much he calls the shots and actually plays, Diamond Dogs is the Bowie-est one of all.

He sets the scene with "Future Legend," a spoken-word intro soundtracked by synths evoking dripping Dalí clocks, buzzing bee guitars quoting "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered," and other experimental studio scuzz. This slides into the bonking backward cowbell of the title track, which filters the Stones’ slam-bam boogie through a woozy mix. "As they pulled you out of the oxygen tent/ You asked for the latest party," it begins—a line Bowie later admitted as self-descriptive. Set in forthcoming years yet capturing the squalor of then-contemporary London, New York, and the Eastern Bloc nations through which Bowie recently passed, the lurid lyrics flash with gang violence: "The Diamond Dogs are poachers and they hide behind trees/ Hunt you to the ground they will/ Mannequins with kill appeal." The vibe is celebratory despite the menace, if unstable—right down to the track’s note-bending central riff. Contemporary critics mourned Ronson’s absence, but Bowie’s guitar here and throughout the album is thrillingly off-kilter with unconventional chord fragments that the Edge, Sonic Youth, shoegazers, and dream-poppers alike would draw from for decades to come.

Because Bowie so convincingly portrayed decay, it went often unacknowledged how far he advanced his compositional and arrangement skills in just a few post-"Space Oddity" years. Their showcase, "Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)" begins with Bowie growling at the bottom of his register, but even before the chorus hits, he’s wailing near the top of his tenor while Mike Garson’s tinkling jazz keys supply the sophistication Bowie’s squawking guitars deny. Topically shifting from a hustler turning tricks to a politician spewing empty promises to cocaine’s brain-freezing bliss, the suite’s interconnected segments assert that all three demand submission to all-conquering power—this concept album’s central theme. The tempo accelerates as his poetry gains density, then subsides again as the melody soars before surrendering to guitars that grind with metronomic precision until sputtering out on the root note of the opening chord on the album’s masterstroke.

As melodically constricted as that suite was expansive, "Rebel Rebel" is Bowie’s answer to all those deliciously dumb Sweet, Slade, Mud, Gary Glitter, Suzi Quatro, and T. Rex hits he indirectly enabled during glam’s peak. Androgyny is subtext to these acts, but the main man, per usual, pushes it to the forefront: "You’ve got yer mother in a whirl/ She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl," goes the opening line, but he never definitively assigns gender: Bowie’s dissident has torn [their] dress, but wants to "be there when they count up the dudes." Yet there’s nothing ambiguous about that glorious guitar groove, the track’s stomping beat, the "hot tramp" pause between both, and their return. If Bowie often drifted above listeners’ heads, here he shoots straight at their solar plexus and scores with what ranks among the greatest, most insistent riffs of the '70s. Rockers who’d dismissed Bowie as a dandy now gave the dude a pass.

Aside from a stray super-Bowie line about lizards crying in the heat, side 2's opening track, "Rock ‘N Roll With Me," is even more forthright—a ballad of appreciation for his fans that provides reprieve from the sleaze and offers further proof that Bowie could belt. It’s stagey to be sure, but so is it sincere. "I’ve found the door that lets me out," he positively roars; performance sets him free.

The album is queasy soul music signifying soullessness; on the Shaft-like tableau "1984," he rewrites Orwell’s authoritarian state as a worldwide ghetto populated by junkies overseen by surgeon thugs who manipulate thoughts and misguide identities, all set to wah-wah guitars. The album culminates perversely, joyfully, as "Big Brother" segues into "Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family," a fuzzed-out danse macabre where irregular time signatures alternate every few measures and the percussion keeps changing accents; there’s no center, just brief, blissful release before a stuttering loop of Bowie yelping in distress fades as if to black.

All this hopelessness and annihilation would be suffocating if it weren’t for Bowie’s exuberance. He throws himself into Orwell’s draconian hell as if strutting around in Kansai Yamamoto’s Aladdin Sane-era bodysuit; it fits his skeletal contours. Determined to reaffirm his relevance in spite of his setbacks, the singer sparkled so brightly that he offset the darkness of his material. Just as Watergate was coming to a boil, singer-songwriters and prog-rockers were glutting the charts, and '60s resistance was morphing into '70s complacency, this sweet rebel (rebel) made revolution strangely sexy again. Glaring at you from Dogs’ cover with canine hindquarters and emaciated features like the circus sideshow Freaks he footnotes in the title cut, he served notice that rock’s outsiders remained more compelling than the softies who increasingly occupied its center, even as his ever-growing popularity chipped away at it. You can bet Patti Smith, the Ramones, and Television sat up and took notes”.

On 24th May, Diamond Dogs turns fifty. I have a lot of time and respect for it. It is very important in terms of Bowie’s career and legacy. The 1970s was his most successful decade. Whilst Diamond Dogs was not his most acclaimed of the 1970s, I think it is important in terms of where he came from and where he would head. In 2016, Ultimate Classic Rock ranked the album as his fourteenth-best. SPIN placed it in fifth when they ranked the albums in 2022. The A.V. Club ranked it fourteenth in their feature. Rough Trade placed Diamond Dogs fourth earlier this year. In 2013, Rolling Stone placed it in fifth. As you can see, through the years, there has been a division of opinion. Good to see that some people consider Diamond Dogs to be a great work that is underrated. Ahead of its fiftieth anniversary, I wanted to dive into it. You may have never heard the album or might not have listened for a while. It is clear that 1974’s Diamond Dogs is…

WORTHY of fresh assessment.

FEATURE: Spotlight: F3line

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Yusuf Sanni

F3line

_________

AN artist that I have been waiting to spotlight…

for a long time now, I have only delayed because there were not many interviews online with her. The inspirational and wonderful F3line is one of the most fascinating and talented young artist on the scene. She has not long put out her simply amazing E.P., Hopeless Romantic. That came out at the end of April. I would compel everyone to listen to it. She is an awe-inspiring artist who is going to go on to collaborate with some huge name, embark on massive tours and, in years to come, will stand alongside some of the most important, successful and powerful artists in all of music! If you have not got on board with her, then I would urge people to follow F3line on social media. Check out her stunning music. I cannot find many reviews for Hopeless Romantic. I hope that future E.P.s and albums will make their way to magazines, online sites and further afield so that it can get the writes-up full of love and praise. She is worthy of that! I really love F3line and her sound. So distinct and original, yet something that most listeners can identify and bond with. I am going to bring in a selection of recent interviews with F3line. An artist that I am really excited about. A truly tremendous prospect. Prior to moving on, I want to bring in this introductory and passionate feature, where we hear from the wonderful F3line:

“F3line is a fierce and beautiful singer signed to Chase Music record label. She prides herself as a proud lover and mother of cats. She is balancing her music with her education as she’s currently studying Electrical Electronics Engineering. She announced herself to the world with the release of her debut singles “Go Back Home” and “Lemons” this year, both standout tracks on Chase Music’s “The Chase” EP.

She draws inspiration for her music from some notable black soul/RnB singers like Sza, HER, and Jhene Aiko to name a few.

49th Street: The name F3line is quite unique, how did you come up with it?

F3line: Well, I love cats a lot. Growing up I had seven of them. They’re beautiful creatures. I had so many of them, I think I started to morph into one (laughs). So the name “f3line” come from “feline” which basically means cat-like.

@f3lineofficial My debut single is out now on all streaming platforms!!!! Click the link in bio to listen 🩷🐾  #fyp #f3line #musicartist👻 #newmusic #fypシ゚viral #relatable ♬ Day One - F3line

49th Street: Do you make music full time or part time?

F3line: It’s part-time for now cause I’m still a student, but I do intend to go full-time cause music is honestly what I love. It’s my talent and I’m definitely gonna use it.

49th Street: Since it’s still part time for you, what’s your other hustle?

F3line: Lol, I’m hustling for my degree . I do modeling gigs here and there too.

49th Street: How did you meet Jimni Abduls?

F3line: He reached out to me on twitter actually. Asked me to be in his music video for “Jowo” with himself, Joeboy and Oxlade, and I was all for it. When I got to set and saw everything, I was like “wow, I want this to be me. I want to shoot a music video for MY song”. Eventually, I gathered enough confidence to go up to Jinmi and I literally just said “hi, I can sing” (laughs). I’m sure he was confused but shocked at how random it was. He told me to come by his studio the next day and I think the rest is history.

49th Street: How has it been like working with it?

F3line: It’s been amazing. He’s made me feel really comfortable in owning my sound. We’ve worked on a lot of songs and I can’t wait to share them with everyone.

49th Street: How has the reception for Go Back Home?

F3line: It was amazing. I’m so grateful for everyone that streamed and are still streaming it. I was especially excited to find out that my literal idol, Fisayo Longe, listens to my music AND it was also the soundtrack for kaicollective’s swim campaign!!! It was definitely a confidence boost for me like wow, I actually make good music and I should never doubt that.

49th Street: What inspired it?

F3line: Funny story actually(laughs). I was out with a bunch of my girlfriends, you know the usual, having fun and partying! And then my mom calls me and says I should come back home and I just didn’t want to go back home (laughs). At that moment, I felt free, I felt amazing, I felt confident, I felt genuinely happy with myself and my friends and life and I just did not want it to end. I wasn’t thinking about any problem or any boy or anything actually. I was just soaking in the good vibes. That’s the message behind this song. I wrote it for people who just want to soak in the good vibes. You can worry about other things later but right now, let’s have fun!

49th Street: What part of the music process gets you most excited?

F3line: Listening to beats. Ughhh I love listening to beats and then associating it with a mood. It’s so crazy how a beat can just give you a feeling. It paints a picture in your head already, even without lyrics. It’s now up to the artist to portray it. This part gets me most excited

49th Street: If you were not making music, what would you be doing?

F3line: I’d be an electrical engineer (laughs) or a full-time face model. Who knows? But I can’t even see myself not making music cause this is just what I love to do.

49th Street: Plans for the future?

F3line: My plan for the future is to definitely work on some songs with bigger names in the industry. Get my sound out there, get more people listening. I’m working on an EP currently. So excited. I can’t wait to release it. Ya, I’m definitely just working on putting more stuff out. You’ve not even heard the best of F3LINE yet!!”.

It is quite hard to categorise F3line’s music. So special and personal is that blend. There is Afrobeat and Hip-Hop in the mix. Elements and colours of R&B. Hopeless Romantic is an E.P. that everyone should investigate and listen to closely. I am going to move on to this interview from Music Africa. We get to learn even more about an artist destined for a huge and long future in the industry. Someone who is almost born to take to the biggest stages in the world:

“MUSIC IN AFRICA: How smooth or difficult has your transition from engineering to pursuing a music career been so far?

F3LINE: It hasn’t been difficult really. It’s been going quite well. Since before I graduated, it was out there that I was going to do music after school. I would write songs in school on weekends or whenever I felt inspired. I kept all my ideas in a book so that when I got home on vacation, I’d record multiple songs on end. So as soon as I graduated, I hit the ground running. I immediately started song selection and getting my project ready. I’m just glad that now the world can finally hear my sound.

How would you say ‘Day One’ is setting the tone for your musical journey?

‘Day One’ was the perfect song I think I could’ve started with because it describes exactly the type of person I am. I love too much, I love too hard and I don’t think when it comes to my emotions sometimes. Vocally, this is me. I think it showcases my range as a singer. I wanted to introduce my best and most authentic self to the market. Pure and undiluted F3line. And when the music is authentic, it’s only up from there.

Afro-R&B and pop are foundational to your sound. Could you discuss how these have become your go-to influences, and what unique elements they bring to your sound?

Growing up I listened to a lot of Beyoncé, Cassie and Rihanna and right now I am really into SZA and Summer Walker. R&B and pop are mostly all I listen to and I think it shows in the music I currently make. There’s a certain type of lyricism that comes with the genre which kinda forces you to be real and vulnerable.  I’m still exploring my sound and I’m still trying to hone in on what that is.

Already, you have been cited as an artist to watch out for in 2024. How do you plan to capitalise on this recognition to further your career?

First of all, it’s an honour to be cited as an artist to watch out for in 2024. Secondly, I just wanna drop music and find my people. I have the drive, and the passion, I have God and I have my talent. One thing I now plan on is dropping great music.

Given the recent global success of their peers in pop music, do you believe there is added pressure on Nigerian artists to excel? If so, do you personally feel this pressure?

I don’t think there’s any pressure. Multiple kings and queens can coexist. We all have the same end goal, which is to get our music out there and to promote Africa in the best light. I am happy that everyone is doing amazingly well and popping. If anything it makes me more confident and more hopeful for when that’s finally me.

How would you describe your experience as a female artist within Afrobeats/Afropop?

My experience has been great. I love being a female artist, we’re queens. However, when it comes to music, there’s kind of a notion that men do it better and women have to rely on looks. Fortunately, I have been privileged to work with people who don’t necessarily see me as a “female artist”, they just see me as someone about to chef up and they give me the space and creative freedom to do my thing. Also, the community of women in music is great. We support and look out for each other and I’m with it 100%.

What inspired your EP Hopeless Romantic and what conversations do you hope it starts?

Hopeless Romantic is a story of a finished person. They loved, and they lost the love they thought was going to be forever. The five songs in it represent the five stages of grief that I had to go through to get over my heartbreak. I want people to understand that this happens to the best of us. It’s not something to have to shame away. Allow yourself to feel it. You loved somebody and it didn’t work out doesn’t mean you should hate yourself for it or deny yourself the pleasure of experiencing love again. Accept that you are a hopeless romantic and that you would still love hard with another person. Love is not something you should regret and I hope my EP starts that conversation.

What are your aspirations and what do you need to bring this to fruition?

I aspire to have a large, tight-knit fanbase that would be like my family. I aspire to top the charts and win awards. All in all, I just want to leave a legacy. One thing I know I’m not compromising on is the quality of music, it’s really good. l need to stay consistent and I need everyone’s support. I’m super excited to see where my career is headed. I have a front-row seat”.

There is a bit more I want to tick off before wrapping things up. More Branches, in April, published an interview that spotlighted F3line. Another chance to get to know her better. I have known about her music for a little while, though I think now is when she is truly striking. Standing out as a mesmeric talent to watch going forward:

“Since exploding on the scene thanks to her contributions on 2021’s collaborative project, The Chase, rising singer, F3line, has been on the rise. In January 2024, she released a new song, “Day One,” to rave review. Last week, she announced more exciting news for her fans, telling fans that her debut studio EP, Hopeless Romantic, was slated to drop under Sony Music West Africa.

For the singer, Hopeless Romantic is more than just a collection of songs; it’s a heartfelt narrative delving into the intricacies of love and heartbreak from a woman’s perspective. With five tracks, each offering a unique exploration of emotional phases, F3line masterfully blends Afro R&B and pop, delivering a melodic masterpiece that resonates deeply with listeners.

Since her debut single, “Day One,” F3line has been making waves in the music scene with electrifying performances at live showcases and festivals, garnering attention, and accolades along the way. Recognized as one of the top artists to watch in 2024 by Turntable, F3line’s star continues to rise.

But F3line is more than just an artist—she’s a force to be reckoned with, drawing inspiration from her agile and distinctive character. A devoted guardian of cats and a first-class engineer by education, her journey from academia to the world of music is a testament to her versatility and determination.

As the release of Hopeless Romantic draws near, we had a small virtual chat with the singer to discuss the motivations and inspirations behind her debut project!

How are you feeling ahead of the release of Hopeless Romantic?

I feel really good. I’m just super excited to put my EP out and show the world just a taste of what I’m capable of.

Is there any song on here that you are especially attached to?

I’m most attached to “XoXo” because my mother’s voice is on it. She was basically comforting me.

What do you want your fans to take away from listening to the project?

I want my fans to know that it’s okay to have loved and lost. Your love is your superpower and because it didn’t work with one doesn’t mean you should kill that spark in your eyes. We move on to the next phase!”.

A couple of other interviews to go. Wet Talk Sound spend some time with F3line recently. I am keen to interview her down the line; if she is round my part of north London. I hope that she plays in the U.K. and London at some point. Lots of venues would put her up. A lot of love for her here. You will be hooked on her music the moment you hear it. It is so striking and immersive at the same time. No doubt she is a massive talent who will go from strength to strength:

“As F3line the artist and Eti (Etietop) the individual, how would you describe yourself?

As Eti the individual,  I’m just a shy, fun-loving girl, but also a brainiac, but as F3line, I’m more outgoing, more confident, and show more poise. So, Eti and Feline are two different people, and I’m just trying to merge the two in the best way possible. The major difference is how outgoing I am. Eti is more of an introvert, but F3line is more outgoing, and extroverted, but we’re both good people.

How did growing up in Akwa Ibom influence your music?

Growing up in Akwa Ibom was really fun. Akwa Ibom is really quiet, really small. But then I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life there; I wanted to leave, and school was a way of leaving because my school was in Ogun state. But then when I got suspended, I realised school may not be the easiest route. So I just did modelling, and then from modelling, I entered music. But all in all, I just wanted to leave Akwa Ibom. It wasn’t the place for me.

Would you say that reflects in the way you write? Not escapism per se, but are themes of wanting to leave, wanting to explore, themes that come up in your music?

Not really. Akwa Ibom doesn’t really play that much of a story because I’ve been travelling out of there. Akwa Ibom is just my home and that’s where my mom is. That’s where I grew up from ages five to eleven and then my dad moved to Lagos. But because my mom was also in Akwa Ibom, I had to go back and forth. I just couldn’t stay there full-time. My music is just about emotions, and right now, it’s more focused on love and heartbreak. Not necessarily escapism, except escaping the toxic situation of a relationship.

That’s quite evident on Day One where there was this perspective of a lover dealing with unrequited love and still offering reassurance. Is this from personal experience, or is it just you drawing on creativity completely?

Yeah, I write from personal experience for all my songs. I don’t know how to cook up stories, so I only write from my personal experiences for now.

What was the writing process for the Hopeless Romantic EP like?

It was fun. It was definitely something, especially because I was still in school when most of the songs for the EP were written, except. XOXO, which was the first song I made during my IT  (Industrial Training).  When I was in school, whenever I had moments of distractions, I would jot down experiences in my journal. People thought it was my journal for personal notes, but it was actually my songbook.

