FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Autumn Songs

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The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Alina Vilchenko

Autumn Songs

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AS we are comfortably…

PHOTO CREDIT: H. Emre

into autumn now, I wanted to mark that with a selection of seasonably-appropriate songs. The weather is changing. It is getting darker earlier and taking longer to get light in the morning. It is a bit chillier and wetter too. That may all sound like negatives. The positives are that there is something about the nature and mood of autumn that is quite romantic and evocative. There is a particular soundtrack to autumn. It has this vibe and mood. I want to explore this with a playlist that will end the feature. One other positives about autumn is that we tend to traditionally get this rush of great albums. Many artists holding them back until this time of year. We are close to Hallowe’en and, before you know it, we will be looking ahead to winter. Whatever your feelings on autumn and the weather, one cannot deny it is an evocative time! So many different colour and types of weather. Many might have their own ideas about autumnal songs. I have collected songs that mention the season but also those that are perfect for this time of year. The songs that I have assembled for this Digital Mixtape are all…

PHOTO CREDIT: Johannes Plenio

BEAUTIFUL and vivid.

FEATURE: There’s Half of a Heaven: Kate Bush’s Suspended in Gaffa and There Goes a Tenner at Forty-Two

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There’s Half of a Heaven

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982/PHOTO CREDIT: Pierre Terrasson

Kate Bush’s Suspended in Gaffa and There Goes a Tenner at Forty-Two

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I like to mark anniversaries…

when it comes to Kate Bush’s singles. There are a couple of tracks that were released on the same day. These days, when an artist releases a single, it is usually the only one they release. Years ago, you would get an artist releasing one single in various countries and another in other nations. It is an interesting thing. Maybe trying to ensure that an album gets as much exposure as possible by releasing different songs from it, this is something Kate Bush did a bit. On 2nd November, 1982, Kate Bush released two underrated songs from the Dreaming. That album was released on 13th September, 1982. Before the album came out, two singles had already been put out. Sat in Your Lap came out on 29th June, 1981. The Dreaming arrived on 26th July, 1982. Enjoying mixed success, it was quite a difficult decision what to release after that. The first singles after the album came out. After The Dreaming single charted low and was not a critical success, it must have been disheartening. I have often said how Houidini or All the Love could have been successful singles. Instead, Suspended in Gaffa and There Goes a Tenner were released. The former is one of the gems from The Dreaming. There are few obvious single options on The Dreaming. Lighter and less dense than The Dreaming or even Sat in Your Lap, it was released in continental Europe and Australia (but not the U.K.). This idea of releasing a song in some territories and not others. I think Suspended in Gaffa could have been a big success in the U.K. As it is, there was a smattering of success for Suspended in Gaffa but it did not do great business. I think it is a tremendous song. With musical contributions from Del Palmer, Kate Bush, Stuart Elliott, Dave Lawson and Paddy Bush, this is a song more people near to hear. Ahead of its forty-second anniversary, I will shine a light on it.

Kate Bush performed Suspended in Gaffa on T.V. a few times. I shall come to its video soon enough. Before that, it is worth getting some words from Kate Bush about the song. A track from an album that many people might not know about.

“‘Suspended In Gaffa’ is, I suppose, similar in some ways to ‘Sat In Your Lap’ – the idea of someone seeking something, wanting something. I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and had the imagery of purgatory and of the idea that when you were taken there that you would be given a glimpse of God and then you wouldn’t see him again until you were let into heaven. And we were told that in Hell it was even worse because you got to see God but then you knew that you would never see him again. And it’s sorta using that as the parallel. And the idea of seeing something incredibly beautiful, having a religious experience as such, but not being able to get back there. And it was playing musically with the idea of the verses being sorta real time and someone happily jumping through life [Makes happy motion with head] and then you hit the chorus and it like everything sorta goes into slow mo and they’re reaching [Makes slow reaching motion with arm] for that thing that they want and they can’t get there. [Laughs]

Interview for MTV, November 1985”.

I love the fact that the video features Kate Bush’s mum, Hannah. The set is this wonderful barn that has this enchanted quality. Built by Steve Hopkins, it is the center point of the visual. Kate Bush was very pleased that her mother was in the music video:

“The video did remain uncomplicated – just a few effects and just one extra: but a very special. one. There is one section where a child’s voice says, ‘Mother, where are the angels? I’m scared of the changes.’ And there was only one person that could be addressed to – my mother. When I asked her to appear in the section, contrary to my concern about her nerves, she was more than obliging and said, ‘Yes’. She was definitely the star of the day, and waited patiently hour after hour as we slowly moved through the bulk of the shooting to eventually reach her debut. I was amazed at her grace and stamina: as all of us began to wane and wilt, my mother continued to blossom and glow, and her only worries were getting back home in time to get dinner and hoping she would not succumb to an attack of giggles during the vital moments of being on screen. She needn’t have worried, for she is a natural professional, a real star and my favourite mum”.