The writing process was very intimate for me. I’d write the songs  and then when I went home during the holiday, I’d record them., Sometimes, additional ideas would come to mind during recording sessions. Whether it was a producer suggesting something or I felt like adding some extra pzazz to it, those moments were spontaneous. But everything in this EP came from my room in Covenant University.

You mentioned how one of  your major influences is wanting people to experience what you feel and how it’s a very intimate process –

It’s not as if I want people to experience just what I feel. I believe these are feelings that multiple people in the world relate to. My goal is to make others feel heard and seen, to create a sense of connection through shared emotions

Moving on, there’s something somewhere about a Jinmi Abduls music video after modelling. What was the exact transition?

I love talking about the story because it was so random. During my year off from school in 2019-2020 (around the COVID period), I worked at a makeup studio to earn extra cash. One day, one of my clients there said, “You’re so pretty. You could be a model”. I took it quite seriously because I wasn’t making that much money with makeup. By then, I hadn’t done video vixen work

I was quite popular on Twitter at the time and one day Jinmi Abduls sent me a DM asking if I modelled. I said yes and ended up in his music video.  I remember the day I got to set, my sister took me because that was my first experience with the music industry. There, I kept telling her, “I’m so happy. Look at people just singing and doing their thing. This is their life and this is what they enjoy doing. They’re making money, touching lives, and everything. This is what I want to do with my life, not modelling, not makeup, not even engineering. I want to sing like this”.

I didn’t even wait till the shoot was over. I just went to Jinmi and was like, “Do you (Jinmi) know that I can sing?. Like literally, I can sing.” And he laughed and said , “You know what? Come to my studio tomorrow and then show me what you got”. That was my turning point, honestly.

How has your family reacted to the journey so far?

My family is very supportive. My mom has been the most supportive person. My siblings are just waiting for me to drop. Nobody listens to my music as much as them and I’m very grateful for that. They never worried about me not finishing school, because they knew how important it was to me to finish. But then, you know Nigerian parents have their worries. “Oh, my child is not going to be a doctor”. “She’s not going to be this or that or that”. So obviously, the worry is there, but they suppress it as much as they can because they support me 100%. I couldn’t have asked for a better support system.

Who were the producers you worked with on the Hopeless Romantic EP  and what were the recording sessions like?

I worked with TMXO, BigFish, Auxxi (Auxxi with the vibe), Ramoni who produced Stupid Love, and Rore who produced Day One. They’ve been amazing to work with. TMXO was the first producer I worked with off the project. He kind of opened up everything to me, because, as I said, XOXO was the first song I recorded off the project.

He gave me a journal to write all my songs in, which I was very grateful for. We sat down (all my producers) and we acted like we were about to make the best song ever. And I just love when both parties are into it and we put the time and  work in to get an amazing song. All in all, my experience with the producers was amazing and I look forward to working with each of them again.

In five years from now, what is one specific milestone you would love to have attained?

I want to go on tour. I want to top the charts. I just want to feel connected. I want to feel connected to my fan base; the people out there listening to F3line. And hopefully, within the next five years, it will happen.

What should fans expect from Hopeless Romantic? Both day-one fans and people who knew you from Day One.

Expect the unexpected. (laughs)  No, I’m just joking. Expect world domination. Expect to listen to an amazing, fresh sound and heartfelt lyrics. This EP marks the beginning of my musical journey, and I want fans, whether day-one supporters or newcomers, to feel like they’re part of it

Are there any artists or contemporaries you would love to collaborate with?

I’m definitely interested in collaborating with other artists. Right now, there are a few on my radar, but I prefer to keep that under wraps for now. Stay tuned, though—you’ll see some exciting collaborations coming your way.

You’re holding out on us, you know?

(laughs) The element of surprise! But no, I want to work with some of the big names and those with cult classics. I  just want to work with so many people ‘cause I’m just starting. Whatever happens organically, really.

When not writing or recording or not being F3line, what does Eti do?

She’s hanging out with her cats or with her friends. I always hang out with my best friends and my cats, whether it’s just reading a book or going for cocktails. I’m very girly, so I like to do girly things and hang out with my girlfriends. Plus, I love the beach a lot, so any excuse to go to the beach, I’ll be there.

As a girl’s girl, what’s your take on female collaborations in the Nigerian music industry?

From what I’ve seen and from what I’ve observed it’s been great. Women are supporting women. The girlies are doing what needs to be done. You feel me? Like I say to  the girls in Afrobeats in Nigeria, “We’re princesses”. And I love how we are all supporting each other. As of right now, I’ve been seeing some collaborations. It’s good. I love it. Looking forward to more women, we’re our own community. We have to support each other. I’ve gotten the most support from women. That’s why I have nothing but to say women supporting women, always.

As far as Nigeria is concerned, are there any content creators you would love to partner with or whose work you admire?

There are so many great content creators that are doing really well. There’s this content creator on TikTok and Instagram, Life with Jai. She’s really good. But obviously I’d want to work with whichever brand or content creator that’s good for my brand.

What’s that one thing about the EP that fans should look out for?

I just want people to hear my EP and  be like, “She’s here to stay”.  Like, “Damn! That was good. That was great”.  Immerse yourself in the project. Feel it.  Speak up, if you might. If it provokes a conversation, who am I to stop it?

Also, what I want people to take away from it is that my EP is not necessarily about heartbreak. It’s just about allowing yourself to feel however you feel and not allowing yourself to stop loving. “This particular experience may have been bad, but I am not going to stop myself from experiencing love or giving out love again”.

Make sure that you go and follow F3line. She is an artist I have been aware of for a bit but am more bonded to each time I hear her music. Someone I am going to follow and support going forward. Hopeless Romantic is one of the best E.P.s of this year. I am excited to see where her career goes from here. I think she will achieve all her goals and exceed that! Someone who is going to be a major name before too long. There is no denying the fact that F3line is…

A vital and incredible voice.

___________

Follow F3line

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/f3lineofficial/

TikTok:

https://www.tiktok.com/@f3lineofficial

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/f3lineofficial

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/0dO41kWVCHHDVfbQTaidMQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@F3lineVEVO

Apple Music:

https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/f3line/1548939447

FEATURE: Show the Queens Respect! Can Hip-Hop Ever Shake Its Core of Misogyny?

FEATURE:

 

 

Show the Queens Respect!

IN THIS PHOTO: One of modern Hip-Hop’s finest artists, Doechii/PHOTO CREDIT: Hao Zeng via Billboard

Can Hip-Hop Ever Shake Its Core of Misogyny?

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IT does seem that there is no shifting…

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kendrick Lamar/PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

quite an ugly an apparently acceptable misogyny that has run through Hip-Hop for decades. One can say that this is an issue that is improving. Maybe not as overt and dominant as it was in past decades, it still very much exists. I think back to the 1980s and 1990s and some of the appalling lyrics you’d hear in Hip-Hop songs. Everyone from Beastie Boys to Eminem has had to face accusations of misogyny and sexism – the former of which corrected it; the latter not really doing much in that regard. I will go on to discussing Hip-Hop’s queens and why focus should be put on them. Many say just listen to women in Hip-Hop and ignore misogyny. Misogyny is not something that should be ignored. If we do that then it is normalised and seen as something that needs to be put up with. A natural part of Hip-Hop. We need to come to a place where women are not only embraced and welcomed in. They should be given the same opportunities and respect as their male peers. Given festival headline slots. Although a few of Hip-Hop’s queens are, there are so many – including Little Simz and Megan Thee Stallion – that are overdue headline focus. Throw in queens like Noname, Tierra Whack, Rapsody, Rico Nasty, Che Noir, Cristale, Ice Spice, Doja Cat, Nicki Minaj, Doechii, Latto and dozens of their sisters; there does seem to be this reluctance to book Hip-Hop’s queens in headline slots. The odd major festival. SZA is headlining Glastonbury and Primavera Sound. Doja Cat was a headliner at Coachella but, by and large, it is Pop and other genres better represented when it comes to female headliners. I am digressing slightly. Hip-Hop, in my view, is music’s most important genre. Rappers and their words are as powerful and influential as any type of artist. In the way they can deliver their messages and the impact that can have.

Even if Hip-Hop has evolved to a place where there are weaknesses and negative changes – very few groups like Beastie Boys or Public Enemy; sampling culture harder to exploit because of lawsuits and strict  restrictions; not enough political and timely messages coming out as much as there should be -, there are so many great artists coming through. I think the rising queens are joining modern icons and producing the best Hip-Hop. We should be celebrating their music and highlighting how they are changing the genre! More festival and stages that headline and unite queens of Hip-Hop. Documentaries made. Listening to women of the genre discussing with one another their path in and experiences. Opening the door for the next generation coming up. Unfortunately, rather than this happening, a childish and rather toxic beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar is stealing the headlines. Ugly bars and words exchanges. Lamar particularly on the offensive. Accusing Drake of being a bad father. Accusing him of not being Black. There are some low points, threats and controversies that seem dangerous, pathetic and bullying. Mature and intelligent artists would not retaliate and let the other punch themselves out. Whilst this may seem unfair on Drake, one feels this feud and pointless beef will continue. It is a black stain on Hip-Hop. Rather than elevating and celebrating great artists, we have to accommodate Kendrick Lamar and his crap. It is misogynistic and disgraceful. Almost making light of women’s pain. A once-genius artist who is responsible for some of the best Hip-Hop albums of the past decade – including To Pimp a Butterfly and DAMN. – is damaging his name to the point of no return. His credibility is going to be destroyed soon enough. It takes away from women in the genre. They are making magnificent music yet are being overshadowed by two of the genre’s most popular male artists engaged in an ever-growing beef.

Not to tar every male Hip-Hop artist with the same brush – as most are respectful of women -, but Kendrick Lamar has a bad track record when it comes to his representation of women. Throughout DAMN., he drops in sexist and misogynistic lyrics. When the media heralded the track, HUMBLE. (from DAMN.) as a feminist anthem and masterpiece, they overlooked the fact that ‘bitch’ was used repeatedly in the song. It was false feminism. Kendrick Lamar is not the only prolific and high-profile male Hip-Hop artist of recent years where misogyny is very much at the forefront. Before moving on, I want to quote from The Guardian’s recent reaction to the ongoing beef between Kendrick Lamar and Drake:

“There can be something hectoring about Lamar at times in his discography, less the Mr Morale of his last album and more Mr Moralising – and this turns ugly with some outright misogyny on Euphoria. He refers to gossiping as “ho shit” even as he delivers a gossipy diss track, and “we hate the bitches you fuck, ’cause they confuse themselves with real women” is gross even if you take it as a subliminal reference to Drake’s oft-remarked-upon friendships with teenage girls and women. There are frequent lines comparing Drake to a woman, which Lamar tries to legitimise by amping women up – “I believe you don’t like women, it’s real competition” – but it’s patronising, and there’s a whiff of homophobia in framing Drake as being less than a real man for having feminine qualities. That also comes through in his loaded praise of Drake’s danceable music – “Keep making me dance, waving my hand, and it won’t be no threat” – and in saying Drake “pops ass” while dancing with women”.

There are plenty of articles from the past decade or so that highlight misogyny in Hip-Hop. I think any hopes of steps being taken and improvement is because women in the genre are fighting back and showing a different approach. Hitting back at these types of male artists and also putting out their own incredible songs. Showing how potent and powerful they are. Demanding respect. It is a problem where we have to ask whether young Hip-Hop fans should be listening to older music that is demanding to women. It is a fear particularly for mothers. There are a few articles from recent years that discuss misogyny in Hip-Hop from various perspectives. It is clear that, even if the genre is not as toxic as it was decades ago, there is still a  huge issue with demeaning and debasing attitudes towards women. At a time when so many amazing women are coming through, it is creates this uncomfortable clash and division. I want to start with an article that relates to Megan Thee Stallion being shot by Tony Lanez. How she was subjected to jokes and abuse. Not believed and attacked. How Black women in Hip-Hop are not protected:

“The notion of misogyny relates to the topic of how often a black woman’s agony is ignored. In the situation with Lanez and Megan, social media did not take it seriously. Other celebrities such as 50 Cent and Draya Michele publicly joked about Megan being shot.

Subsequently, this compelled Megan to speak about the lack of protection that Black women face in their communities. The ridiculing pushed her to tears via Instagram live as she explained her innocence in the alleged shooting situation.

In hip-hop music, misogyny relates to any aspect of rap that supports or normalizes the objectification, exploitation and victimization of women. Misogyny is a long-standing issue within the hip hop world, and for years nothing has changed.

After the first female solo hip hop album was dropped by MC Lyte in 1988, women flooded the hip hop scene. “At the same time, the lyrical content of our male counterparts seemed to shift,” said Ellen Chamberlain in her “Misogyny in Hip-Hop” TED talk. Male rappers soon began to incorporate an excessive amount of slurs and derogatory statements directed to women into their lyricisms.

These lyrics consisted of disrespectful and violent behavior towards women. Harsh lyrics continue to be normalized causing some to feel comfort in applying it to their everyday lifestyle—not just in music. Ownership and outlook seemed to shift the scales in hip-hop, according to Chamberlain.

“Women have always been a central focus of degenerative rap lyrics,” said Neha Makkapati, a Daily Nexus journalist.

In 1993, Queen Latifah dropped the iconic feminist song “U.N.I.T.Y” in response to all the male emcees calling females out of their name in their lyrics. But even then, the song did not receive a lot of recognition on the radio. Perhaps she bruised a lot of egos with the record or the message was too powerful. Back then many appreciated the song. It confronted the lack of respect for women in our society and slurs against them.

The hip-hop culture has also portrayed women as props. Chamberlain pointed out the fact that hip-hop crews from the 90s such as No Limit Records, Terror Squad and Bad Boys had at least one female rapper present. Yet, in the grand scheme of things, those ladies only gained the opportunity to shine because of their position in proximity to men as props rather than independent successful artists. “Here[in hip-hop], violence and mistreatment are ok. It’s ok to mumble slanders of how women are nothing more than vehicles for sex,” said Makkapati.

The concept of misogyny in hip-hop portrays women as less than what they are. The lyrics and content have also made some men view and treat women as nothing more than objects. So undoubtedly Lanez felt comfort in shooting a woman because of the amount of misogyny not only in music, but in other aspects of life too. Although he never disclosed his side of the story, from the outside looking in, Lanez is satisfied with the violence and mistreatment toward women”.

I will move on to this article. Hip-Hop turned fifty last year. There was a documentary, Hip-Hop at 50, that celebrated the genre and its evolution. Whilst we can discuss the genre’s influence and importance, women in the genre were also using the opportunity to ask for change and respect. Whilst there are women battling back and kicking against misogyny, the industry needs to do more! Men in Hip-Hop need to change. There needs to be more allyship. Greater progression and an end to the way women have been treated since Hip-Hop’s inception and start in 1973:

“ATLANTA (AP) — Rasheeda Frost’s decades-long relationship with hip-hop started in 1981. She was a curious, energetic kindergartener — eager to touch and explore anything put in front of her.

Rasheeda remembered her mother presenting her with a huge, white box — it was a record player that she would continuously spin, not knowing what its purpose was. Then, she said, her mom gave her a record with a colorful cornucopia printed in the middle: The Sugarhill Gang.

“She must’ve just known hip-hop was embedded in me at such a young age,” the MTV “Love and Hip-Hop: Atlanta” reality star said.

The then 5-year-old would dance until she couldn’t anymore. “I played that record until I tore it up and scratched up the record.”

Frost fell in love with hip-hop. Lyrics, music videos, and magazine covers display a genre that is male-centered and male-dominated. Despite this challenge, Frost took her passion a step further and joined the ranks of female rappers and emcees who battled misogynoir, sexism, and patriarchy to send hip-hop spinning in a different direction, making way for women to take the main stage in the genre.

“I had to go out there and work triple as hard, make sure I’m respected, not get taken advantage of as a female, and really go hard for what I know and stand for something,” Frost said.

From The Sequence releasing the first rap record by an all-female group, called “Funk You Up” in 1979, to MC Sha-Rock’s iconic performance on “SNL” as a part of Funky 4+1, female rappers have been a part of hip-hop since its debut. Women have fought to shape their identification in hip-hop and demand recognition.

In the 50 years since DJ Kool Herc extended breaking at a back-to-school party, women have gone from donning a male-imitated aesthetic, to owning their sexuality in lyrics, to selling out stadiums for their own concerts. At hip-hop’s 50th anniversary, female rappers are taking their moment to shine — while still demanding respect and facing decades-old challenges.

Msia Kibona Clark, an African culture and feminist studies professor at Howard University, said women were “largely invisible” in hip-hop during the ‘80s and early ’90s.

“Early on the idea was to imitate men in terms of the aesthetics, and the idea was the hip-hop uniform — baggy clothes and sneakers and t-shirts,” said Clark.

Clark said early female rappers had the challenge of navigating a culture tinged with sexism and sexual harassment, as well as carving out a perspective that often wasn’t heard in the mainstream.

“To me those were the dark ages of hip-hop because it just wasn’t enough women voices,” Queen Latifah said during an interview with The Associated Press.

SiriusXM host Roxanne Shante started entering rap battles and making records as a young teen in the 1980s. The hip-hop legend’s battle tracks solidified her as one of the earliest and fiercest emcees at the age of 14.

“I came in as little sis; even to the point of where sometimes they didn’t even want to let me participate, because sometimes the men felt that I was that good,” Shante, told the AP, detailing how it was a problem for men to battle rap a teen girl.

Shante, along with artists such as Salt-N-Pepa, Yo-Yo, and Queen Latifah were voices that amplified feminist storytelling and issues during the ‘80s and early ’90s.

Entertainer and philanthropist Yo-Yo was known for rapping about female empowerment and demanding respect, but she still dealt with having to “stay in a woman’s place.”

“Those were some of the challenges when the record labels only respected men,” Yo-Yo said.

During the early days, hip-hop itself was being questioned, and later, the genre was being condemned as “gangsta rap.” DJ Spinderella recalled consistently being asked how long she thought hip-hop would last.

Female emcees found themselves having to defend the genre as well as prove themselves worthy of holding the mic.

“When there was negativity or any kind of misogyny, it only pushed us even more,” said DJ Spinderella, a member of the hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa. “Our first goal was to shake our thing, but then the fact that we were inspiring women to become their better selves despite the negative was important.”