I do not have as much to say about There Goes a Tenner as Suspended in Gaffa. I want to complete my spotlight of this song with some words from the amazing Dreams of Orgonon. I think one of the defining qualities of Suspended in Gaffa is that it skips and jumps. It seems more airy and open than many of the songs on The Dreaming.

“Yet at the core of this excess, there’s a simplicity to “Suspended in Gaffa.” It has the same expansive and consumptive obsessions as its sister songs — youthful aporia, an obsession with an unreachable god, a desire to unite with the subconscious. Yet it filters this through a childlike, somewhat Carrollian filter, with a surfeit of internal rhymes, abstract nouns, and ambiguous pronouns like “out in the garden/there’s half of a heaven/and we’re only bluffing,” “I try to get nearer/but as it gets clearer/there’s something appears in the way,” “I pull out the plank and say/thankee for yanking me back/to the fact that there’s always something to distract.”

The lyric is an endless series of prevarications, often relating to knowledge, or the unattainability of it (see “Sat in Your Lap”). The refrain’s “not till I’m ready for you,” “can I have it all now?/we can’t have it all,” “but they’ve told us/unless we can prove that we’re doing it/we can’t have it all” speak to an “all or nothing” approach, not identifying exactly what’s at stake so much as its urgency. Desire gets codified as an end in itself, often for a god (“I caught a glimpse of a god/all shining and bright”) — “until I’m ready for you” gives away the game (constructive spiritual union with a deity is impossible if one is unready to consent). “The idea of the song is that of being given a glimpse of ‘God’ — something that we dearly want — but being told that unless we work for it, we will never see it again, and even then, we might not be worthy of it,” Bush explained to her fan club. Tapping into the subconscious is a difficulty — when one has a glimpse of something wondrous, there’s a desperation to retrieve the feelings associated with it. “Everything or nothing” can be a neurodivergent impulse, but it’s also how a taste of the sublime works.

The nature of aporia in “Suspended in Gaffa” is cinematic. There’s the title, obviously, referring to the line “am I suspended in gaffa?,” itself a reference to gaffer (or “gaffa”) tape, which is commonly used in film and stage productions. The laboriousness of cinema is inferred a few times (“it all goes slo-mo”), as reflections and manipulation, staples of cinema, get pulled into the mix. Bush even goes quasi-Lacanian at one point; nudging herself with “that girl in the mirror/between you and me/she don’t stand a chance of getting anywhere at all,” a moment of amusing self-deprecation.

The music video, while counterintuitively simple in its setup of Bush dancing on her own in a barn, is similarly weird. Bush’s hair is made up to twice the height of her head as she dances in a purple jumpsuit, slowly jogging in place and thrashing her arms on the floor like an adolescent Job on her rural ash pile. In a pleasantly domestic turn, Bush’s mother Hannah appears (shockingly) as Bush’s mother. The resulting video is both tender and discordant, the ethos of “Suspended in Gaffa” in microcosm.

Bush’s fight with aporia moves forward. She mixes religious metaphors like a hermeneuticist in a Westminster pub (“it’s a plank in me eye,” taken from Matthew 7:5, is adjuncted by “a camel/who’s trying to get through it,” a quiet subversion of the Talmudic “eye of a needle” axiom, cited by Christ in the Synoptic Gospels and additionally by the Qu’ran 7:40), grasping fragments of faiths, mediums, and metaphors in their simplest form. The results are crucially inchoate, as the perspective of a child so often is. Yet through that rudimentary perspective comes a different understanding of emotional truths than one usually finds from an adult point-of-view. Fragments and naïveté are by no means inherently less scholarly than a more mature perspective; sometimes, they’re the most efficacious tools a person has for exploring the ridiculous and sublime.

(Bush.) Personnel: Bush, K. — vocals, piano, strings. Elliott — drums. Palmer — bass. Bush, P. — strings, mandolin. Lawson — synclavier. Launay — engineer (backing tracks). Hardiman — engineer (overdubs). Cooper — engineer (mastering). Backing tacks recorded at May/June 1981 at Townhouse Studios, Shepherd’s Bush. Overdubs recorded at Odyssey Studios, Marylebone, West End and Advision Studios, Fitzrovia from August 1981 to January 1982, 4-and-a-half months. Mixed at the Townhouse from March to 21 May, 1982. Issued as a single 2 November 1982”.

I want to move onto There Goes a Tenner. Perhaps not as regarded as Suspended in Gaffa, this was released in the U.K. and Ireland. The single featured Ne T’enfuis Pas as the B-side. With the video directed by Paul Henry, this was Kate Bush appearing as a robber planning to pull off a bank heist. The Suspended in Gaffa video was directed by Brian Wiseman. I shall come to Kate Bush’s words about the song. First, here are a selection of the reviews for a song that miffed and confused some people:

“A practically formless song with odd vocal affections, and no chorus to speak of. (…) Most disappointing.

Record Business, 1 November 1982

Very well planned, and executed with relish. Katy doesn’t mind acting a bit silly if it makes the end result better.

Dermot Stokes, Hot Press, 5 November 1982

Very weird… Obviously she’s trying to become less accessible. Even so this has a haunting atmosphere.

Neil TennanT, Smash Hits, 1982”.

I am going to end with a bit more details about There Goes a Tenner.

“It’s about amateur robbers who have only done small things, and this is quite a big robbery that they’ve been planning for months, and when it actually starts happening, they start freaking out. They’re really scared, and they’re so aware of the fact that something could go wrong that they just freaked out, and paranoid and want to go home. (…) It’s sort of all the films I’ve seen with robberies in, the crooks have always been incredibly in control and calm, and I always thought that if I ever did a robbery, I’d be really scared, you know, I’d be really worried. So I thought I’m sure that’s a much more human point of view.

The Dreaming interview, CBAK 4011 CD

That was written on the piano. I had an idea for the tune and just knocked out the chords for the first verse. The words and everything just came together. It was quite a struggle from there on to try to keep things together. The lyrics are quite difficult on that one, because there are a lot of words in quite a short space of time. They had to be phrased right and everything. That was very difficult. Actually the writing went hand-in-hand with the CS-80.

John Diliberto, Interview. Keyboard/Totally Wired/Songwriter (USA), 1985”.

Reaching a dissapointing ninety-three in the U.K., it was her first single to that point not to reach the top seventy-five. I do love There Goes a Tenner. So many standout lyrics: “I hope you remember/To treat the gelignite tenderly for me/I’m having dreams about things/Not going right/Let’s leave in plenty of time tonight/Both my partners/Act like actors:/You are Bogart/He is George Raft/That leaves Cagney and me/(“What about Edward G.?”)”.

I am going to wrap up in a minute. I have written about There Goes a Tenner and Suspended in Gaffa before and incorrectly noted the release date as 1st November, 1982. Correcting that, I want to explore these amazing songs. Why there were released as singles. I want to return to Dreams of Orgonon for their analysis of a song that many people have not heard:

“Bush also taps into a tradition of British comedy which pivots on woefully incompetent characters issued a societal role or occupation completely unsuited to them. The likes of Python or Fawlty Towers spring to mind, and doubtless Bush saw some Ealing comedies. The children’s panto delivery of “There Goes a Tenner” infers a stylistic awareness of Bush’s debt to this tradition. The music video certainly tips the viewer off to what kind of song this is, with its frankly adorable deployment of Bush and Gary Hurst in black jumpsuits and soot on their faces, its dutch angles depicting the Very Scary robbery, and the explosion of a safe full of money. Its stars are the major aberration among these cliches; a woman and people of color aren’t supposed to be the daring stars of a heist film. This isn’t the heroic act of white men showing up the rest of the world; it’s women and minorities acting out of desperation.

For its vexed class dynamics, “There Goes a Tenner” does acknowledge poverty as a motivation for its characters. “Pockets floating in the breeze” indicates impoverishment, and the final line of the song “there’s a ten-shilling note/remember them?/that’s when we used to vote for him” is a weirdly subtle political critique for “Tenner.” When the single dropped in 1982, Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Government was enjoying a 51% approval rating in the wake of the Falklands War and Thatcher’s craven sinking of the retreating Argentinian battleship the ARA General Belgrano, killing 323 people. By the 22nd of September, 9 days after the release of The Dreaming, 14% of the United Kingdom’s workforce was reported to be unemployed. As the Tory government waged a war on inflation in its slow establishment of neoliberalism, it caused a glut of unemployment that lost 1,500,000 people their jobs. “When we used to vote for him” is an odd phrase — but clearly the robbers have turned to crime because alternatives are unavailable (one merely has to point out that poverty is a major contributor to crime).

“There Goes a Tenner’s” death on the charts was not a tragedy. Bush’s decision to release it as a single is one of her oddest choices as a public figure. Yet even if by accident, she’s tapped into the zeitgeist of early neoliberalism and Thatcherite austerity. How come we’re not getting paid any more? Because Margaret fucking Thatcher ruined everything.

(Bush.) Bush — vocals, piano, Fairlight, CS80. Elliott — drums. Palmer — bass. Lawson — synclavier. Launay — engineer (backing tracks). Hardiman — engineer (overdubs). Backing tracks recorded at Townhouse Studios May – Jun ’81. Overdubs at Odyssey Aug – Dec ’81, Jan – Mar ’82. Mixed Mar – May ’82. Issued 2 November 1982 w/ B-side “Ne t’enfuis pas.” Performed on Razzmatazz 21 September 1982. Shown on Pebble Mill at One 8 October 1982. Image: Jamie Lee Curtis and Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda (1988, dir. Charles Crichton)”.