By the late ‘90s and early 2000s, women were becoming more visible in hip-hop. Female artists offered a variety of sounds and trends — from Lauryn Hill’s melodic rap to Missy Elliott’s experimental music videos.

Challenges for female rappers persisted. As more women entered the genre, some were uniting on hit records such as “Ladies Night,” while others were pit against each other. At the same time, the hypersexualization of women was ramping up.

“With the historical treatment of women and how women have been sexualized, I think women artists have been able to reclaim it,” said Christin Smith, an independent consulting researcher.

Although female rappers have pushed sex positive lyrics since the ‘80s, the mid-to-late ’90s saw the advent of artists such as Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown more overtly displaying and owning their sexuality. This drew controversy — and hypocrisy.

“When I came out with songs like ‘Make It Vibrate’ and songs like ‘Georgia Peach’, I got a lot of resistance from radio because they said it was too sexy,” said Frost, who released her first album “Dirty South” in 2001. “It was a battle every single day just to be heard, to be respected.”

As rap continued to evolve from the mid-to-late 2000s, rappers such as Remy Ma and Trina continued to hold down the booth. Nicki Minaj’s impact on the genre was explosive in the 2010s — as reflected by her winning the BET Awards best female hip hop artist from 2010 through 2016.

The late 2010s saw a change in technology. Internet access became widely available due to the smartphone . This gave rise to a new era of artists who social media as a way to gain traction. Hip-hop also became a part of pop culture, with the sound being used in movies and commercials. Hip-hop artists became the faces of popular brands and fashion labels.

The shifting pop culture landscape, along with the tenuous work of female rap pioneers, helped pave the way for what audiences see now: an explosion of female rappers and artists on stage and behind-the-scenes.

“I love it. I think that we have our own table. We just don’t have to get in to fit in. I think women are making powerful moves,” said Yo-Yo.

Women in hip-hop have gone from behind-the-scenes to winning prestigious awards for their artistry. They’ve also ventured into other industries. MC Lyte is a popular voiceover artist, recognizable for her work voicing the BET Awards and the 2023 Grammy Awards. Missy Elliott this year will become the first female rapper inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Queen Latifah has starred in numerous movies, TV shows, and her own talk show. Roxanne Shante hosts “Have a Nice Day” on LL Cool J’s Rock Tha Bells Radio on SiriusXM.

The theme of female empowerment remains but the message has changed — with artists such as Megan thee Stallion and the City Girls rapping about sexual liberation and hypergamous values, as well as women having their own money.

The pervasiveness of misogyny and patriarchal violence still threatens the existence of female rappers. Some experts think that female rap is more hyper-sexualized than ever before, and artists must fit a certain body standard to be accepted.

Clark pointed out the rise in popularity of the Brazilian butt lift surgery among female rappers. “It’s hard to tell whether or not someone is doing that because they genuinely want to do that. They feel more pleased with their body with that procedure versus those who are told if you want to make it in this industry, you have to do this.”

There’s also a push for more femme-presenting queer and non-binary artists to have a platform in a genre that has been largely homophobic and heteronormative since its inception”.

Before rounding up with an article, another point comes to mind. Late last year, Irish Hip-Hop artist Denise Chaila rightly points out that if we are calling out misogyny in Hip-Hop then it needs to happen across music. This is true. We cannot only focus on Hip-Hop and assume every other genre and corner is fine. Even so, misogyny in Hip-Hop is back under the spotlight. It does seem to be particularly rife and damaging in Hip-Hop. The hope is that misogyny can be stamped out right across the industry. Even if there are incredible male Hip-Hop artists making wonderful music, the most exciting and original Hip-Hop is coming from women. Vulture highlighted a book, Ode to Hip-Hop, where Kiana Fitzgerald stated how women are making the most progressive and exciting Hip-Hop – whereas men are coming up short in that department. Also, how can we say Hip-Hop is progressive given the amount of homophobia and misogyny that is still around – and Kendrick Lamar seems to casually drop into tracks and that seems to be okay:

“Did you hear? Hip-hop turned 50 this year! Of course you heard. Because the internet has been wallpapered with fawning, congratulatory pieces exploring the history of the genre for months now. There have been awards-show tributes. Lifetime-achievement awards. Brand deals. But one thing is crucially missing from the mass celebration: meaningful critique. “How can we say hip-hop was ever progressive if it was always so deeply homophobic and misogynistic? How?” asks scholar Jason England, assistant professor of English at Carnegie Mellon. “Hip-hop has always had a radical posture. That doesn’t mean it was radical in action. You cannot deny just how problematic the music has always been, and in that way, it is deeply American.”

Kiana Fitzgerald, author of Ode to Hip-Hop, points out that women are making the most exciting, broadly appealing hip-hop today. Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Nicki Minaj, Doja Cat — all are doing it better than their male contemporaries. But at what cost? Says Fitzgerald, “The saying within the Black community is ‘You have to be twice as good to get half as much.’ That’s even more the case for women rappers, especially Black women rappers.” Cardi B has to be a stand-up comedian on top of rapping. Megan Thee Stallion has to be the most beautiful woman in the world. Doja Cat sings, dances, raps, and is a weird art girl. The men? Guys like Drake and Travis Scott? They’re just mumbling”.

Via a beef between Drake and Kendrick Lamar, misogyny has once again shown that Hip-Hop is slow to evolve. It takes away from the amazing women who are making the best music in the genre but, at the same time, having to ask for change and protection. They are strong queens, yet they are surrounded by artists who show very little respect for them. Whilst, true, this applies to a small percentage of men in Hip-Hop that is not good enough. There is still too much misogyny in Hip-Hop. There should be none! Such an important genre and wonderful style of music, they should be leading by example and platforming women. Pushing them up and saluting them. Women in Hip-Hop do not want fake humbleness. The genre has faced a crisis with misogyny for decades. It needs to stop! Men in Hip-Hop need to do a lot more. They need to change the course, improve Hip-Hop’s reputation and…

RESPECT women.

FEATURE: Vinyl Corner: Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert

FEATURE:

 

 

Vinyl Corner

Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert

_________

IT has been a while since…

PHOTO CREDIT: Echoes/Redfern/Getty Images

I was last in Vinyl Corner. I wanted to come back to focus on a magnificent live album. Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert is an album that you really need to hear. I don’t think you need to be a big fan of Coltrane or know much about her. It is about the power and beauty of the performances and music. I would advise people to seek out this album on vinyl. Here are a few more details about an extraordinary live experience:

“A previously unreleased, killer live recording from 1971.  Recorded live, by Impulse! at a charity gala given at Carnegie Hall for the benefit of the Integral Yoga Institute in 1971, this incredible set never saw commercial release until now. The gala concert was one of two halves with the first two transcendental tunes by Alice taken from the album she had just released on Impulse! and then two explosive tunes by her late husband John Coltrane. Naturally, à la Coltrane/Dolphy at the Gate, which picked up the recent Grammy nomination for Best Liner Notes, the package includes some knockout editorial, with essays by Lauren Du Graf and Alice’s producer Ed Michel”.

I wanted to expand a bit more and give some more detail and background to Alice Coltrane and her performance at Carnegie Hall. Among the greatest Jazz performances the space has ever seen, it did seem to be this revelatory moment. You get a sense of what the crowd felt and the feeling in the air in 1971. So transcendent and divine. That live album was recorded in the same year she released the masterpiece, Journey in Satchidananda (the title track and Shiva-Loka are played during the Carnegie Hall set) You can stream the live album of course, though this is well worth investing in. Get the vinyl copy too:

“Described by a writer for Pan African Music as “a splendid and ecstatic memento of spiritual jazz with some of its greatest masters,” Alice Coltrane’s 1971 Carnegie Hall concert (and its corresponding album release) left an indelible mark on audiences and the history of jazz music as a whole.

Born Alice McLeod in Detroit, Michigan, Coltrane embarked on her musical journey at a young age, displaying prodigious talent and a deep-rooted connection to spirituality. Her marriage to legendary saxophonist John Coltrane further ignited her passion for music, propelling her into the realm of jazz luminaries.

Coltrane made her Carnegie Hall debut on April 14, 1968, in a program titled “Cosmic Music,” which featured her original music in addition to works by John Coltrane and Jimmy Garrison. Just a few years later, on February 21, 1971, she brought together an all-star cast of jazz legends to the Hall in a benefit concert for Swami Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga Institute.

Coltrane performed on both piano and harp, joined by saxophonists Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, bassists Jimmy Garrison and Cecil McBee, and drummers Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis. Also featured were rock band The Rascals and singer-songwriter Laura Nyro.

Coltrane would go on to perform at Carnegie Hall five more times, the last of which were back-to-back performances on September 21, 1984, alongside pianist Marilyn Crispell with saxophonist Sam Rivers and bassist Reggie Workman. According to the review published in The New York Times, Crispell opened with a solo piano set, followed by the Alice Coltrane Quartet, which recreated John Coltrane’s Impressions in commemoration of his birthday on September 23”.

I am going to end by bringing in a couple of reviews for Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert. MOJO were among those to share their thoughts on an album that was released via Impulse! Back in March. The more I pass through the album the more it impacts me. You can be completely new to Alice Coltrane and it will not affect what you get from this album. It is an astonishing thing to behold:

“WHEN ALICE Coltrane took the stage at New York’s Carnegie Hall on February 21, 1971 she’d just returned from a five-week sojourn in India where she’d swum in the Ganges, visited the holy city of Rishikesh, and found a certain kind of peace, a salve to the pain she’d been experiencing since the death of her husband, John, in 1967. As quoted by Lauren Du Graf in the long-form essay that accompanies this release, Coltrane said, “The trip to the East gave me the spiritual motivation to come out more – to do more with my music.” Part of a series of benefit performances to raise money for her guru, Swami Satchidananda [pictured above], the Carnegie Hall concert finds Coltrane in an intense state of divine liberation.

Playing with an expanded double quartet comprised of Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp on tenor and soprano sax, Jimmy Garrison and Cecil McBee on bass, Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis on drums, plus Swami Satchidananda followers Tulsi Reynolds and Kumar Kramer on tamboura and harmonium, Coltrane sets off proceedings with a new composition, Journey In Satchidananda, from her recently released fifth studio LP. It begins as a heavy, creaking procession anchored in slow contemplation by bowed and plucked bass and chiming cymbals before Coltrane’s cascading harp glissandos and Pharoah Sanders’ breathy, keening flute fill the groove with layers of bright, glistening sunlight. Then, Archie Shepp’s soprano sax breaks through with a high, hovering gospel-blues wail. It’s a massing of the troops, an indication of just what this double-quartet are capable of. Another harp number, Shiva-Loka, goes deep into a world of slow, ethereal meditation, the percussive, double-kit groove of Blackwell and Jarvis locked in conversational communion as Shepp and Sanders’ soprano saxes chatter and cry over the surface.

However, little prepares us for the epic, half-hour version of John Coltrane’s Africa that follows. Beginning with a Blackwell and Jarvis floor-tom battle, Coltrane’s agitated, roiling keyboard chimes are soon interlaced with wild-free blowing from Sanders and Shepp in an extended act of screeching liberation that is simultaneously joyous and terrifying. Ultimately, it feels like a cabalistic mass, a summoning of the spirit of John Coltrane and Africa itself. Defined by an hypnotic 10-minute bass solo, McBee hands over to Garrison who imitates the vocal cadences of the Nigerian talking drum before all nine players return for a wailing Africa coda and a barnstorming, funk-heavy and utterly free rendering of John Coltrane’s 1966 composition, Leo. Remastered from Ed Michel’s 2-track “reference mix” (after both 4-track masters were lost), The Carnegie Hall Concert now sounds magnificent despite a few rare spots of distortion. What began as a benefit for Swami Satchidananda and evolved into a summoning of John Coltrane’s spirit now stands as a tribute to the liberating force of Alice Coltrane herself. It’s a communion. Drink deep”.

I will wrap up with a review from Pitchfork. In one of the most extensive and detailed examinations  In many ways, this album is a good entry into the work of Alice Coltrane. It might compel you to look further and wider and seek out her contemporaries. You will get so much from Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert:

“There are a lot of reasons to be excited about The Carnegie Hall Concert. It’s only the second full live album in the official Alice Coltrane catalog (an incomplete version of this same Carnegie Hall concert was previously released as a bootleg), and it dates from her most celebrated period as a bandleader, recorded just one week after the release of her acknowledged masterpiece Journey in Satchidananda. It features generously roomy renditions—including versions of two key Journey tracks, each clocking in at more than double the length of the original—that readily transport and at times overwhelm despite the occasionally rough sonics of the source tape. (Sadly, the 4-track master tapes of the concert were lost over the years—“Don’t ask me how,” writes Coltrane’s frequent producer Ed Michel, who oversaw the original Carnegie Hall recording, with palpable frustration in his production notes—so the release is drawn from a 2-track reference mix.)

And the album’s supporting cast is extraordinary, bringing together musicians from Journey—Pharoah Sanders on tenor and soprano sax, flute and more, Cecil McBee on bass, and Tulsi Reynolds on tamboura—with bassist Jimmy Garrison, a previous sideman to both Alice and John; Archie Shepp, a collaborator of John’s and, like Sanders, a strongly established saxophonist-bandleader in his own right; dual drummers Ed Blackwell and Clifford Jarvis, the former of whom had joined John on 1960 sessions co-led by Don Cherry; and harmonium player Kumar Kramer.

But there’s another, perhaps even more valuable aspect to the album, exemplified by the “Africa” reentry described above: the way it helpfully complicates Coltrane’s rapidly crystallizing legacy. At this point, Coltrane’s overdue canonization has fully taken hold. During roughly the past decade, thanks to a series of illuminating reissues and tributes and a steady stream of namechecks (from tastemakers including Solange and André 3000), her work has been given its rightful due apart from the long-enshrined catalog of her iconic husband and collaborator, reaching a slew of new listeners in the process. But as her name has morphed into a kind of buzzword—often invoked in conjunction with the now-inescapable descriptor “spiritual jazz”—her image has at times been reduced to a near-caricature, that of the serene queen of the ashram, smiling benevolently from within her brilliant orange robes.

While there is of course some truth to that characterization, Alice Coltrane was not all prayer rugs and incense. As Flying Lotus—her grandnephew and frequent, outspoken champion—noted in a 2021 interview, Coltrane “was the matriarch of the family, but she was also the Godfather. She took care of everybody, but you couldn’t mess with Auntie.” In a starker way than any other prior Alice Coltrane release, The Carnegie Hall Concert allows us to glimpse these two incarnations side by side: Coltrane as both matriarch and Godfather; Coltrane as spiritual-jazz mystic and formidable heir to the harshly ecstatic fire music that her husband had spearheaded in the last few years of his life.

That juxtaposition seems almost intentional, as the concert is divided into two neat halves. First comes the Journey material, the title track and “Shiva-Loka,” as they’re sequenced on the album. In starting the show this way, Coltrane was both showcasing her new LP and honoring her guru. As Lauren Du Graf lays out in her helpful and detailed liner notes, the Carnegie Hall performance was actually part of an all-star benefit for the Integral Yoga Institute founded by Swami Satchidananda, Coltrane’s spiritual teacher at the time, her guide both out of grief, in the wake of her husband’s death, and on a transformative 1970 trip to India, and—as she’d cited in the Journey liner notes—a “direct inspiration” for the album.

Coltrane’s harp work on these first two tracks is flat-out gorgeous, but she seems content to play a mainly textural, supportive role. That changes dramatically on the final two pieces, 20-minute-plus renditions of two compositions by John, “Africa” and the minimal, staccato fanfare “Leo,” both featuring Alice on piano, the instrument she’d played in John’s band and worked at diligently in her earlier, largely undocumented musical apprenticeship in Detroit. These performances are as shatteringly intense as the first two were quietly meditative. The ensemble seems to be not just performing John Coltrane repertoire but consciously channeling the relentless rush of his most forbiddingly dense free-form work. “Africa” has a strong flavor of Trane circa the mid ’60s, when he beefed up his working band with extra drummers and saxophonists—with Shepp joining in occasionally and Sanders eventually signing on as a permanent addition—to create ever-escalating action paintings of sound.

As Alice switches instruments, so do Shepp and Sanders, picking up the tenors they proudly hoisted alongside Trane on 1965’s Ascension, and seeking out similarly furious peaks (Shepp’s roaring, ragged cries around the 5:00 mark are particularly arresting, as are Sanders’ multiphonic shrieks around 8:00). Alice also had plenty of experience playing alongside John in this mode—check out Live at the Village Vanguard Again! or Live in Japan, both recorded in ’66—but here, she’s even more commanding. During her solo, she establishes the firm bedrock of the piece while letting fly with swooping, swirling right-hand cascades. She often sounds here like either two or three pianists playing at once, nodding to the great McCoy Tyner, who was at the keyboard for John’s original version, while blasting off into her own distinct stratosphere.

More magic comes during her extended feature on “Leo,” a piece she had performed many times with John and would often reprise in later years. Starting around the 5:00 mark, she conjures a massive wall of rippling notes before launching into a series of breakneck dashes with the double-strength rhythm section, punctuated by prismatic storm clouds of sustain. You rarely hear Alice Coltrane mentioned in the company of the great power pianists of free jazz—Cecil Taylor, Don Pullen, Matthew Shipp, and others—but her staggering performances during this latter portion of the show confirm just how much she deserves to be regarded as a titan of that idiom.

Ultimately, the release of The Carnegie Hall Concert feels right on time, providing a welcome jolt of focus to a widespread impression of Alice Coltrane that’s started to seem just a tad vague. She’s here in full: the matriarch we now know well and duly appreciate; the Godfather we may not have ever properly reckoned with. The devotee of Satchidananda; the torchbearer for John. And the bandleader and instrumental powerhouse who marshaled formidable talents like Pharoah Sanders and Archie Shepp, and found space for them within her rapidly expanding musical vision. There were more Alice Coltranes still to come, as she moved into challenging orchestral music, mind-bending organ work, and, ultimately, decades filled with devotional song. As this set shows, she always contained multitudes”.

I have not offered too many of my own insights and interpretations. I feel that others can do it better and with more clarity and expertise! I was drawn to this album when it was reissued/released on vinyl. It sounds exceptional! I am thinking of adding it to my collection. Such an affecting album from the great Alice Coltrane, I think a lot of people have discovered her music after hearing this album. Alice Coltrane: The Carnegie Hall Concert is an album that hits…

ALL the senses.

FEATURE: The Greatest Movie Soundtrack Ever? The Incredible Pulp Fiction at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Greatest Movie Soundtrack Ever?

The Incredible Pulp Fiction at Thirty

_________

EVEN though it was not released…

in the U.S. until 14th October, 1994, Pulp Fiction was shown at Cannes on 21st May, 1994. I am marking its upcoming thirtieth anniversary by looking closely at its soundtrack. One of Quentin Tarantino’s earliest and best films, it went on to win eight major awards from a total of twenty-six nominations. Pulp Fiction won for Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Academy Awards. One of the greatest films ever, it still really holds up after thirty years. Even if Tarantino’s acting cameo in the film is pretty awful, his direction and writing is masterful. Suffering a little bloating and need of editing – one of the curses of most Tarantino films -, it is s sharp, funny and iconic film that I hope gets new celebration and showing on its thirtieth anniversary. It must have been exciting for audiences at Cannes seeing the film thirty years ago. The soundtrack from Pulp Fiction is almost as iconic as the film itself. Tarantino is brilliant when it comes to great needle drops and pairing perfect music with iconic scenes. Someone who must spend hours sifting through vinyl and meticulously looking for the right song for his movies, I wanted to argue that Pulp Fiction is one of the greatest soundtracks ever. It may be the very best. The soundtrack was released in September 1994.

As the film was first shown thirty years ago on 21st May, I want to bring in a few features that go deep with one of the finest and most memorable soundtracks ever. American Songwriter investigated the Pulp Fiction soundtrack a couple of years back:

“Composition and Track Order

Comprised of 16 total songs, the Pulp Fiction soundtrack featured a wide array of musical styles and hit singles. It also featured sections and skits from the movie, which was one of the most popular in the entire 1990s, so that when you put on the record, you’re back in the movie. In your car? You can still hear the actors and the dialogue about foreign hamburgers (Royale with cheese!).

But the real meat of the album is the music. The soundtrack, thanks to writer-director Quentin Tarantino, introduced music lovers to handfuls of great, specific, nuanced tunes. Songs like “Jungle Boogie” by Kool & the Gang, “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green, “Lonesome Town” by Ricky Nelson, “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield, and more.

All of these songs became favorites amongst people now in their late 30s and early 40s. But there’s more! Like “Flowers on the Wall” by The Statler Sisters, Dick Dale’s rendition of “Misirlou” and “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon” by Urge Overkill.” What gems.

Origins

The movie itself has no traditional film score. Instead, it was an eclectic group of songs that could be heard on either AM or FM radio—songs director Tarantino loved. In total, there are nine songs from the movie on the LP and four tracks of dialogue bits, which are then followed by music. There are three tracks of dialogue alone, as well. Seven songs featured in the movie were not included on the original 41-minute soundtrack.

Upon its release, the album reached No. 21 on the Billboard 200, and Urge Overkill’s cover of the Neil Diamond-penned “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” peaked at No. 59.

Tarantino chose surf music like Dale’s track because, he said, “It just seems like rock ‘n’ roll Ennio Morricone music, rock ‘n’ roll spaghetti Western music.”

According to legend, many of the songs on the soundtrack were suggested to the director by musician Boyd Rice, via their mutual friend Allison Anders, including Dale’s now-infamous track. Others were suggested to Tarantino by friends Chuck Kelley and Laura Lovelace, who were relied on as music consultants. (Lovelace also appeared in the movie as Laura the waitress.)

Legacy

In 2002, a two-disc collector’s edition of the album was issued. The first disc contained the songs, including four more tracks. And the second disc was a spoken-word interview with Tarantino.

The soundtrack has since been certified platinum in Canada. And by November 1994, total sales of more than 1.6 million had accumulated. By 1996, two million units had been sold. In 1995, the soundtrack reached No. 6 on the charts.

The success of soundtracks like the Pul Fiction offering, helps to bring to light songs that may have been lost to time. In this way, they were like tangible playlists, showing light on songs that were popular historically but that then earned a resurgence, like “Jungle Boogie.”

One reason why the soundtrack was so beloved was because of the curatorial flare Tarantino (along with music supervisor Karyn Rachtman) had as an artist. Wrote a critic in The Orange County Register, “Unlike so many soundtracks, which just seem to be repositories for stray songs by hit acts regardless of whether they fit the film’s mood, Tarantino’s use of music in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction exploded with a brash, Technicolor, pop-culture intensity that mirrored the stories he was telling.”

Wrote Billboard, “Pulp Fiction…successfully spoke to those attuned to the hip, stylized nature of those particular films.” Adding, “In some cases, like Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs, which were not geared toward any specific demographic, the soundtracks were still very focused albums,” said Kathy Nelson, senior VP/general manager at MCA Soundtracks. “In both cases, the body of work—both the music and the film—has a specific personality.”

To this day, the genre is popular and one of the kings of surf rock, Dick Dale, has songs in commercials that sell everything from food to toothpaste”.

In 2014, to mark twenty years of Pulp Fiction, Medium wrote how Quentin Tarantino’s curated classic changed the way we watched movies. I think it has inspired so many other film soundtracks. I am not including all of the feature, though I wanted to bring most of it in:

“The Rebirth Of Cool

The songs used in the film give it a timeless quality, a sense that events on screen are happening in an alternate reality. The action seemed to be set in the present day, but the characters remain blissfully unaware of the period’s dominant forms of music: grunge, hip-hop and electronica. In their world, it is perfectly normal for John Travolta’s Vincent to be doing Adam West’s bat-dance to Chuck Berry’s “You Never Can Tell,” or for The Revels’ “Comanche” to be the song of choice for Marcellus Wallace’s soon-to-be-living-the-rest-of-his-short-ass-life-in-agonizing-pain rapist.

Divine Intervention

Prior to Pulp Fiction, the standard methodology behind a major film soundtrack was to simply “play the hits” (if you had the budget), as Forrest Gump did that same summer of 1994. Releasing a high-profile double-disc set—a collection of massive hit records from earlier eras, including Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog,” CCR’s “Fortunate Son” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama”—it sounded as if they ordered a copy of Freedom Rock and jammed to it in the editing room.

“What I don’t want to do, and I’ve seen it done in a lot of movies, is they turn up the soundtrack to create a false energy. Or in particular, to create a sense of period,” said Tarantino in a 1994 interview, included on the 2002 expanded reissue of the Pulp soundtrack. “‘Okay, it’s the 60s. We’ll play a lot of 60s songs and that will create the period.’ To me that’s cheap, it’s annoying, and like listening to the radio and watching a movie at the same time. They don’t really go together… I try to avoid that.”

Neither Pulp nor Reservoir Dogs had the Forrest Gump-sized budgets to splurge on your parents’ favorite songs, so they had to make-do with more obscure selections. Quentin Tarantino had little interest in going after the obvious big hits, so he picked a series of more off-the-beaten-path numbers when writing the screenplays for both films.

Tarantino’s original music supervisor on Reservoir Dogs told him that it would be impossible to get the rights for some of the songs written into the screenplay, so their only option would be to use “muzak” covers or cheap copies. Lucky for Tarantino, music supervisor Karyn Rachtman had a different plan. Without her, both Pulp and Reservoir may have sounded very different.

“He had a music supervisor on the film, who told him that he couldn’t have any 70s songs, because they couldn’t afford them,” Rachtman told Cuepoint. “So they had to get 70s sound-a-likes, to like, make up 70s songs, so it sounded like 70s songs, but ones you didn’t know. And he was devastated, and most devastated about ‘Stuck In The Middle With You,’ he wrote that scene to that song.”

Karyn, who hadn’t yet been hired for the job, was determined to see Tarantino’s vision through; that is, to see Mike Madsen’s Mr. Blonde severing the ear of a bloody, bound and gagged cop, to the accompaniment of Stealers Wheel.

“They had, I believe, $10,000 allocated for all the music in the film. And [Quentin] said, ‘Help me get ‘Stuck In The Middle With You.’ What can you do?’ And I was like, ‘I’m going to go get it.’ And it was a hell of a hard job, I’m going to reach out to Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty (of Stealers Wheel), at the time whom weren’t speaking. [Producer] Stacey Sher and I put a plan together and explained about how we were paying homage to “Singin’ In The Rain” in A Clockwork Orange, and that it’s a violent scene. Here we are, asking for a song for no money, and to a violent film, and for a filmmaker you’ve never heard of,” she said.

“So it was a tough job, but needless to say, I got the song and it took up the entire music budget. And Quentin was like ‘Thank you so much, what can I do for you now?’ and I was like ‘You can fire your music supervisor and hire me.’ And he did,” she remembers fondly.

Rachtman, who would later help round out the soundtrack to Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, worked closely with Tarantino to see that what was written on the page would be heard on the silver screen.

“Especially in Pulp Fiction, Quentin was a horrible speller. He really wrote most of those key songs to that film in the script. But he would make up titles for them that didn’t exist, and spell things wrong. And I’m like, ‘I can’t find this song.’ Of course it would be a lot easier today with the internet and all that kind of stuff, but that was a tough job. Quentin very much writes to music.”

It’s something that the recent chart-topping Guardians of The Galaxy soundtrack quite obviously took a cue from, building the film around a series of semi-obscure, retro tunes. Marvel Studios’ latest even uses one of Tarantino’s original selections from Reservoir Dogs, with Blue Suede’s “Hooked On A Feeling” lifted right from K-Billy’s Super Sounds Of The 70’s playlist.

“When I heard about the Guardians Of The Galaxy soundtrack, I got a little jealous. I have an 18-year-old and 24-year-old, and they were telling me it’s pretty cool,” said Rachtman.

Hopefully they realize that their mother’s work on both Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs laid the groundwork for the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. In the Tarantino style, the music of Guardians plays a central role in the new film, but like Forrest Gump, it still “plays the hits.” While it is largely built around the obscure 70s tunes, it also relies on obvious, overdone crowd pleasers like Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back.” Tarantino didn’t go for this. Like a good DJ, he defined what the hits would be and what the next trend would be.

The soundtrack of Pulp Fiction is largely built around 60s surf tunes, most notably the opening credit sequence track, “Misirlou” by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. The song is so synonymous with the film that many just refer to it as “The Pulp Fiction Theme.” However its origins are much deeper: the song originated as a 1927 Greek rebetiko composition, was made popular by Dale’s cover in 1962, and again by The Beach Boys a year later for their Surfin’ USA LP. The song has been covered dozens of times throughout the last century, and most recently was sampled for Black Eyed Peas’ “Pump It.”

What Tarantino has referred to as “rock & roll spaghetti western music,” the surf rock resurgence exploded into 90s pop culture as of a result of the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, and simultaneously with Portishead’s hit single, “Sour Times,” released that same year. However Rachtman largely credits the origins of the comeback to Link Wray, who many view as the pioneer of the power chord.

Inevitably, what Quentin wrote in the screenplay was not always attainable from the rights holders. “I remember ‘Locomotion’ by Carole King was refused,” recalls Karyn.

“At one point I thought of using ‘My Sharona’ for the sodomy-rape sequence. ‘My Sharona’ has a really good sodomy-beat to it, if you really think about it,” Quentin revealed in the soundtrack interview. “Apparently part of the band was for it, but one in the band was a Born Again Christian who just wasn’t for it and was like, ‘No, I’m not interested.’”

Says Karyn, “Quentin’s mother came on the set when we were at Jack Rabbit Slim’s, and she said, ‘Why is Quentin using [Chuck Berry’s ‘You Never Can Tell’]? Why did he chose that song? I used to listen to that song all the time when I was pregnant with him.’”

Among the myriad surf tunes and twangy guitars are a few funk and soul classics that belong to the gangster Marcellus Wallace and his crew. The first of these is Kool & The Gang’s “Jungle Boogie,” which acts as the backdrop for Vincent and Jules’ oft-imitated car-ride conversation — it plays on the radio while they discuss the finer points of Amsterdam’s McDonald’s menu. Later in the film, perhaps referencing that earlier moment, Sam Jackson’s Jules uses the band name as a substitute for the word “cool,” telling Tarantino’s bath-robed Jimmy character, “Hey, that’s Kool and the Gang. You know, we don’t wanna fuck your shit up!”

Marcellus has his own theme song, Al Green’s soul classic “Let’s Stay Together,” which plays when we are first introduced to the back of his bandaged head. It’s implied that Marcellus prefers this kind of slow, romantic baby-makin’ music. Perhaps Jules didn't know just how prophetic he was being during his Big Kahuna Burger interrogation, telling Big Brain Brad, “And Marcellus Wallace don’t like to be fucked by anybody except Mrs. Wallace.”

While the Pulp soundtrack is built on retro tunes, its biggest hit was Urge Overkill’s newly-recorded remake of “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon,” which first topped the charts in its original Neil Diamond incarnation in 1967. This cover version was the only modern-ish song on the album, released as its lead single. The song was recorded as a throwaway in 1992, for the band’s vinyl-only Stull EP, primarily to fulfill their previous record label contract before signing with Geffen Records in 1993. Ironically it would end up being the band’s biggest hit.

“The movie was such a global hit, as was the soundtrack,” Urge Overkill’s Nash Kato told Cuepoint. “One doesn’t necessarily guarantee the other. You can have a hit movie, but nobody buys the soundtrack, or vice-versa. But both were such big hits. That three minute cover that we pulled out of our ass took us around the world.”

With so many of the soundtrack’s songs taken from yesteryear, why didn’t Tarantino just use Neil Diamond’s original 1967 version? Supervisor Rachtman recalls, “I had never heard that [Urge version] before, and Quentin just loved that, and I had nothing to do with it, except for making the deal on it. It was just something that Quentin was just a huge fan of, and he had to have that version. And I remember Neil Diamond’s publishing company was being very difficult, but afterwards I think he was very grateful.”

“The thing is, our version is really so squishy. Everything’s a little of out of tune. There’s no solid meter. The drums speed up and slow down,” says Urge’s Nash. “Everything that was so wrong with that take became so right for that pivotal scene in the movie, where everything turns to shit. [Mia] snorts all of that heroin, which she thinks is coke, and then all of a sudden she overdoses. They used it in the narrative, it wasn’t incidental music. She walks over to the reel-to-reel and this is the song she wants to hear. I don’t think he would have bothered licensing that tune if it had been any more correct, you know?”

As legend has it, Uma Thurman picked the song from a handful of options that would animate her drunken solo dance scene and shortly-to-follow heroin overdose. “The story we got from Quentin is that it was a pivotal scene. He had it down to three, possibly four tracks. So since it was Uma’s scene, he was going to bounce it off her and let her choose,” recalls Nash. “I don’t know what the other songs were that we were up against. So apparently when she heard ours, she was like ‘This I can do.’ She sings and dances to it, and… O.D.’s (laughs). So it better be the right song!”

However the greatest tale surrounding Urge’s hit cover is how Quentin’s hobby of vinyl crate-digging led to his discovery of the track, which he allegedly found in a used/discount bin, somewhere in Europe.

“This was a long running gag for us, for a while. Because some poor fucker thought that we sucked, or this record sucked and cashed it in for a dollar or two, or something. And then Quentin Tarantino, an avid record collector, picked it up for 50p or whatever the currency is,” laughs Nash. “We’ve always wanted to find the guy who thought the record sucked and changed the trajectory of our musical career.”

“And film history, at that,” adds Eddie”.

There are other great features like this, that look at the amazing songs featured throughout Pulp Fiction. You can buy the soundtrack here. I think that it is the greatest soundtrack ever. The way the dialogue sits alongside the songs. I know some soundtracks concentrate on songs without any dialogue clips. Not only is the range of the songs phenomenal. The way the songs sit in the scenes. Some are integral to the action and moment. Others more in the background. There is a mixture of well-known tracks with some that many people would have discovered through the film. A beautiful blend of genres and artists! You can hear songs from the soundtrack and they are synonymous with scenes from Pulp Fiction. The power of Quentin Tarantino’s writing and music love. The passion he put into selecting the songs. As Pulp Fiction premiered at Cannes on 21st May, 1994, I wanted to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary by saluting its soundtrack. It remains, in my view, the greatest…

MOVIE soundtrack of all time.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts: Coffee Homeground

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Deep Cuts

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Coffee Homeground

_________

THIS particular Kate Bush song…

was one of only a few that she wrote new for her second studio album, Lionheart. That was released in November 1978. The issue was, as I have written about a lot, is that EMI were so eager to get another album out following the success of The Kick Inside – released in February 1978 – that it gave very little time for Kate Bush to write new material. So busy promoting her debut, she was only really able to write new songs on the go. Penning what she could when she had a free moment. The other two songs that were new, Symphony in Blue and Fullhouse, are incredible. Symphony in Blue especially is a wonderful and beautiful song. There is something distinct about Full House with its sound of paranoia and fear. Maybe an insight into the mind of Kate Bush. Perhaps someone herself feeling stressed or like she had no space or freedom at that time.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush ‘Red Head'. This was an out-take from the back cover series of portraits that Gered Mankowitz shot for Lionheart in August 1978

It was definitely a sonic move away from songs on The Kick Inside. Even if most of Lionheart’s tracks were older numbers that were perhaps overlooked for The Kick Inside, what she wrote new for her second album was quite different in terms of style and subject. The final two tracks on Lionheart sort of deal with a sense of darkness and horror. Hammer Horror is dramatic and sweeping. That ends the album. It was the first single released from Lionheart. The penultimate track is Coffee Homeground. In terms of the composition, it is vastly different to anything Kate Bush had recorded to that point. Some of the most interesting lyrics she ever wrote. I would have loved to have seen this released as a single, as a really good video could have accompanied it. The long-running Kate Bush fanzine, HomeGround, took its name from that song. A high honour for a track that few people really know about. You never hear it played in radio.