With The Dreaming sporting very few single options, there was this decision to follow up the first two with a duel-release. I do think that Suspended in Gaffa could have charted quite high in the U.K. There Goes a Tenner is a slightly odder song to sell. It is amazing, yet perhaps one of the lesser songs on The Dreaming. What would have happened if Leave It Open or Houdini was a single? I do love the songs that were selected. As they are coming up for their forty-second anniversary, I wanted to shine a light on the tracks. One further single would arrive from The Dreaming. Night of the Swallow was released in Ireland on 21st November, 1983. Over a year after The Dreaming was released, there was this long wait. That said, Sat in Your Lap was released over a year before the album came out. Five singles that came out over the period of almost two and a half years. I have a soft spot for There Goes a Tenner and Suspended in Gaffa. Although not successful or often regarded as highlighted as much as other songs on the album, they are gems in their own right. I think people should check them out…

AHEAD of their anniversary.

FEATURE: Stage Right: Why We Urgently Need a #MeToo Movement in Music

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Stage Right

 IN THIS PHOTO: Marilyn Manson has been accused by multiple women of assault and rape, and yet is still performing live and releasing a new album soon, showing how little the music industry cares about protecting women

Why We Urgently Need a #MeToo Movement in Music

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I don’t think any male artist…

IN THIS PHOTO: Chris Brown

can truly be ‘cancelled’. It is a word that is tossed out there but never actually meaningful or true. Think about a T.V. personality like Philip Schofield. I have seen how he is supposedly ‘cancelled’ and yet he is on T.V. To be cancelled is to disappear and not exist ion your former guise. If you have a platform and are still allowed on T.V. or even social media then you are not cancelled! This is true of male musicians. They might not be played on radio stations, though there will always be stages and venues that will host them. Motivated by money rather than any morals or decency. Men who have committed domestic abuse or adultery are still out there. Those who have done even worse. If a female artist were to do anything of that nature, they will be attacked and actually cancelled. It seems like there are two sets of rules. Artists such as Chris Brown have enjoyed relatively little damage to their careers after committing heinous assaults. Marilyn Manson is an artist who has been accused multiple times of rape. In any other profession they would be sacked and banned. It seems that there is hope for any despicable man who commits sexual assault and rape. It calls into question whether men are immune from any punishment or consequence if they have a large fanbase. Does the music industry care about women’s rights and protection?! The Los Angeles Times reports on protests that have happened around recent Manson gigs. He is also releasing a studio album shortly:

“Outside the Honda Center in Anaheim in early September, a group of a dozen or so protesters shouted at black-clad Marilyn Manson fans as they filed into the arena.

This was Manson’s first tour in years, after at least four women alleged in civil suits and other court filings that the singer 55, sexually and physically assaulted them. Manson, born Brian Warner, has denied all their claims.

“You’re supporting a rapist!” one female protester yelled. “He tortures and rapes women!”

“It’s just brazenly siding with an accused rapist,” said Caroline Heldman, an activist who organized the protest outside Manson’s Honda Center show this month. “I’ve never seen a more blatant example of profit over decency.”

“They were asking for it!” A male Manson fan yelled back, perhaps in jest, but with enough fury that a shoving match broke out between him and the crowd outside.

Since 2021, Manson’s old record label and agency cut ties, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department raided his L.A. home and at least a dozen women came forward with claims against him. The famously transgressive artist was, to many rock fans, now synonymous with real violence.

Manson is no longer going away quietly.

On Nov. 22, he’ll release a new album, “One Assassination Under God - Chapter 1.” His return has sparked outrage from women who have alleged abuse and activists who are aghast that Manson is performing in arenas again.

“It’s so wild that Manson’s on this tour and he already has a new record label,” said Caroline Heldman, an activist who organized the protest outside Manson’s Honda Center show this month. “It’s just brazenly siding with an accused rapist. I’ve never seen anything like it, or a more blatant example of profit over decency.”

“I wonder what it is about Manson that makes it hard for people to give him up,” Heldman asked. “It really speaks to depths of how little we care about sexual violence in this culture, and how little his fans care.”

Manson’s attorney, Howard King, described the allegations to The Times as “lurid claims” with “three things in common — they are all false, alleged to have taken place more than a decade ago and part of a coordinated attack by former partners and associates of Mr. Warner who have weaponized the otherwise mundane details of his personal life and their consensual relationships into fabricated horror stories.”

“Mr. Warner vehemently denies any and all claims of sexual assault or abuse of anyone,” King added.

Most prominent among Manson’s accusers has been “Westworld” actor Evan Rachel Wood, who was in a romantic relationship with Manson for three years. After she came forward, Manson sued the actor for defamation. In an anti-SLAPP filing this year, Wood alleged: “For years, Plaintiff Brian Warner raped and tortured Defendant Evan Rachel Wood and threatened retaliation if she told anyone about it.” A judge threw out portions of Manson’s defamation suit in August, though the suit is ongoing.