If Fullhouse was, in Bush’s own words, relating to a lot of the emotions she was feeling at the time – including paranoia and anger -, then there is a continuation of that on Coffee Homeground. This is a track that Bush wrote whilst she was in the U.S. in 1978. Promoting The Kick Inside – though there were no live performances or T.V. spots -, it is quite exciting imagining Bush in the U.S. in general at that time. It must have been quite scary and lonely, though there is something romantic thinking about her writing a track in a private moment. The background of Coffee Homeground is intriguing. Bush wrote the song whilst in the U.S. in May 1978. Only a month later, she was in Japan for some promotion. It shows how she was being dragged from pillar to post in an intense time. A couple of months after The Kick Inside came out, she was in America. A nation that she had no intention of breaking or wanting big success in, there was a challenge getting The Kick Inside shifting units there. It did not do much at all. Even so, I guess it was expected any artist at the time would go to America. With some wonderful synthesiser work from Duncan Mackay, Coffee Homeground is one of the standouts from Lionheart. Wild, weird and woozy, this is what Kate Bush said about the inspiration behind the song:

“[‘Coffee Homeground’] was in fact inspired directly from a cab driver that I met who was in fact a bit nutty. And it’s just a song about someone who thinks they’re being poisoned by another person, they think that there’s Belladonna in their tea and that whenever they offer them something to eat, it’s got poisen in it. And it’s just a humorous aspect of paranoia really and we sort of done it in a Brechtian style, the old sort of German [vibe] to try and bring across the humour side of it.

LIONHEART PROMO CASSETTE, EMI CANADA, 1978”.

Bush addresses someone that might be lonely and, as a way of keeping people around, poisons them. A grim way of preserving people and keeping them trapped. Slipping poison into coffee and food, Bush, as the narrator, is wise to the plan. Despite it being loosely inspired by a cab driver in the U.S., it seems like another song that references her position and state at the time. After the anger and paranoia of Fullhouse, we have a song where someone is wary of dangers and traps. Maybe the sheer pressure and expectation on her at the time – she was still a teenager when she wrote Coffee Homeground – bled into the song. You can definitely read some of the lyrics as Bush having to refuse offers or dealing with those who don’t want the best for her. Some of the lyrics are among the most vivid and visually arresting that she ever created: “Offer me a chocolate/No thank you, spoil my diet, know your game!/But tell me just how come/They smell of bitter almonds/It’s a no-no to your coffee homeground/Pictures of Crippin/Lipstick-smeared/Torn wallpaper/Have the walls got ears here?/Well, you won’t get me with your Belladonna – in the coffee/And you won’t get me with your aresenic – in the pot of tea/And you won’t get me in a hole to rot – with your hemlock/On the rocks”.

I have seen Kate Bush’s Coffee Homeground discussed a few times here and there but, by and large, it is a song overlooked. Some magazines have placed it fairly high in their rankings of Bush’s songs, though I feel many do that to put something more obscure in the pack. It would be nice if Coffee Homeground got some radio airplay once in a while. It is a wonderful song. Coffee Homeground has been immortalised through the decades-running fanzine. It was also one of the tracks performed during 1979’s The Tour of Life. Normally the second song of Act 3, at least many fans got to see this song come to life. I am interesting seeing how it was staged and what concept Bush went for when she brought it to the stage. There is an interesting discussion about Coffee Homeground on the Dreams of Orgonon website from 2019.

“Coffee Homeground” comes at the tail end of Lionheart, when the album’s slower and quieter tracks have all trailed off. As the album’s penultimate track, it provides Lionheart with a relatively bombastic and staunchly theatrical climax. For all that Lionheart explores stagefright and theatrics in depth, it’s a much quieter album than that description might suggest. There are few especially up-tempo songs on it, and Bush’s piano guides her backing musicians through her songs. “Coffee Homeground” almost sounds out of place on the same album which has “Oh England My Lionheart” and “In the Warm Room,” with Bush’s camp attempt at a German accent and Kurt Weillian orchestral scoring. It’s by the grace of Lionheart’s strong thread of camp that “Coffee Homeground” is allowed to work, exploding into full blown theatrics at the end of an album which previously treated them as something more to be discussed than outright embraced.

As we’ve discussed at length in this blog, Kate Bush is a consistent purveyor of camp. Her mime training, her focus on character in her songwriting, and a constant awareness of form are camp attributes of her songs thus far. When we get to the Tour of Life, we’ll see just how far she takes that. Bush’s camp instincts to come a head in “Coffee Homeground,” is one of her most unreservedly theatrical songs. It’s hard to overstate just how theatrical this song is. Bush as a singer is always expressionist; in “Homeground” she takes this camp tendency to its logical conclusion by doing a funny accent. Her play at a German accent is willfully funny, one of the silliest things on Lionheart. Bush was often mocked for her gurning and high-pitched vocals (by such comedians as Faith Brown and Pamela Stephenson), and “Homeground” suggests she’s in on the joke to some extent, or least just as capable of having fun with it. On the track she engages in Sprechgesang, a kind of singing in which a singer rapidly moves back and forth between speaking and singing. This a natural move for Bush, who’s done this sort of thing before — moving back and forth between speech and song is a stylistic norm for her. But it’s worth investigating just what brings her to it this time around.

Bush’s use of Sprechgesang, her mimed German accent, and an unusually playful orchestra make up a hat tip to the early 20th century German theater team of playwright Bertolt Brecht, composer Kurt Weill, and singer Lotte Lenya. This collective is one of the most influential in 20th century theater, and we could get a whole book out of talking about any one of them. Let’s start with Brecht, as his writing is useful for discussing Bush’s storytelling in “Homecoming.” Brecht’s great contribution to dramatic theory is “Epic Theater,” which, like glam rock, revels in its status as artifice and production. Jack Graham has written about Epic Theater as applied to Doctor Who before, so for a more thorough take on the subject you should read his post. Suffice it to say here that “producedness,” as Jack puts it, is a key aspect of both glam rock and Epic Theater. Both are conscious of form and actively embrace it, taking no care to hide the fact of their creation, as opposed to more realist modes of theater. The two forms are thus resultingly compatible on some levels.

Yet there’s an element of Epic Theater which Bush neglects altogether: its strident anti-capitalism. Brecht was a Marxist who used the theater to shatter an audience’s preconceptions of how a capitalist society works. Bush has never been very interested in subverting the established social order. Even when she’s an actively subversive songwriter, she’s still essentially being one in the position of a well-to-do middle-class heterosexual white woman. This lack of political intent makes “Coffee Homeground” feel like it’s missing a key ingredient (and I’m not talking about hemlock). It’s not clear why this song has to be a Brechtian homage — it makes the song more striking, but it’s not clear what Bush is trying to say.

Resultingly, Bush’s engagement with Epic Theater is a purely audible one. “Homeground” owes more to Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya than it does to Brecht, as it’s their sound Bush pillages. Bush’s trill becomes a half-spoken warble as she strives to sound like Lenya for a track. It’s not a bad impression — sure, it sounds nothing like Lenya’s voice, but Bush doesn’t do the worst job of imitating her speech patterns. Musically, the strongest resemblance to Brecht and Weill’s work here is the morbid subject matter applied to carnivalesque scoring. The melody contains huge leaps and never sounds quite the same, as the intro and bridge repeat essentially the same phrase in a different key every time they appear. There are little discordant details such as the use of the non existent #VII chord of B flat (A), which doesn’t appear in B flat major or B flat minor. The pre-chorus will make a play at being in A before transforming into some mode of B (possibly mixolydian, or anything with a flattened seventh). Even if “Homeground” lacks conceptual clarity, it’s far from banal.

The decrepit house of “Homeground” is as much a stage for the song itself as it is for Bush. In a period where she’s torn between the obligations of touring and her desire to give her songs the time they need, “Coffee Homeground” is the sort of song Kate Bush is bound to produce. Her shortcomings and her ambition clash violently, and the result is as fascinating and vexed as anything she’s ever made. This has been a challenging period for Bush, and as we’ll see in the next two weeks, it’s about to climax.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Gered Mankowitz

Recorded July-September 1978 at Super Bear Studios in Nice. Released as B-side of “Hammer Horror” on 27 October 1978 and on Lionheart on 12 November 1978. Performed live on Tour of Life in 1979. Personnel: Kate Bush — vocals, piano. Stuart Elliott — drums, percussion. Ian Bairnson — rhythm guitar. Duncan Mackay — synthesizer. David Paton — bass”.

A magnificent and hugely interesting song from Kate Bush, it was an early – if masked and fictional – insight into her mindset in 1978. A song that different from themes of love and romance. This was Kate Bush taking us somewhere unusual and dark. One could say she did that with songs like Wuthering Heights. Coffee Homeground is a different beast altogether. It is a deep cut that warrants new love and some overdue exposure. The penultimate track from one of her most underrated albums, it is a gem from Lionheart. If you have not heard the wonderful Coffee Homeground, then do go and…

CHECK it out.

FEATURE: Revisiting… Eddie Chacon – Sundown

FEATURE:

 

 

Revisiting…

Eddie Chacon – Sundown

_________

ONE of the very best albums of last year…

PHOTO CREDIT: Pat Martin

was also one of the most under-reviewed and overlooked. The tremendous Eddie Chacon released the wonderous, beautiful and hugely memorable Sundown. I wanted to alert people to it. I would encourage people to go and buy the album. A mediative and soulful debut for Stones Throw Records – as Rough Trade describe Sundown -, Chacon wrote and produced the album with John Carroll Kirby. Many might know Chacon from the legendary duo, Charles & Eddie. Following on from his magnificent 2020 album, Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, Sundown is an even finer creation. His work has been acclaimed by the likes of The New York Times and The Guardian. I shall come to a review from The Guardian for Sundown. There is a lot to get through, so I will jump in now. I will get to an interview from FADER in a minute. First, I want to drop in 15 Questions and their interview with Eddie Chacon from last year:

“Where does the impulse to create something come from for you? What role do often-quoted sources of inspiration like dreams, other forms of art, personal relationships, politics etc play?

I’m generally at ease with the ebb and flow of being creative.

I tend to wait patiently until I have something I need to get out. In the meantime, I’m paying attention to everything. Just waiting to be moved by something I suppose.

For you to get started, do there need to be concrete ideas – or what some have called a 'visualisation' of the finished work?

I need to have fairly concrete subject matter worked out in my mind before I start working on something new.

I use visualization a lot. Not only in my songwriting but across the board. Literally in everything I do.

What does the balance between planning and chance look like for you?

I don’t plan when I’ll be creative. I have access to my recording studio 24/7 so I tend to just wander in there when I’ve got something on my mind that I feel strongly about. In my personal life I’m quite the opposite in that I’m a meticulous planner. So on one hand I create when I feel like it but I’m also well aware of the scheduling of things.

I know I need to come prepared when I’m gonna be working at a certain time with a producer or writer. Somehow this method has worked for me ever since I can remember. I’ve always had a fairly easy no stress relationship with the creative process. Suffice to say I quit for nearly 20 years because I’m well aware that I need to work with a great producer and it took that long for me to get the opportunity to work with one. (laughs)

I’ve always had a great ability to delay gratification.

Is there a preparation phase for your process? Do you require your tools to be laid out in a particular way, for example, do you need to do 'research' or create 'early versions'?

I don’t prepare. I have meticulously built my studio so that nothing gets in the way of my creative process.

I think I don’t prepare because the significance of that somehow freaks me out.

Do you have certain rituals to get you into the right mindset for creating? What role do certain foods or stimulants like coffee, lighting, scents, exercise or reading poetry play?

I don’t really have a ritual in this regard. I do have this thing about my creative space being clean and minimal with no chaos. Maybe that is my ritual.

What do you start with?

I try to be mindful of my stress level. I’m not creative when I’m stressed so I do things that make me feel open and relaxed.

How difficult is that first line of text, the first note?

I usually don’t start unless I’ve got a line or title that I feel strongly about.

When do the lyrics enter the picture?

Lyrics are the first order of business for me. Not a finished lyric but a strong sense of knowing what I’m writing about.

Having said this, much of my work is stream of consciousness. I guess it’s just free styling really. Where do they come from? They occur to me naturally once I feel strongly about something. I’m not saying
I have to understand the subject matter. In fact, much of my work is about the sadness, confusion, loss and suffering that comes my not understanding something. I think this is where a lot of my best material comes from.

Do lyrics need to grow together with the music or can they emerge from a place of their own?

Both.

What makes lyrics good in your opinion?

Subject matter that sheds some much needed light on something or communicates that we’re not alone. I try to give the listener a door to their own feelings or sometimes I’m searching for a door to my own feelings.

What are your own ambitions and challenges in this regard?

All of the above.

Once you've started, how does the work gradually emerge?

Some songs happen in a few minutes and some I work on for a week. Some are ideas I’ve tossed around in my head for years.

Many writers have claimed that as soon as they enter into the process, certain aspects of the narrative are out of their hands. Do you like to keep strict control over the process or is there a sense of following things where they lead you?

If I’m well prepared. Meaning my thoughts are sorted in my mind. Some of the songs will seem to write themselves and sometimes I rely on good old fashioned experience to be able to articulate what I’m trying to say.

Often, while writing, new ideas and alternative roads will open themselves up, pulling and pushing the creator in a different direction. Does this happen to you, too, and how do you deal with it?

I usually let things be what they want to be as long as the work is potent and meets my criteria for what I enjoy in a song.

There are many descriptions of the creative state. How would you describe it for you personally?
I call it a meditation but when I’m in the zone I feel it’s all a meditation. Life I mean.

Especially in the digital age, the writing and production process tends towards the infinite. What marks the end of the process?

I’ve read that a lot of people tweak endlessly but for me it’s like a cake. When it’s finished it’s finished with some exceptions of course.

Once a piece is finished, how important is it for you to let it lie and evaluate it later on?

I’ll sometimes make a few tweaks here and there but generally I don’t continue to work on it.

I do reference my own music when I’m having problems getting to something that I did right on a previous song.

What's your take on the role and importance of production, including mixing and mastering for you personally?

I think production is key. At this point in my life I don’t consider myself a producer but I have a strong desire for my music to be in its own lane so for me there are very few producers out there that I feel can do this.

It’s aspirational but my desire is for my music to live in its own rarified airspace. This is high minded I know but it’s helpful to strive for this.

How involved do you get in this?

I work with producers that I feel are beating to the sound of their own drum. This resonates with me. I work with John Carroll Kirby and Nick Hakim and I feel they both embody this.

After finishing a piece or album and releasing something into the world, there can be a sense of emptiness.

I can’t relate to this. I think celebrating your hard work is a super important part of the process. All of my favorite artists throughout history played as hard as they worked. I subscribe to this.

How do you return to the state of creativity after experiencing it?

Celebrating or rewarding yourself when you’ve completed something is the best way to get back to work I believe”.

I don’t mean to mangle this interview but, as it is extensive and detailed, I am editing down this from FADER for clarity. Though some of the flow and narrative might be cut short and fragmented. I think what remains should compel people to read the entire thing – and give a good idea of what Sundown is about and Chacon as an artist:

“Nobody else in the world has had a career quite like that of Eddie Chacon. He started his first band, Fry By Nite, with his two buddies, Cliff and Mike, in the mid-1970s at the age of 12, playing shows in the Castro Valley’s abandoned movie theaters. Fry By Nite never took off, but those theaters turned out to be some of the smallest venues those three kids would ever play. Mike Bordin founded Faith No More; Cliff Burton joined Metallica.

Eddie went in a different direction. He moved to L.A., got a job as a staff songwriter at CBS Songs, and earned himself some respectable credits — though the debut solo album he’d been working on turned out to be a flop. He wound up in Miami, signing a deal with Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew. The idea was that Chacon would record an album called Sugaree under the pseudonym Edward Anthony Lewis. But sessions with the legendary Dust Brothers turned out to be — according to a recent article in the Guardian — “an education in heavy weed consumption.” Chacon ended up being credited as an engineer on 2 Live Crew’s infamous As Nasty As They Wanna Be — the first album in history to be legally defined as obscene. But he was 26 years old and no closer to realizing his dreams of working as a solo singer-songwriter.

Chacon moved to New York and signed with Josh Deutsch at Capitol Records. Soon after, he met another young, aspiring singer-songwriter, Charles Pettigrew, on the C Train. The two bonded over a copy of Marvin Gaye’s Trouble Man — nobody’s sure exactly which of them was carrying the LP — and realized they were both signed to the same man at the same label. They teamed up and, as Charles and Eddie, wound up with one of the biggest R&B hits of the 1990s (the smooth and irrepressible “Would I Lie To You?”) and a pretty successful debut album, Duophonic. They also wrote and recorded “Wounded Bird,” a sugar-packet-sweet ballad for Tony Scott’s True Romance. But their second album, Chocolate Milk, would end up being their last. The music industry had changed around them. What they thought would be a hiatus in 1997 turned out to be an amicable breakup. And though they started talking daily again in the early aughts, even sharing ideas for new music, Charles never told Eddie he was sick. He died of cancer in 2001.

PHOTO CREDIT: DeMarquis McDaniels

Eddie hadn’t stopped making music. He wrote songs for other people, including the English pop group Eternal. He worked with the Danish producer Poul Bruun, which led to credits on a handful of massive Scandinavian records. But, as he told Aquarium Drunkard in 2020, he was lost in those years. One day he walked into his studio, the same as he had every day, and realized he didn’t want to make any music. He was depressed. A perceptive friend sent Eddie a camera with a note saying “I think you’d be good at this.” Somewhat inevitably, he was. In fact, he ended up as the Creative Director at Autre Magazine.

It was only in 2018, when a mutual friend set up a meeting in L.A. between Chacon and the jazz-soul songwriter and producer John Carroll Kirby, that he really entertained the notion of returning to music. The result was Pleasure, Joy, and Happiness — a moody, gently funky, oddly meditative record that sounded unlike anything Chacon had done before. Chacon, between a falsetto and a honeyed croon, always seemed to be ruminating on something or dispensing some gentle wisdom. And, though at times it seemed as though it might have been his swan song — a perfectly unexpected record to call time on a completely unconventional career — Chacon is back again. His new album, Sundown, is out this Friday.

Our house was filled with music. I’m the youngest of three, and my older brother was obsessed with Led Zeppelin and Robin Trower and [Crossby, Stills, Nash & Young]; Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon and Pink Floyd Animals, these were the soundtracks of my childhood. That was through one bedroom wall, and on the other wall, my brother Jim was obsessed with early Barbara Streisand and the soundtrack from Lady Sings the Blues where Diana Ross is playing the part of Billie Holiday. So I just had this mixture of hard rock — my mom and dad called it acid rock — and crooning soul music. I became obsessed with James Brown when he came out with “Get on Good Foot (Parts 1 & 2).” I remember having that 45 and playing it on our green shag carpet on this little record player we had. We three little kids danced around that 45 until we wore it into the ground, man. We would go to Walgreens and buy the same 45 over and over again because it would get so scratched up from skipping all around.

Were you writing your own music as early as Fry By Night?

My brother tells me that I would make up songs and tell him they were mine from the time I was six years old. He would say, “You didn’t write that.” I would say, “Yes, I did.” I was trying to make up songs that sounded like the Delfonics or Bloodstone, pivotal songs to me. There was a band called Cold Blood featuring Lydia Pense from the San Francisco Bay Area — they were really popular in our house. She was a Janis Joplin-esque soul singer, a beautiful blonde girl singing like Janis Joplin. It freaked me out.

I can almost decipher the vocabulary of myself as a singer, where certain aspects of my tone came from. My voice has somewhat of a raspy grit, and I always used to try to mimic Lydia Pense. I wanted to have this crooning, easy, low tonality, and I became obsessed with the song “Natural High” by Bloodstone. Of course, Tower of Power was a pivotal band if you grew up in Northern California in the late ’60s and early ’70s — and, of course, Sly Stone. I can put together this little jigsaw puzzle of where different parts of my voice were formed.

When you then moved to New York City, it seems like you and Charles almost had a compulsive desire to keep writing music — that you were writing wherever and whenever you could.

That was largely driven by Josh Deutsch. I never met anybody like Josh, and I have to credit him for taking what was already a strong work ethic and upping the ante. This guy had me whipping out my guitar in taxi cabs going from Uptown to Downtown to a studio. I’m like, “Dude, we’re going to be in the car all of five minutes.” He’s like, “Just get it out, man, let’s do something.” We were lying on the ground, writing lyrics on napkins.

Then it just dissolves. When you realized you were leaving the label, did you think you would pick up and take it somewhere else?

We thought that what turned out to be a permanent break would just be a short break initially. There was a series of awful events in which, around that time, Charles lost his father and his sister, and he was overcome with grief. I was much younger and far more narcissistic, so I was more driven by the music and career. I wasn’t able to process what he was going through the way I would’ve processed it today. So months turned into years, and a few years after that, I got a phone call that Charles had passed away. I didn’t know that he had cancer. In fact, within six months of his death, we’d started talking on the phone again, sending cassettes back and forth to each other with song ideas. I remember one of the last things we said was, “Let’s get an attorney to get us a record deal again and make another record.”

All I could think of was how we started with nothing. I was on my last $500, and I know he was broke too. I looked around, and by that time I’d bought a beautiful house in the hills, my rockstar dream home, and I had my walls covered with 25 gold records. I had this immense sadness come over me: The man who traversed the whole journey with me from nothingness to us both having our dreams come true — homes and comfort and all the joy and gratification that goes with that — was gone. I remember being in touch with those emotions, and it made me feel such a depth of sadness.

PHOTO CREDIT: DeMarquis McDaniels

What is that you find in this communion with other people, in collaboration, that helps you to find your peak?

I’ve always felt like the job of a good collaborator or producer is to mine the gold in the people you work with. I find that the essence of great collaborations is a genuine interest in helping out the other, not helping out yourself. It has to be in the service of someone else to be great, I believe.

When did you realize that you wanted to keep doing this — that this was the beginning of something, not the end of something?

I didn’t have a realization. I have zero entitlement and don’t think the universe owes me anything. I just take it moment to moment. I never really thought of it as a followup record. And even if it was a followup record, what I’ve learned from my past experience with Charles is don’t overthink it. If there’s magic in the room, let it be. So we didn’t continue with the heaviness or significance of, “We’re making a followup record. We’ve got to make it better or bigger or splashier.” We just showed up”.

I am going to end with some positive reviews for the sublime Sundown. If you are not sold or still unsure whether you want to check out this album, then I hope the reviews push you towards the affirmative. Record Collector Mag had this to say about one of the musical treasures of last year:

“The re-emergence of US soul singer Eddie Chacon has been one of the more heartening musical stories of recent times. In a nutshell: Chacon was one half of Charles & Eddie, the early 90s R&B duo who scored an international smash hit in 1992 with their then-inescapable debut single, the sugar-sweet Would I Lie To You?. The pair’s fame was short-lived as subsequent singles failed to set the charts alight and their second album, 1995’s Chocolate Milk, struggled to find an audience. They were dropped by their label and Chacon embarked on a series of unrealised projects, including collaborations with 2 Live Crew and the Dust Brothers. When his former partner, Charles Pettigrew, died of cancer in 2001, Chacon put music on hold to become a successful fashion photographer.

Still, an urge to create music that had taken hold as a teenager wasn’t easily shaken off. Chacon released “dark disco” as The Polyamorous Affair with his wife Sissy Sainte-Marie from 2008-11, but to little fanfare. It was only when he met pianist and producer John Carroll Kirby in 2019 that Chacon’s musical fortunes changed. Kirkby’s production work with Solange on A Seat At The Table (2016) and When I Get Home (2019), along with performance credits on Frank Ocean’s 2019 single DHL and The Avalanche’s We Will Always Love You (2020), meant he was in demand. He and Chacon bonded over music and began jamming together, work that coalesced into 2020’s Pleasure, Joy And Happiness, a sublime and cathartic collection of modern soul that was apparently meant to bring closure to Chacon’s career, but through word of mouth became the hit that launched an unlikely third act.

Sundown takes the slinky, lo-fi wooziness of Pleasure, Joy And Happiness and uses it as a blueprint to expand upon. Where there were brittle drum machines, there’s now shuffling percussion and inventive drumming. Layers of synths have been joined by live flute, saxophone and trombone. There’s a new sense of confidence in the vocals, the clarity of the melodies, and production flourishes. Lyrically, too, there’s a shift – the troubled soul-searching has (mostly) given way to a sense of joy and acceptance at his place in the world.

There are songs here that do not so much start as saunter into earshot, in no rush to reveal themselves and all the more seductive for it. Haunted Memories is a case in point, beginning uncertainly – all fluttering Rhodes and searching, stuttering beats – until a groove has emerged from nowhere for Chacon to drape a subtly sing-song melody upon. Or the soft jazz-funk of Far Away, with its insistent groove that simmers away seductively beneath Chacon’s careworn falsetto. Songs that at first appear slight become formidable with repeated listens without losing their freshness, it’s some trick Elsewhere, as on the glorious strutting dry-funk of Holy Hell, the languid, warped soul of Step By Step, or the sunshine groove of Morning Sun there’s a directness to Chacon’s music that adds a new dimension to his sound. As does the healing, near-new age sound of the title track, a blissed-out evocation of the wonder of nature that sounds inspired by Chacon and Kirby’s Ibizan jam sessions. Far from signifying an ending, Sundown suggests Eddie Chacon is just getting started”.

There are two more reviews I am keen to get to. MOJO definitely showed a lot of love and respect for Eddie Chacon’s Sundown. An album I only recently listened to in full. I think that it is so magnificent. Revealing something different every time you pass through it. An album you can not listen to only once. It is such an astonishing work:

"I ALWAYS said if I got my head screwed on straight I could make one great record where I was honest with myself," Eddie Chacon told me in 2020. We were talking just prior to the release of his debut solo LP, Pleasure, Joy And Happiness, released some 28 years after his brief shot at fame with neo-soul duo Charles And Eddie, and following a good decade in which he’d turned his back on music completely. "I’d wanted to make this album my whole life," he said, but it’s taken my whole life to get there.”

That album, an ethereal, stripped-down collection of haunting confessionals, recorded with Solange and Frank Ocean collaborator John Carroll Kirby, in which Chacon revisited past failures and regrets, his haunted falsetto floating on Kirby’s vaporous synth lines, all underpinned by skeletal drum patterns, was Krapp’s Last Tape via Channel Orange. It was, in Chacon’s words, his “one great record”. So where do you go after you’ve made the album you’ve been waiting your whole life to make? How do you follow up on a swan song?

First you go back to working with the man who made it all happen. Recorded in Ibiza with Kirby, utilising the island’s sole Fender Rhodes, and then bolstered at 64 Sound Studios in northeast Los Angeles, with Logan Hone on flutes and saxophone, Elizabeth Lea on trombone, Will Logan on drums and David Leach on percussion, Sundown is both a bigger sounding LP than Pleasure, Joy And Happiness but also a deeper one. Ushered in by the deceptively simple opening track, Step By Step, a reeling ‘quiet storm’ appeal to “listen to your heart”, reminiscent in its seductive slink of peak-era Sade or Robert Palmer, here is an enticing soul record about barely hanging on (Far Away), losing everything (Comes And Goes), the difficulty of long-term relationships (Holy Hell), blaming the world for your own failures (Same Old Song), and, on the title track, age and loss. Tellingly, Chacon and Kirby say Sundown was inspired by repeat listens to Pharoah Sanders’ cyclical 1975 live track, Greeting To Saud, vibing on its meditative power. That mood is certainly present but so is that seductive atmosphere of ’80s/’90s soul; ruminations on mortality, failure and experience dressed up in a livery of pointillist seduction. The resultant combination is incredibly powerful, an emotionally rich and often lyrically dark album underpinned by both the “be here now” spirituality of Sanders and the “in the moment” seduction of Sade and Palmer. At its heart is a powerful message: if you’ve lost everything you can still embrace the beauty of the present instant or, as Chacon sings on the deceptively light Every Kinda People groove of the final track, The Morning Sun, “The morning sun/Touches everyone”.

Let’s finish off with The Guardian and their review of Sundown. Awarding it five stars, it is clear that this album should have got a lot more airplay around the world. I heard it on stations like Soho Radio, though it didn’t really reach the commercial stations. It is an album that deserved more exposure and love. Let’s hope stations tune in when Eddie Chacon puts out his next album – whenever that comes:

“It was hard not to notice a tone of amazement about the glowing reviews of Eddie Chacon’s debut solo album, Pleasure, Joy and Happiness. Whatever musical highlights people expected 2020 to bring, a warped soul album by a singer in his 50s, working with a producer who had previously collaborated with Harry Styles, Solange and Frank Ocean, wasn’t among them. Nor was a comeback by one half of Charles & Eddie, previously filed away alongside Tasmin Archer and Tony Di Bart in a drawer marked early 90s one-hit wonders. No matter that Charles & Eddie had been a more substantial proposition than most of said drawer’s other denizens, as anyone who listened to the charming retro-soul of their 1992 album Duophonic would tell you.

Their debut single Would I Lie to You? was the kind of hit that achieves what you might call obliterating ubiquity: a global smash that succeeded in overshadowing everything else its authors did. Under the circumstances, you couldn’t blame Chacon for walking away, which he eventually did, becoming a photographer and creative director after his erstwhile partner Charles Pettigrew’s death from cancer in 2001. And yet, nearly 30 years after Chacon’s solitary hit, and apparently out of nowhere, here was Pleasure, Joy and Happiness, an understated, left-field triumph, Chacon’s plaintive but emollient voice drifting over collaborator John Carroll Kirby’s gauzy, off-beam synths, samples and electric piano, singing songs that seemed to speak of hard-won experience: Trouble, Hurt, My Mind Is Out of Its Mind.

The question that haunts Sundown is whether the unexpected success of Pleasure Joy and Happiness can be replicated: a sense of anticipation attends its release that clearly wasn’t there before its author’s status was upgraded from one-hit wonder to low-key R&B legend. The answer turns out to be a qualified yes: it replicates its predecessor’s success precisely because it doesn’t try to replicate it, taking a noticeably different route to invoking a mood of hazy calm. The sound has shifted. The drum machines have largely been replaced – or at least augmented – by live percussion; there is brass and woodwind alongside the samples and electronics; it feels jazzier.

On Far Away and Haunted Memories, Chacon, now 59, sings over muffled clusters and runs of electric piano notes, like a particularly inconspicuous improvised solo that runs throughout the track. The sound of Same Old Song exists on the cusp of pillow-soft early 70s soul and the era’s spiritual jazz. Chacon has mentioned Pharoah Sanders as an influence on the album, although the Lonnie Liston Smith of Astral Traveling might be a more obvious comparison – and its electronic washes and drones stop it shifting into the realm of homage or pastiche. And with its spiralling synth solo and 80s groove, you could append the descriptor “jazz funk” to single Holy Hell without anyone getting too upset, while noting that it is jazz funk of a distinctly warped cast.

The tone of the songs has shifted, too. Although a vein of melancholy still runs through the album – “I’ve been thinking too much,” it opens, “I’ve been barely hanging on” – it’s more obviously tempered by optimism, albeit optimism of an ambiguous variety. “We’ve got each other and that’s a start,” offers Holy Hell’s equivocal assessment of a relationship. “We can keep on shining / But we can’t stop the hands of time.” Meanwhile, The Morning Sun’s component parts seem to pull towards slightly different ends: the blissed-out lyrics and breezy sax at odds with the slightly discordant, faintly ominous synth weirdness that’s going on underneath them.

Tightly written melodies – as on Holy Hell or Step by Step’s appealingly rough-hewn take on a vintage slow jam – vie for space with more abstract tracks. Haunted Memories feels as if you are eavesdropping on a jam session at the precise moment when a song starts to emerge through the mist. The title track moves in the opposite direction, gradually, joyously unravelling. Regardless of the setting, Chacon’s voice sounds fantastic – his falsetto on Comes and Goes is particularly gorgeous – and the effect is the same, potent and affecting: it’s an album that pulls the listener in close and envelops them in its rich, heady world for its entire duration.

When Pleasure, Joy and Happiness was released, Chacon talked about it as a culmination, half an hour of music into which he’d poured everything he had: “a perfect representation of who I am”. It made you wonder if it was a one-off, a curio unlikely to be followed up. Soothing, moving, occasionally disquieting and utterly immersive, Sundown suggests its predecessor was something else entirely: merely the first step of an entirely unlikely and entirely delightful career renaissance”.

An album that I was keen to promote and spotlight. One that I think everyone should listen to. If you have not heard it or are not aware of Eddie Chacon, then I would urge you to play Sundown. It is an album that you will not forget! It did get some press, though not as much as it should have. More an underground album rather than one that was reviewed a lot and played far and wider. It is a same, as Sundown is a work of…

MAJESTIC beauty.

FEATURE: Radical Optimism and Some Dissenting Voices: Why Dua Lipa Remains Underrated and Is One of Our Most Important Artists

FEATURE:

 

 

Radical Optimism and Some Dissenting Voices

PHOTO CREDIT: Tyrone Lebon 

Why Dua Lipa Remains Underrated and Is One of Our Most Important Artists

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I am a big supporter of Dua Lipa…

PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Beleiu for ELLE

and feel she is one of our most important artists. Someone who, in terms of the Pop league, seems to be rated below someone like Taylor Swift. In fact, a lot of U.S. Pop artists seem to get more acclaim and backing from the media. Maybe a bigger fanbase. I am thinking about everyone from Olivia Rodrigo and Billie Eilish through to Drake and Ariana Grande. I find Dua Lipa’s work more varied and energising than, say, Taylor Swift’s. More individual and deeper than many of her contemporaries. We also have the excellent Charli XCX but, compared to the fellow British Pop artist, Lipa seems to be a more wide-ranging artist in terms of her talents and sound. A figure and personality I am more drawn to. Someone whose visual aspect and interviews are always standout. She comes across as a passionate and ambitious artist who has a long future. I feel, after a few small film roles, that she has a genuine career in film. Someone like Lady Gaga: she who can turn her hand to any role. I also think that Lipa, with a successful podcast and book service:

“Service95 is a global editorial platform founded by Dua Lipa. Launched in February 2022, it encompasses a website, weekly newsletter, the podcast Dua Lipa: At Your Service and the Service95 Book Club.

The website and weekly newsletter feature a considered curation of lists, stories, perspectives and conversations with a global lens. There are brilliant articles from some of the world’s most compelling voices – on everything from style and arts to social justice and politics.

In Dua Lipa: At Your Service, our founder goes deep in conversation with some of the world’s most inspiring minds – from actors to activists. Its three seasons are brimming with fascinating stories and life lessons that inspire us all not simply to be more curious about the world around us but, ultimately, to be of service.

In the Service95 Book Club, books represent diverse global voices, telling powerful stories spanning fiction, memoir and manifesto. Members are invited to read along with the Book of the Month aided by discussion guides, author Q&As and further reading lists to bring readers closer to the authors, their inspirations and the worlds they create”.

I do think that Dua Lipa is an artist not as respected and celebrated as she should be. When it comes to modern Pop/music icons, there are several in the U.S. We have some great artists here. I think that Dua Lipa might be our standout artist. Someone who should be put on the same pedestal as the biggest artists out there. As a performer and songwriter, I feel she is superb. In a modern scene where the likes of Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo are among a wave of brilliant women inspiring the next generation – you could throw in SZA and any number of contemporaries -, Dua Lipa is subjected to as much doubt and scrutiny as she is acclaim. I know I have recently written about the majestic Lipa. I have argued how she is one of our most underrated idols. That is apparent when you look at some of the reviews for Radical Optimism. Even though music critics have to react to the album on the first listen or so and cannot have too much time to ruminate, it seems like there have been some unfair write-ups. Dua Lipa is headlining Glastonbury in the summer. She has revealed that a 1980s Pop legend will join her on stage. She is going to put together an incredible set! Even though music opinion is subjective, I do think there have not been enough reviews recognising the strengths of Radical Optimism. Perhaps Dua Lipa being compared with contemporaries too much rather than people reviewing the album on its strengths. It makes me think, once more, how Lipa remains undervalued. I guess the fact that she claimed the album was influenced by psychedelic sounds/act and Britpop might have lead people in the wrong direction – as there are more Dance sounds and 1980s/1990s Pop nods that hint more to Europe and America than British mid-‘90s Pop. Even so, the more I listen to Radical Optimism, the more I think that it will ensure as one of this year’s strongest.