In 2021 actor Esmé Bianco sued Manson, alleging sexual assault, sexual battery and human trafficking. The two settled Bianco’s lawsuit in 2023. The same year, Manson settled a suit with a Jane Doe alleging “forced oral and vaginal rape.”

Manson’s former assistant, Ashley Walters, recently revived a lawsuit against Manson alleging sexual assault and harassment. Hearings are scheduled for 2025.

IN THIS PHOTO: Marilyn Manson performing in Camden, N.J. several years ago/PHOTO CREDIT: Owen Sweeney/Invision/Associated Press

In November 2021, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department raided Manson’s home after a nearly two year investigation into the assault allegations. In 2022, the Sheriff’s Department gave its investigation to the Los Angeles County district attorney, though Manson has not been charged.

Wood and Bianco’s claims of abuse helped to spur the passage of California’s Phoenix Act, which extends the statute of limitations on domestic violence to five years, so survivors have more time to come forward. Two recent documentary series, Wood’s own “Phoenix Rising” and “Marilyn Manson: Unmasked,” explore the many claims against him.

Nonetheless, Manson’s comeback is underway.

After his old label, Loma Vista, dropped and disavowed him, he signed to the underground metal label Nuclear Blast and released new music. On this arena tour, he opened for the hard rock group Five Finger Death Punch.

For the women who have accused Manson of assault, seeing him back onstage playing to adoring crowds is frightening and demoralizing.

“If he doesn’t go to prison or get in any trouble for what he’s done, how do other survivors feel?” said Bianca Kyne, who alleged in a 2023 lawsuit that Manson sexually assaulted her multiple times in the 1990s, beginning when she was a minor. “If the most obvious case gets off scot-free, this must destroy the hope of women who have been assaulted by other people in the music industry.”

“If he doesn’t go to prison or get in any trouble for what he’s done, how do other survivors feel?” asked Bianca Kyne, who has sued Marilyn Manson alleging sexual assault. Manson has denied all claims.

Manson is “as vile and violent as he is cunning,” said Jeff Anderson, Kyne’s attorney in her lawsuit against Manson. “He’s a predator that presents more of a danger to youth than few I’ve encountered in 40 years of working with survivors”.

IN THIS PHOTO: “Right now is the best time for disgraced heavy metal musicians to come back into the limelight,” metal scholar Laina Dawes said. “We’re now in a post-Me Too era, when people are retracting from taking issues like assault seriously”/PHOTO CREDIT: Leanne Lagoyda

It is horrifying that anyone in any industry can be accused of such depraved and extreme actions and be allowed to continue. The women who have come forward bravely to speak about their experiences should be commended. They deserve justice. Seeing Marilyn Manson still on stage and his album going out into the world soon is going to have a devastating impact. Almost like they are being mocked! It does seem that men in music can get away with anything is they have commercial appeal and lure. It is harrowing that this is not an isolated case. So many men through the years have been shamed because of their sickening acts. The industry should stop giving them second chances! In fact., acting like nothing has happened. Venues are responsible for Marilyn Manson performing. A record label and people in studios ensuring he can complete and release an album. How does any of that make any sense?! It is so infuriating that we are in a position where this can happen. Where protestors are being mocked. Where fans of Manson can say that the women accusing him of rape deserved it. That there is this toxicity and privilege that protects men from the law! Unless they actually go to prison then they can pretty much slide back into their regular routines. If a woman was in the position Marilyn Manson is, venues would refuse to support her. Labels would drop her and there would be no way that she would get a moment’s peace. Men like Marilyn Manson walk free and unhindered. This needs to be a wake-up call for the music industry! That women should not have to see their abuser perform on stage and continue their career. That these men need to be punished and stripped of their careers. I hope justice does come and Marilyn Manson is jailed. Until now, there is this sickening circus where he gets to brush off the allegations and enjoy his career. So disrespectful to the women who have suffered at his hands. It makes me think whether now more than ever, we need a music #MeToo movement – something that has never really happened. There are no excuses. This movement needs to…

IN THIS PHOTO: “It’s just brazenly siding with an accused rapist,” said Caroline Heldman, an activist who organized the protest outside Manson’s Honda Center show this month. “I’ve never seen a more blatant example of profit over decency”/PHOTO CREDIT: Leanne Lagoyda

HAPPEN right now!