It is a tough climate and industry. I think that too many artists give too much away on social media. Feel they need to be revealing or open up their private lives. In a bid for connection, transparency and popularity, they can end up revealing too much. Dua Lipa’s Instagram has that mix of personal and professional. She posts photos and videos of professional engagements, together with snaps and insights into her life. I feel a lot have called her feed a little personality-free or like a model’s life. The music seen as lacking ideas. In both cases people are wrong. I am going to end by celebrating Dua Lipa and hinting at what her future might hold. I want to bring in some different reviews for (the brilliant) Radical Optimism. The Line of Best Fit, in one of the more dismissive reviews, were clearly not listening to the same album – though everyone is entitled to their own opinion:

“Lipa has described Radical Optimism as indebted to both 1990s rave culture and psychedelia. The intriguing addition of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker and producer/remixer Danny L. Harle as producers and co-writers suggests that Lipa was at least serious about her intentions, but these influences don’t really come to fruition. Opener “End of an Era” introduces the album’s mood as more rooted in balearic house: all sun-warmed synths, laid-back beats and optimistic lyrics about a holiday romance. It’s all very effortless, until a stilted spoken word section kills the mood (“another girl falls in love, another girl leaves the club” – ahh, the duality of woman). The catchy “French Exit” sustains the vibe with a gorgeous, distinctly Mediterranean guitar/drum duet, but Lipa again breaks the mood with her dorky spoken French. Spoken word bits are often awkward, but it feels significant here that what magnetism Lipa possesses doesn’t carry over when she’s required to be more informal, more ostensibly human.

The propulsive “Houdini” is deathly addictive, a fantastic first single choice which continues Future Nostalgia’s aerobics-core disco revival. “Whatcha Doing” is also in the vein, but unfortunately sounds like a re-run of Lipa’s Barbie soundtrack single “Dance the Night”. Another single, “Illusion”, is a showcase of Lipa in possibly her most fitting role; that of dance single vocalist. Here she is tasked with embodying known emotional signifiers and tropes rather than creating her own. “Falling Forever” is a bold attempt at a more avant-garde kind of dance track, but just sounds bizarre, and curiously like it’s being played at 1.25x speed. The “Running Up That Hill” drum fill is a neat steal in theory, but its gravitas doesn’t serve the song. There’s a few more unexpected bits of instrumentation on the album – like the flute in the mid-tempo “Maria” – but they all sound like late add-ons to spice up the palette of synths, beats and Spanish guitar.

When Lipa breaks out of the dance-pop mold, her confidence and conviction drops substantially. “These Walls” is a more introspective take on the breezy, rooftop terrace mood of much of the album, but aside from a woozy guitar line it’s bland and corny, its production and lyrics giving Natasha Bedingfield-lite (“If these walls could talk / They’d tell us to break up” – really?). The closing track “Happy For You” radiates zen feelings about an ex’s new relationship, and even calls back to an earlier Lipa hit (“Together you look hot as hell”) but it’s weightless, dull and lacking, as though the peace Lipa is describing could just passively happen to a person, rather than be the result of hard work or struggle. As the album fades out, the lasting impression is absence – of a twist in the tale, a subtle kernel of doubt, the weight of experience”.

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The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis provided his thoughts on Radical Optimism. It is hard to shake off that feeling that many critics are writing about the album in relation to what was promised in terms of its influences and sources, rather than setting that aside and viewing it on its own merits. Going into things a little clouded and fixated on trying to find Britpop and Psychedelic touches:

“But it’s so far removed from what Dua Lipa has claimed it is that you find yourself frantically searching for evidence of what she might have meant. Does the “psychedelic” part refer to the presence of songwriter/producer Kevin Parker, who certainly started his career making lysergic alt-rock with Tame Impala, but turns up here in his pop hitmaker guise familiar from his work with Lady Gaga and the Weeknd? Is the regular presence of an acoustic guitar – and a pretty sliver of electric slide that decorates These Walls – supposed to signify Britpop?

PHOTO CREDIT: Tyrone Lebon

You could drive yourself mad doing it, so perhaps it’s better to focus on what is here, rather than what isn’t. It’s sunlit and appealingly frothy – you could divine a lot from the fact that Radical Optimism was sent out to journalists under the pseudonym Candy Floss. That it lacks an immediately grabby pop anthem along the lines of Physical or New Rules doesn’t mean it lacks hooks: they’re just the kind that burrow under your skin without you noticing, as on singles Houdini and Illusion. Similarly, the production tends to subtlety: most of the sonic excitement happens in the lower end, in the busy acid lines that underpin Maria, the thunderous live drums of Falling Forever and the combination of slap bass and sprawling deep electronics behind Watcha Doing. Maria deals in Jolene-like love rivalry, Happy for You ends the album on a note of Someone Like You-ish passive aggression – the kind of song in which the protagonist professes at length to be delighted at how hot their ex’s new partner is, which means the album’s much-vaunted optimistic tone takes on a hint of a fixed grin – but for most part, the lyrics are of the type that rhyme “sweetest pleasure” with “gonna be together” and “this could be forever”, ie they seem to exist primarily in order to give the singer some words to sing rather than actually expressing anything.

In a way, that seems very on-brand. Dua Lipa’s refusal to engage with the more soul-bearing aspects of 21st-century celebrity has made her the kind of pop star one suspects Andy Warhol might have had a lot of time for: a slightly remote, visually arresting space into which fans can project whatever they want. Profile writers looking for an angle have recently suggested she’s everything from big-sisterly “agony aunt for lovelorn club kids” to a “dauntless warrior queen” to a sharp-eyed operator carefully plotting every part of her success. Being a blank slate has served her well thus far, although it’s seldom a strong long-term strategy, and Radical Optimism lacks a unique personality as a result – particularly compared with the vivid writing of her peers. It’s a well-made album with mass appeal and, of course, there’s no law that pop music has to be deep. But the adjective in its title certainly doesn’t belong”.

Before getting to that interview from The Guardian, The Independent were closer to the mark in their five-star review. I feel that there is a lot to recommend about Dua Lipa’s third studio album. Even though her best work still lies ahead, it does show that she is someone always moving and trying to do something different to her peers:

“You have to admire Dua Lipa’s steely sense of purpose. Back in 2017, when she was working on her self-titled debut album, she told her A&R Joe Kentish that she planned to work with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker on her third album. Kentish laughed and told the emerging star to hold her horses. But seven years later, here she is with her third album, Radical Optimism, and here’s Parker, playing and producing on seven of the 11 tracks.

This artistic conviction has been one of the Albanian-British artist’s driving traits from day one. We heard it in the uncompromising regime of her 2017 single “New Rules”, in the brisk edicts of “Don’t Start Now” (2019) and again on “Houdini”, the advance single for this record, on which she throws down the gauntlet to a potential lover with the line: “Prove you’ve got the right to please me.” Urgent, upbeat, demanding and funky, Lipa is a finger-snap personified throughout Radical Optimism.

She takes control from the off. A flurry of Seventies synth-flutes open “End of an Era”; that trademarked rubber-band-bass sends her striding onto a dancefloor to take the initiative. “Hey/ What’s your name?/ Come with me,” she demands. Parker’s dropped in some live percussion – the shimmer of a hi-hat, some bells and a chime – into the mix, contributing a more organic vibe to Lipa’s muscular brand of disco pop

But she doesn’t need a live band to create jeopardy; she’s always enjoyed the one-two punch of bass and vocals (fuelled by sparkly synths) to speed pulses. On “Houdini”, the melody builds as she urges a potential lover to “catch me before I go”, ramping up interplanetary levels of pressure by stressing that “time is passing like a solar eclipse”. Tick tock, snap to it!

The make-or-break stakes remain high on “Training Season”, where a rattling snare prods the unready into action. “Whatcha Doin’” finds another irresistibly elastic bass line catapulting Lipa into a romantic “collision”, while the club beat of “Illusion” finds her laughing at a player who’s “Tryna’ make me yours for life, takin’ me for a ride.” Her energy and swaggering self-confidence are contagious.

Fittingly for such an international artist, Lipa accessorises certain tracks with a little Eurodisco, skirt-twirling, sambuca-shot fun. There’s a Latin strum and flamenco handclaps on both “Maria” and “French Exit” (the latter a term for leaving without saying goodbye).

PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Beleiu for ELLE

There’s a dreamy little American slide guitar gilding the lower key on “These Walls”, whose melody is so sweetly peppy that non-Anglophones are unlikely to realise is a breakup song) and some gloriously abandoned ululation on “Falling Forever”, which makes you want to throw her hat into the ring for Eurovision 2025. The beat thunders on at a gallop as Lipa – often more of a pouty/breathy singer – really gives the vocal some welly.

Unlike many of her pop peers, Lipa doesn’t offer any diaristic glimpses into her private life, joking in a recent interview that she is too British to “spill guts”. She certainly sounds like a woman who has little time for that sort of smush. Like an Eighties aerobics instructor, she wants bodies on the dancefloor: feel the burn, sweat it out. Dress in something that allows you to bend and snap along with her, you’ll end up glowing with Lipa’s Radical Optimism”.

I want to bring in sections of that interview with The Guardian before I wrap things up. It highlights various sides of Dua Lipa. Why she should be as highlighted and celebrated as much as many of her female peers. I think that women like Dua Lipa, Billie Eilish and Beyoncé are so inspiring and empowering. Not only incredible artists, they are also activists and businesswomen. Multiple sides. A huge balancing act. You get the feeling that, through music and wider afield, Lipa wants to change the world and make a difference:

“Her best songs do sound as if they’ve been made for a hot, sunny day at Glastonbury (arguably more so than her prized night-time headline slot). If you’re looking for lyrical profundity, Dua Lipa’s music is not your go-to. Most of her songs, written by a team with her at the helm, are about being betrayed by rubbish boyfriends, not standing any nonsense from rubbish boyfriends, having great sex with rubbish boyfriends and dumping rubbish boyfriends. But if you’re after electro-pop dancefloor bangers, she’s up with the best (One Kiss with Calvin Harris, Be The One, Physical, New Rules).

Lipa was born in London to Kosovan-Albanian parents who fled Kosovo in 1992, just after Yugoslavia had been dissolved and at a time of growing discrimination against ethnic Albanians. Her mother, Anesa, the child of a Kosovan father and Bosnian mother, trained as a lawyer. Her father, Dukagjin, is the son of Seit Lipa, an esteemed historian and a former head of the Kosovo Institute of History. In the 1980s, Dukagjin was a member of the Kosovan rock band Oda, before training as a dentist. In England, their qualifications were useless. So they waited tables while retraining – Dukagjin in marketing and Anesa in tourism.

I tell her I’m struggling with the theme of radical optimism, particularly in such a polarised, war-torn world. Lipa has been vocal in her criticism of the Israeli government and her support of the Palestinian people. “You know, it’s not just Israel and Gaza,” she says, “it’s also Russia and Ukraine. And there is so much happening in Sudan. There’s so much going on in our world that’s horrible. I think everybody’s feeling that sense of hopelessness.”

Exactly. So where do we find optimism? “For me, music has always served as a form of escapism. It’s about community, togetherness. It’s one language that we can all universally connect with.”

Agreed, art can be a great way to escape and bond. But I still don’t get the optimism. “I just like to see things in a positive way. Every time when you look back and in hindsight go, ‘Oh, that thing that upset me is so irrelevant now.’” And the radical element? “It’s the idea of being radically accepting of who you are, of your flaws. It comes over time, learning about yourself, going through different experiences, maturing. Understanding that being forgiving towards someone is just as important for them as it is for you. It’s about being able to move on. That is radical acceptance in its clearest form.” One song, Happy for You, sums up her philosophy of radical optimism – she spots an ex with his new model girlfriend and finds it in her heart to be pleased he’s found love.

Music writers have pointed out that in an era dominated by female singers with a distinct USP (Beyoncé empowers, Taylor confesses, Adele provides a shoulder to cry on), Lipa does not have one. She would probably agree and say that’s her strength. There are many Duas; she contains lucrative multitudes. So there is the singer who gets you dancing; the bikini-clad Instagram babe who always seems to be holidaying with a hot boyfriend (actor Anwar Hadid, film-maker Romain Gavras and now Masters of the Air star Callum Turner); the #sponsoredcontent creator who writes on X: “So fun being back with my @porsche family for 24hrs in Singapore!!!” Then there is the campaigner who wants to educate about social injustice, and the arts curator who runs a book club and interviews literary giants (she has taken the club to women’s prisons). And finally, there is the aspiring media tycoon who founded the website Service95 in 2022, which she describes as a “global style, arts and society venture – the ultimate cultural concierge – at the service of the reader”.

Perhaps it’s the podcasts that reveal most about her character and ambitions. Interviews with Shuggie Bain author Douglas Stuart, campaigner Monica Lewinsky and pop star Charli XCX were beautifully handled. But what’s most interesting is how little she divulges about herself. Often her subjects will tell Lipa a story about fame or the music industry, for example, and say that she must have experienced a similar thing. We wait for the revelation, but Lipa skilfully bypasses it and segues on to her next point. It’s a conjuring trick of sorts. She appears to invite us into her life – showing us what she reads, where she holidays, which issues she cares about – while revealing nothing truly intimate.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tyrone Lebon

Is she aware of how little of herself she gives away in her podcasts? “Oh, 1,000%,” she says. “I guess I just wear different hats, and when I’m in my podcast world, and especially when I’m interviewing different artists, I’m there for them and for their story.”

You have an incredible knack of not answering their questions, I say. She smiles, curious. “Go on,” she says. Take Charli XCX, I say. When she asks which songs of yours you hate playing, you don’t answer. “Well, that’s really interesting because I don’t have a song that I hate playing,” she says.

OK then, one you’ve written that you hate?

“Yeah, I have that, but I can’t tell you that.”

Exactly, I say, but you’re happy for Charli XCX to tell you. “That’s entirely her prerogative. I don’t want to say because I write with other people. It could be a song that someone’s really proud of. I’m not going to go and shit on that.”

So next time Charli XCX guests on her podcast and offers up her least favourite song, is she going to tell her to keep it to herself so she doesn’t cause offence? No, she says. “I love how open she is, it’s great. Maybe I’m a bit more of an overthinker.”

She tells me about Radical22 Publishing, her publishing and production arm. “Through my book club, I get sent lots of new books, and if I find a story that I love, then maybe I can help produce it or bring it into a different world.” She mentions a documentary series on London’s musical heritage, directed by Oscar winner Asif Kapadia that Radical22 is producing. “It’s about Camden, which is my home. I’m so excited about that. I want to grow with all these other aspects of my job.”

It’s now that I feel I’m seeing the real Dua Lipa. And it’s now that the podcasts she has made with Apple CEO Tim Cook and former New York Times editor-in-chief Dean Baquet begin to make sense. Sure, the music is important to her, but Lipa seems to be playing a longer game.

When she met Cook and Baquet, she saw the interviews as learning opportunities: how do you grow the world’s biggest tech company? How do you lead the world’s most influential media organisation? How do you plan for, shape and, of course, control your global success? Her interview with Baquet was strategic. The NYT had run an advert in May 2021 targeting Lipa and supermodels Bella and Gigi Hadid. The ad, paid for by the World Values Network headed by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, featured photos of the three women, with a headline saying “Bella, Gigi and Dua, Hamas calls for a second Holocaust. Condemn them now”. It claimed the women had accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and “vilified the Jewish State”. Lipa said at the time: “I utterly reject the false and appalling accusations”, and called it a “blatant misrepresentation” of who she is.

When she interviewed Baquet a year later, she interrogated him about the advert and told him how it had affected her. Baquet struggled to provide a convincing answer as to why the paper had run the ad, simply saying there was a church and state separation between editorial and advertising. But, I discover today, there was an even more politic reason for the podcast. It was Lipa’s way of resolving her problem with the NYT. What clued-up superstar wants to be at war with such a powerful organisation? “For me, it was important because I wasn’t working with the Times because of it.” You had boycotted it? “I wasn’t doing any media work with them because I felt I was put in danger. So it was important to talk to him about it. It was something that I needed to get off my chest.” She is no longer boycotting the NYT.

We’re giving a platform to voices we think need it, news people might not go looking for. We offer something different to the Guardian or the New York Times

What is fascinating in her interviews with Cook and Baquet is how much common ground she finds with them as cultural curators, media grandees and global influencers. As well as its book club and podcast, Service95 provides news features, restaurant reviews and travel pieces.

As she has almost 90 million Instagram followers, would I be right in thinking that she’d like to create a media empire? “Yeah, potentially. I think the media sphere is changing drastically.” And, yes, she understands perfectly why her fans may prefer to come to her for news. “We have a lot of subscribers. We’re giving a platform to voices that we think really need it, and it’s news that maybe people might not necessarily go looking for. I think we offer something different to what the Guardian or the New York Times are doing.”

Are you going to take my job? I whimper. “Definitely not,” she says. “I need you. Because I want to commission interesting stories, but I need the writer. I need the journalist. Journalists are super vital. The people who tell the stories are super important.”

She recently started to learn Spanish, French and Italian, and plans to be fluent in all three languages by the time she’s 35. Where do you see yourself then – a multilingual, singing media tycoon?

“Yeah, all of it,” she says. “Why not? Yeah. Hell, yeah.”

On my way out, I ask again about her shirt. “Isn’t it like the AC Milan top?”

“No, I designed it myself with my team,” she says firmly. “Do let me know if you want to write something for us.”

Thank you, I say, much appreciated.

“1,000%,” she says”.

I feel like the reviews for Radical Optimism have not been as sunny and considered as they should be (though sources like The New Yorker have been kind). No worries! I think the album will sell loads. Its streaming figures are impressive. The singles from the album have done really well. Even if they did not stay in the high numbers for as long as hoped, she still has scored three top tens from the album so far. She is going to bring that album to life at Glastonbury in June. We are also going to see Dua Lipa go on to bigger and better things. She will enjoy huge concert tours around the world. Documentaries and more film work. I can see Dua Lipa going on to do a lot of charity and humanitarian work. She is someone who is not only an incredibly powerful and incredible artist. She has so many facets. Much deeper and more impressive than many give her credit for! As compelling and important as her peers. Still in her twenties, we are going to see this incredible artist go from strength to strength. I feel she will produce an astonishing headline performance at Glastonbury. In years to come, we are going to hear and see so many different sides from Dua Lipa – though future albums and in other projects/guises. I think that the brilliant and hugely listenable Radical Optimism more than…

LIVES up to its title.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: A Summer-Ready Cocktail

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Şule Makaroğlu/Pexels

A Summer-Ready Cocktail

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WE have seen some great weather…

PHOTO CREDIT: Engin Akyurt/Pexels

as of late, yet it is always temporary. Spring has not really got into its groove yet. Many people are looking ahead to summer, as it seems we will get warmer and more settled weather. In spite of that, it has been nice to experience some summer-ready days! Some warmth and sunshine. It is not long until summer not so, as I do from time to time, I wanted to put out an uplifting mix that brings some audio sunshine at the least. A playlist and mixtape that is ready for the summer months. Songs you can play to summon the scent of the season. From some classics decades old and tracks released fairly recently, there should be enough in this mix that gets you in a better mood. Conjures up some temporary warmth. If you are in need or some summer cocktails and visions of warmer climes, then I hope that the mix below…

PHOTO CREDIT: Alesia Kozik/Pexels

DOES the job.

FEATURE: The Alchemy: The Generation Differences of Experiencing the Rise and Dominance of the Music Icon

FEATURE:

 

 

The Alchemy

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna photographed for Rolling Stone in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: Steven Meisel

The Generation Differences of Experiencing the Rise and Dominance of the Music Icon

_________

THERE has been a lot written…

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift/PHOTO CREDIT: Beth Garrabrant

about Taylor Swift’s latest album, THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Some see the album as not breaking ground and the same as her other albums. There have been big reviews like this. This is another one. A double album, some argue it could be edited better. Many fans love the album, though many have come out to say that it is not that interesting or different. One cannot argue against the fact that its creator is an icon. The biggest artist of her generation. There is almost this hegemony where Taylor Swift is dominant. Having won so many awards, broken records and been a part of one of the biggest tours of all time – her Eras Tour -, she is someone who has a legion of fans. Every one of her albums get so much hype and explosion. So many features and discussion. You can do your research, but there are so many articles written that dissect and discuss THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. I am not a massive Taylor Swift fan myself, though I admire her as an artist. She is a tremendous songwriter. Someone who is hugely inspiring and a modern icon. She will put out many more albums and no doubt appear in and direct films. I think we get to a point where each album she puts out will get more and more attention and scrutiny. It will break streaming records, sell massive units and then scoop loads of awards. Some would say that is deserved, though some would counter that it is because it is Taylor Swift: it would be wrong not to garner an artist and album with that much acclaim. One of the of the downsides of all this fame and focus means that Swift cannot really enjoy a private life in the way she would. I think she is also subjected to much more criticism than many artists. Also, a sense of pressure that future albums need to top what came before.

Taylor Swift is breaking records that Madonna previously held. Perhaps the two most successful female artists ever, Swift wants to distance herself from Madonna. That said, it won’t be long until the two collaborate on something. Madonna is in mind, as she is still touring. The Celebration Tour is a phenomenon. Sitting alongside Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Beyoncé's Renaissance World Tour as the biggest and most successful. Full of spectacle and wonder. Three music queens producing something history-making. I think Taylor Swift very much reminds people of Madonna. Not just in terms of the fact they are blonde Americans. In terms of what they have achieved in their golden days. One could say Madonna was the biggest artist in the world from the 1980s through to the 1990s. Her 1980s was hugely successful. Taylor Swift enjoying the same acclaim and peaks in the 2020s. I have been thinking about Madonna as more than one of her albums celebrates a big anniversary this year (Like a Virgin turns forty later in the year). I grew up listening to Madonna, so I am experiencing two music icons in different times. Comparing the experience of the modern icon and ones from the past. Both Taylor Swift and Madonna are massively acclaimed and brilliant artist, yet they have risen and reached their peak at very different times. In terms of how Madonna rose and became an icon. How Taylor Swift has today. It takes nothing away from the achievements of each, yet I feel the feeling and sensations you feel now are perhaps not as potent and enduring as they were back in the 1980s and 1990s.

One could say that Taylor Swift will go on to become more celebrated and successful than Madonna. This would have seemed inconceivable a few years ago even though, with her streaming figures and album sales rising – not to mention her huge wealth -, we are in a position where we may be witnessing an artist who is going to be the most successful woman of all time. Not that Madonna can be dethroned as the Queen of Pop – I am not sure whether Swift would call he music ‘Pop’ -, but we might be living through a time that we will never see again. In terms of a single artist achieving as much. When I was young, I experienced Madonna through traditional sources of the time: MTV, music T.V in general, radio and print media/music magazines. I was born in the same year her eponymous debut came out (1983), so I was very young watching her go from this promising artist to a world-straddling legend. Maybe 1989’s Like a Prayer was the moment where she was untouchable and unstoppable. Today, on tour and inspiring countless artists, she is still this amazingly important person and icon. Her impact will never fade. There are differences in how icons are made and how we make them today. In terms of the past, a lot of the reason Madonna became an icon – apart from the music – was because of her distinct music videos, the innovative nature of her tours, in addition to the fact her music was played on radio and we read interviews about her. All forms of media sharing their opinions on her. Pre-Internet, there was a slower build but one that was more exciting and enduing. I am not sure, if Madonna came through now, there would be quite the same affect and feeling now.

It is hard to explain. I think the Internet and social media now can make an icon faster. Taylor Swift able to share clips of songs and teasers. So much of the marketing and feedback is done online. You do see her music videos played, though I think the role of radio and music T.V. is far less important than social media and digital reviews. Her tours are also important. I think most of her acclaim and popularity has come in a shorter time. Swift has always been popular; the past few years have been particularly busy and eventful. A real explosion. Building from albums such as 2020’s folklore, this acceleration has been fuelled by social media, momentum and, obviously, a gifted and wonderful artist evolving and going from strength to strength. In decades to come, we will talk of Taylor Swift and think of her as one of the best artists of all time. Swift might well endure as long as Madonna, though I think it is less likely she may be touring like Madonna is now at the age of sixty-five. Swift has re-recorded some of her studio albums. I think it is easier to make an icon now, as there is so many more media outlets now. A much bigger network who can share music really fast. Does this take something away from the phenomenon of crowning and celebrating an icon?! I suppose the more we go digital and the more the Internet takes charge, things are going to feel different. I wanted to use Taylor Swift and Madonna as two icons from different times – though both are touring and recording at the same time. Growing up between Madonna albums and seeing this evolution and transformation. Different looks and sounds. The magazine articles and press discussion around her. She faced criticism and sexism, yet Madonna always came out fighting and was this indomitable artist who was in a league of her own.

Today, we have Taylor Swift. The embodiment of a modern-day icon. Someone who has the same fame and popularity as Madonna in her regency. It is wonderful seeing her get good press and doing so well. Whilst it is exciting and like we are part of history, there is something a little numb about it. Maybe it is the sheer amount of press and wave of acclaim that seems overwhelming. I think that the way an icon was constructed and defined decades ago was more impactful and dug deeper than it does today. Whether things are more mechanical. There is definitely something missing. I look back at old photos of Madonna and some early clips. That rush of nostalgia and warmth. In many ways, it is a great and strange time to be around. Remembering days where icons like Madonna and Prince were made. How that made us feel. How they endure and influence to this day. Being around now to see Taylor Swift rule and break records. It made me think about those differences and what separates them. Everything now is so much faster and full-on. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. Maybe good in some ways as we can see and hear more from an artist a lot faster. What is clear that two living icons (look at what Madonna is still capable of doing - over four decades since her debut album came out!), Madonna and Taylor Swift, are going to be adored and revered…

FOR decades more.

FEATURE: Generation X-Why-ZZZZ: How Ageism Against Women Is a Form of Discrimination That the Music Industry Is Slow to Eradicate

FEATURE:

 

 

Generation X-Why-ZZZZ

IN THIS PHOTO: Kylie Minogue

How Ageism Against Women Is a Form of Discrimination That the Music Industry Is Slow to Eradicate

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I know that it applies to…

PHOTO CREDIT: Elena Rubtsova/Pexels

all genders, though ageism is a form of discrimination that affects women most. This is not a new or surprising conversation. I think that there are a lot of forms of discrimination that still exist. Misogyny and sexism has not really radically shifted and improved. I guess we can say there is more awareness and acceptance of L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists. I still think that women are the recipients of most of the discrimination and marginalisation. Black women perhaps the least exposed and celebrated. Women still the minority when it comes to radio playlists. Festivals not fast enough to create balance. In terms of representation, celebration and equality, men in music are still seen as superior. There have been a few discussions over the past year or two that have centred around ageism. Perhaps not as talked about as sexism or misogyny, I remember Kylie Minogue acknowledging the fact that ageism is no longer seen as cool. This would have come after she was left off of BBC Radio 1’s playlist. Padam Padam was the first single from her acclaimed album, TENSION. It was not played by BBC Radio 1 – until complaints and people highlighting this changed that. I agree that ageism is not cool though, as Minogue – who is in her fifties – highlighted, it clearly was present. That does not mean that it has gone away. In fact, radio stations especially are still championing and including more younger female and male artists. Male artists do encounter ageism too, though it has always been something much more common regarding female artists.

Earlier this year, Pet Shop Boys claimed how there is no longer ageism in music. Their logic being that acts like that can still be popular. That there is this embrace of older acts. They are short of the mark. They can sell albums and get played on radio because they are established. And a male act. I don’t think that there is the same sort of security and visibility for older female artists. Women over the age of thirty or forty who are making steps into the industry struggle so much more than younger artists to get noticed and played. Recently, actor Kate Hudson revealed how she faced sexism when she tried to go into the music industry – at a shockingly young age. At the age of forty-five, Hudson is now launching a career in music:

“At the age of 45, Kate Hudson is launching her music career. That chapter of her career almost didn’t happen, though, because she was discouraged from even going down that path over a decade ago. Her shocking ageism experience probably isn’t the only story in Hollywood, but The Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery star has the clout and the power to make her dreams become a reality.

Husdon admitted that the unhelpful advice she received “jarred” her at the time. “It was in my early 30s and they basically said, ‘It’s done. Past. You’re too old,'” she told CBS Sunday Morning. “And for me, it wasn’t just about being a performer, it was about wanting to write music.” She admitted that “it kind of resonated for a bit” until she was ready to say, “Nah, f**k you. No, no one tells me what to do!” That brings her to this stage of her career and the launch of her debut album, Glorious.

Kate Hudson performs onstage at the 35th Annual GLAAD Media Awards held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on March 14, 2024 in Beverly Hills, California.

It took a long time for her music to reach the public, but not because of the music executive who tried to thwart her career — Hudson sometimes got in her own way. “I guess I wasn’t ready for it until now,” she revealed. “I just don’t care anymore what people think. It was never right whether it was my own stuff or feeling afraid to mess up my movie career. It just never felt right…until now. I’m just doing it”.

James lead Tim Booth recently told Channel 4 how he has faced ageism. A successful band who have been making albums for decades, they are not immune to that discrimination. I think it highlights how there is this preference for younger artists. How relevance is defined by age. Artists in their teens, twenties and early-thirties seen as cool and current, whereas any artist over that is ‘past it’. Will Young, in the video for his song, Falling Deep, worked with dancers his age (he is forty-five). He recognised how there is this desire and allure for young and fresh artist. If you are established and should be played because of that legacy, it seems less important to the industry. Will Young, in this article, acknowledged how there is particular discrimination against women. Ageism plays into a wider narrative and spectrum of discrimination. One that is affecting women more than anyone else. A recent report about gender equality also highlighted how there was age discrimination. Younger women in the industry less likely to face discrimination than those of a different generation:

“Prepared by MIDiA Research and featuring a forward by Melissa Etheridge, the report — available here — aggregates responses from 4,146 creators and professionals in the music industry. This research was done through an online global survey translated into 14 languages and executed in November and December of 2023.

Of these respondents, 64% were men, 32% were women and 6% were gender expansive, with this segment indicating that they identify as nonbinary, agender, transgender or other. One-on-one interviews were also conducted with women and gender expansive creators in the U.S., South Africa, France, Mexico, and India.

Among the key findings, the survey found that — despite some recently documented gains for women in music creation and representation — women and gender expansive people are far more likely than men to experience the music industry as “generally discriminative” based on gender, with 49% of women and 41% of gender expansive individuals expressing this belief, compared to only 16% of men.

Age plays a factor in regard to this finding, with Gen Z less likely to perceive gender discrimination than older generations. 31% of 16-24-yea- old women view the industry as generally discriminative based on gender, compared to 54% of 25-34 year olds and 42% of women 55 and older. The report notes that this finding “could reflect improving conditions” but could also be a function of younger women not yet being in the industry long enough to experience discrimination.

The study also found that three in five women in music have experienced sexual harassment, and that one in five have experienced sexual assault.

More than 70% of women who have these experiences do not report them, the study says, “due to fear of retaliation and not believing anything would change being the most common reasons.” The study also notes that 53% of men who witnessed sexual harassment and/or assault did not report it, with 37% of these men saying that they “did not feel it was their place.”

Additionally, 56% of women who reported sexual assault responded that their claims were ignored or dismissed. The study found that nearly one-third were told to “keep quiet about it” while 12% were terminated from their job after reporting an incident.

As such, the study states, “the burden is on women to adapt their behavior to avoid misconduct, rather than on perpetrators and the wider industry to stop it happening in the first place.”

In terms of money, the study found that women and gender expansive people “are twice as likely as men to discover they are paid less than colleagues in the same or similar roles.” Identity compounds this issue, with 49% of women of a marginalized race or ethnicity having learned they’re paid less than colleagues. The study advises that the pay gap “is likely even more widespread than these statistics indicate, as individuals may be subjected to unequal pay without knowledge of it”.

Even if ageism against women has slightly moved and there has had to be some evolution, there is still this barrier. Artist LT (Leanne Tennant) told me how she has faced ageism and continues to do so. Many other women facing barriers and fewer opportunities when they reach thirty. Things are even bleaker when they hit forty. I do feel that there is this thing where artists over thirty and forty are only seen as relevant and worthy for particular radio stations and demographics. Even if bigger festivals like Glastonbury will book women over the age of thirty and forty, there is still a reliance and dominance of male acts and younger artists. Kylie Minogue’s third imperial phase shows that there is still ageism in the industry. Women baring the brunt of this. Things can change and get better. I don’t feel enough is being done from those in the industry. Like sexism and gender imbalance in general, few are keen to move the dial when it comes to embracing women of ‘a certain age’. I think about this article. Artist Lola Blanc, who was twenty-seven at the time, wrote how ageism is something she constantly faced:

“In a culture where artists and actresses and writers alike are either fibbing or withholding the truth of their birth dates, because everyone around us is telling us we're only as valuable as we are young, the impulse makes sense. It might mean fewer acting roles, or less interest from labels or agencies, or no longer having a "thing." And that's extremely daunting. But maybe it's only the norm until it's not. Sia and Tina Fey—women known for the merit of their talent rather than the size of the boners they induce (though they're both totally boner-worthy)—give me hope.

Yes, I am getting older. In a few years, I'll be 30, and maybe I'll be tempted to email all the websites that have ever listed how old I am and ask them to erase any evidence that I'm human. Tempted, perhaps, to do my darnedest to make the world believe that I am still young and fresh and sparkly and dumb and infantile and fuckable, available for the defiling, even as my humanity pulls me, faster and faster, into smarter, stronger adulthood. Tempted, as it were, to be a part of the problem.

Except I do believe it's a problem. Time is moving, and it's happening to all of us, no matter how well we conceal the shrinking lips and deepening lines that come with its passage, and what I can't quite wrap my head around is why women are supposed to be so goddamn ashamed of it.

The truth is, I'm thrilled to be beyond much of the insecurity and ignorance of my teenage years and early 20s. I feel beautiful. I'm doing the best work I've ever done, I know more than I've ever known, and I'm excited at the thought that, with every passing year, my work will improve and I'll know infinitely more than I do now. I believe that I am valuable. So why am I, along with countless other women, being told to feel like I'm not? I'm only in my 20s. What happens in ten years? Twenty?”.

Recently, J-Pop artist kiki vivi lily discussed her experiences with ageism. Many women are making the best music of their career when they are in their late-twenties and thirties. That experience and time means that they have richer and more personal stories. Music that is stronger than what they were making in their teens and twenties. Legends like Madonna and Rita Ora have recently responded to ageism in the industry. One can also say that platforms like TikTok have not helped. How there is lookism and an obsession with beauty standards. If women are over thirty or forty, they are not seen as desirable or worthy as younger contemporaries. As I say, things are better now than years ago, though we are nowhere near the point where ageism against women has ended. Male artists do face it, though you can look at playlists, festival line-ups and further afield and see how things are easier for men who are part of Generation X or older. Career highs from the likes of Kylie Minogue show that you can never write off an artist or define them by age. Minogue’s recent album far stronger than most of the work being put out by modern and younger Pop artists. I am hearing of incredible women who are struggling to get heard and respected because they are not in their twenties. Music should be ageless and barrier-less. However, when it comes to female artists, they are facing so many pushbacks and issues. It is evident that…

NEEDS to change.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Cuts from Twenty Golden Albums of 1979

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: This photo of The Clash’s bassist Paul Simonen smashing his bass guitar onstage was taken from the wings backstage at The Palladium in New York City on 21st September, 1979, during the band’s Take The Fifth U.S. Tour (their seminal album, London Calling, was released on 14th December, 1979, and it features this iconic image on the cover)/PHOTO CREDIT: Pennie Smith
 

Cuts from Twenty Golden Albums of 1979

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LATE last year…

IN THIS PHOTO: David Bowie in Kyoto, Japan in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Masayoti Sukita

I put together a series of playlists that collated songs from albums celebrating big anniversaries in 2024. One of them related to 1979 and albums turning forty-five this year. I want to come back, as there are some real classics in the pack. Rather than include a song from each of the great albums of 1979, I have narrowed it down to twenty. Albums from amazing bands and iconic solo artists. I think 1979 is one of the greatest years for music ever. A real turning point between what was popular until the late-1970s (including Disco) and the Pop and various sounds that defined the 1980s. From a Fleetwood Mac album that followed on from their finest release, through to one of David Bowie’s more underrated albums, below are a selection of the very best from 1979. If you want a flavour of what defined the year, then the mixtape below should give you…

IN THIS PHOTO: Fleetwood Mac circa 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Norman Seeff

A good idea.