FEATURE: Erase/Rewind: The Conflict Between Introducing Children to Music and Some of the Drawbacks

FEATURE:

 

 

Erase/Rewind

PHOTO CREDIT: Vika Glitter/Pexels

The Conflict Between Introducing Children to Music and Some of the Drawbacks

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AT the moment…

PHOTO CREDIT: Karolina Kaboompics/Pexels

I am introducing my nephew to music. Well, the whole family is. For his birthday recently, I bought him a Walkman. A modern replica anyway. One that is a radio and has a few cool features. He is getting into physical music and seems to engage with the tactile nature of it. Interested in flicking through C.D.s on a rack rather than looking through Spotify. Cassettes are more rare but, as there is a record shop near where my parents live that sell a lot of cassettes, I picked up a few a while back. A bit of a bundle to go with the cassette player. I was pleased that I could get the cassettes so inexpensively, though I was thinking about the songs on the cassettes. In a zeal to get a few good Pop albums, I did wonder about the lyrical content. On Spotify, there is an Explicit (or E) next to songs that have swear words or questionable content. It normally covers bad language. In terms of suggestiveness or anything sexual, there are looser guidelines. It is up to parents to an extent to filter what children and can and cannot listen to but, even on celebrated albums that you want everyone to listen to, you sort of forget that some of the songs are very much not geared to children. In the sense that they know obvious albums and songs not suitable. It can be hard to police and assess everything. I don’t think there is anything too suggestive, immoral or even overly-risqué in the music I chose. Nothing that is impressionable or going to do any damage. It is just some of the songs and the sexual suggestions. Some that may raise questions about the lyrics or what lines mean. In that excitement to roll back time and have a child experience the same sort of music education I had, I did wonder about the implications.

I suppose you have to be pragmatic and reasonable. There are obvious no-go areas with regards music and what is appropriate to play particular people. However, think about albums you would not necessarily flag. You find them okay because you’re an adult and can understand the lyrics and relate in a way that is not questionable or unusual. The things I am not shocked by would possibly be a lot different for children. At the heart of everything is that access to physical music and passing it on. Seeds being planted so that someone like my nephew can go on and broaden his horizons. The same way I did when I was a child. Thinking back, I don’t think there was too much music from my childhood that stays with me in a negative or damaging way. You can’t shield children from the real world. However, when it comes to music, there do have to be limitations and caution. For context, the albums I bought included George Michael’s Faith and The Beautiful South’s Carry on Up the Charts. Both albums contain songs about sex. Some explicit lyrics. The melody and the choruses will make an impression but, thinking about the lyrics, is it wise to expose children to those, even if the artists are not lewd or trying to be controversial?! It opens up this greater debate. It is vital that we expose children to physical music and albums. Not just rely on streaming and have them on devices. I do worry at what price access to a world of music has on children. Albums used to have parental guidance labels on them. You do not really get it much now.

Maybe it is overreaction or being overly cautious. The way children engage with music and how they experience it is different to someone like me. Words and thoughts they might not be used to or really understand. Not that this will put me off curating, searching and trying to pass on music and buy albums for young relatives. The importance of opening their eyes and ears to the wonders of music is one of life’s great joys. With it comes this need to tread more carefully than you might otherwise have wanted to. Some would argue that some of the more challenging or adult themes in music are important in terms of teaching or educating. Rather than it being shocking, it is framing something adult in a way that is more appropriate for children. But when is enough enough or a little too much? I keep coming back to that. In a wider sense, should there be more guidelines or advisory notices on particular albums? If you are looking to buy one for a younger listener, do you need to do more research just in case there is something a little spicy or that which would raise eyebrows? It has raised questions and conundrums in my mind. A gesture or present maybe coming with caveat or disclaimer. In the long-term, the music I buy and expose someone like a nephew too is unlikely to lead to awkward questions being asked or them repeating standout (i.e. explicit or suggestive) lines. It is more about the listening experience and whether certain lyrics or attitudes in some songs will make a bigger impact through time. You can know that an artist like Taylor Swift might be safe ground and not cause too many surprises, though there are so many other artists and albums that sort of take you by surprise. I guess I need to find the positives and celebrate the joy of music rather than the worry about things that may turn out to be small. Rather than pause, erase or rewind, it is best to simply…

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Dribble.com

PRESS play.

FEATURE: Just Like a Photograph, I Pick You Up: The Visual Allure, Engagement and Genius of Kate Bush

FEATURE:

 

 

Just Like a Photograph, I Pick You Up

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in the final session with Gered Mankowitz at Old Chapel Studios in London in 1979

The Visual Allure, Engagement and Genius of Kate Bush

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THE start of a chapter…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush circa 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

in Graeme Thomson’s biography of Kate Bush, Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, talks about her allure and appeal as a visual artist. Actually, someone who captivated and grabbed the camera. The chapter is called An Architect’s Dream. That title is a song on Bush’s 2005 album, Aerial, though it is very apt when we consider Bush in front of the camera. This perfect and ideal photographic subject. Something I have explored a little before, I have been thinking how that natural instinct to project the greatest looks and expressions was instilled early on. One of my favourite bits of Kate Bush memorabilia, archive artefact or whatever you want to call it, is the Cathy photobook. A collection of photos from Bush’s brother, Jay/John, it is a collection of photos of Bush from childhood. First published as a run of just five-hundred copies in 1986, it would have been fascinating given the time it was released. A year after Bush released Hounds of Love and the same year as her greatest hits album, The Whole Story, arrived, we got this look at her childhood. Black-and-white images during a period in the 1980s that seemed to be more neon, bright and variegated. Every child has photos taken of them. Few grow up in a household full of art and music and have a brother who is a professional photographer! One could say Bush was exposed to the camera and taught how to be natural but also give something extra. Thomson, in his book, talks about Bush’s early videos. Think about everything up to Breathing and Army Dreamers from 1980’s Never for Ever. If we consider Wuthering Heights, The Man with the Child in his Eyes and Babooshka. Maybe still finding her feet regarding concept and scale. That the earliest videos might seem a little wince-inducing or odd. A naivety and innocence that might seem dated or insubstantial. Bush’s initial video for Wuthering Heights did get some bad publicity.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with a snappy friend in Amsterdam circa 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Claude Vanheye

Bush became aware of the camera as a child. How to not feel posed and forced as a subject. Looking completely natural but also entrancing. Her childhood photos are so interesting. Into adulthood, other emotions and dynamics came through the photos. Look at videos like that for Wuthering Heights and they are standout and timeless because Kate Bush is in there! Right from the start of her career, Bush knew where the camera was and where the boundaries were. That is what Paul Henry, who directed videos included that for The Dreaming, said. It is hard to put into words, but look at some of the expressions and looks from photos back in 1978/1979. So many different possibilities and layers without exaggeration. Such a natural subject! This aura and communication with the camera is something Bush had and did like few other artists. Gered Mankowitz, who photographed Bush in 1978 and 1979, reserved a very special place and platform for her in this respect. That she could give something to the camera that is immortal and unique. It may only be a few seconds of movement or an expression. That economy and power Bush has. Although Kate Bush was very much embracing the camera for her videos and wanted to make them more cinematic and ambitious, this was very much for the sake of the song. Ensuring that she provides a visual interpretation that was original and bold. She was not an artist trying to sell sex or make it all about her. The same is true of photographs. She would be so committed and often be in a studio for hours whilst various shots were taken. Away from that, Bush was very private and not at all starry. She was almost more comfortable being disguised and immersed in a song. Playing a character or adopting a role. That was more interesting and important to her. She felt that she was not interesting. Why people would want to see her in photos.

One of the defining aspects of Kate Bush is her changing looks and periods. Such a diverse and adaptable photographic subject who could inhabit any space or fashion and make it her own. There is this contrast between Kate Bush as a normal person at home and Kate Bush the artist on record and on the screen. Many were surprised when a video like Babooshka came out. Such a starling and eye-opening video, it is world away from the same woman who is this very sweet, shy and down-to-Earth person who would make tea and be this wonderful host! Not quite Jekyll and Hyde, Bush was definitely someone with two sides. Maybe exaggerating various aspects for creative and photographic purposes, one cannot deny how she was this genius in front of camera. Images so important to promoting her work. Pushing photographers and getting the very best out of them. Graeme Thomson does note in his book how Bush, in music videos, could go ugly, swap genders and play alluring roles. There was this walking on a precarious line. Inspired by cinema and making her music as visual as possible, it is no surprise that she was so curious and compelling in front of camera. Putting so much imagination and work into her promotional clips.

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

I am so intrigued by Bush as this visual subject. Why she is so much more distinct than most of her peers. It was that balance between someone very private and un-starry and someone in her career who was assertive and keen for people to see her videos. As a photographic subject, there was never any signs of nerves or wanting to hide. That early familial exposure and training was a perfect test run for a scarier and more high-profile canvas. Working with a range of different photographers, all of whom had so much respect and love for Kate Bush. I guess we could get into a whole new area about the music videos and how they changed through the years. How various directors talked about Kate Bush and go deep into the filming process. I am fascinated by the chemistry and magic Bush provided in photographs. How there was this aura and spirit around her that was so special and hard to pin down. Maybe it is because her brother was around her with a camera and she started in this safe and comfortable space before going into a professional and less grounded space. Even so, she adapted really naturally and was a perfect subject. So patient and collaborative! That thing about giving a brief look or doing something small that translated into something huge powerful and evocative. Photos that still provide mysterious and compelling qualities all these years later. Whether it is shots of a teenage Bush in 1978 or photos for 2011’s 50 Words for Snow, still this hugely engaging subject. I would love to know the stories behind some of those iconic photos. The shoots and the conversations between Bush and the photographer. Whether that was Guido Harari or John Carder Bush – her brother photographed her as recently as 2011 -, always so involved and inspiring. Not someone who ever looked uninterested and like she had to get this out of the way. Even if Bush could never quite understand why people would want to see photos of her and was keener to focus on the music and videos, one cannot argue against the fact she was such a fascinating person to photo. Even so, when she was in front of the camera, she gave us something that…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1993/PHOTO CREDIT: Guido Harari

IS truly remarkable.

FEATURE: All You Had to Do Was Stay: Taylor Swift’s 1989 at Ten

FEATURE:

 

 

All You Had to Do Was Stay

Taylor Swift’s 1989 at Ten

_________

RATHER than feature and discuss…

IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift attends the 49th Annual Academy of Country Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on 6th April, 2014 in Las Vegas, Nevada/PHOTO CREDIT: Christopher Polk/ACMA2014/Getty Images for ACM

the Taylor’s Version release of 2023, I want to feature the original 1989. Released on 27th October, 2014, it is a few weeks or so until the tenth anniversary. One of the biggest albums of the 2010s, did those listening to Taylor Swift’s fifth studio album release it would be seen as one of the most important and best albums of the decade?! That the then-twenty-four-year-old would go on to be this modern icon. Enjoy huge tours and grow to be the biggest artist of the modern age. There are signs of that promise through 1989. A creative jump from 2012’s Red, 1989 was perhaps the highest-rated and acclaimed album of Swift’s career to that date. Since then, she has won huge reviews for albums such as folklore (2020) and Midnights (2022). I am not sure how Taylor Swift will mark the tenth anniversary of 1989 later this month. Following a dispute over the ownership of her back catalogue, she re-recorded her first six studio albums that were previously released by Big Machine. Swift then owned the masters and substituted Big Machine’s. One cannot deny that 1989, in both forms, is a supreme work! One of the producers on the album, Swift included synthesisers, programmed drums and electronic backing vocals. It was a departure from her previous work. Talking about complex and broken relationships, the subject matter was deeper and perhaps richer than her albums before. Ones that relied more on acoustic arrangements. I am going to get to some features around 1989. Most of the reviews you will see for 1989 are for the Taylor’s Version edition. I have found a few reviews for the 2014 original. An album that was number one in many countries, including the U.K. and U.S. I guess many have reappraised and reframed 1989 after Swift re-recorded it in 2023.

In October 2014, The New York Times provided their take on an exciting new album from Taylor Swift. One that said goodbye to her Country beginnings. Whilst she has not completely abandoned it, 1989 did seem like a step more into 1980s Pop influences. I kind of think of artists like Madonna who can bring in Country elements on albums like Music (2000), but also conquer Electronica and a range of influences on Ray of Light (1998). Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005) being more Disco-inspired. Swift is an innovative artist who does not rest and is fascinated by different sonic and production possibilities. Framing her lyrics in different ways to maximise their impact and relevance:

“Full of expertly constructed, slightly neutered songs about heartbreak, “1989,” which is to be released on Monday, doesn’t announce itself as oppositional. But there is an implicit enemy on this breezily effective album: the rest of mainstream pop, which “1989” has almost nothing in common with. Modern pop stars — white pop stars, that is — mainly get there by emulating black music. Think of Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber. In the current ecosystem, Katy Perry is probably the pop star least reliant on hip-hop and R&B to make her sound, but her biggest recent hit featured the rapper Juicy J; she’s not immune.

Ms. Swift, though, is having none of that; what she doesn’t do on this album is as important as what she does. There is no production by Diplo or Mike Will Made-It here, no guest verse by Drake or Pitbull. Her idea of pop music harks back to a period — the mid-1980s — when pop was less overtly hybrid. That choice allows her to stake out popular turf without having to keep up with the latest microtrends, and without being accused of cultural appropriation.

That Ms. Swift wants to be left out of those debates was clear in the video for this album’s first single, the spry “Shake It Off,” in which she surrounds herself with all sorts of hip-hop dancers and bumbles all the moves. Later in the video, she surrounds herself with regular folks, and they all shimmy un-self-consciously, not trying to be cool.

See what Ms. Swift did there? The singer most likely to sell the most copies of any album this year has written herself a narrative in which she’s still the outsider. She is the butterfingers in a group of experts, the approachable one in a sea of high post, the small-town girl learning to navigate the big city.

In that sense, the most important decision Taylor Swift made in the last couple of years had nothing to do with music: She bought a pad in New York, paying about $20 million for a TriBeCa penthouse.

It was a molting, the culmination of several years of outgrowing Nashville combined with interest in Ms. Swift that placed her in tabloid cross-hairs just like any other global star.

But it also afforded her the opportunity once again to be seen as a naïf. In Nashville, she’d learned all the rules, all the back roads. Now, with that place more or less in the rear view, she is free to make the John Hughes movie of her imagination. That’s “1989,” which opens with “Welcome to New York,” a shimmery, if slightly dim celebration of the freedom of getting lost in Gotham: “Everybody here was someone else before/And you can want who you want.” (As a gesture of tolerance, this is about 10 steps behind Kacey Musgraves’s “Follow Your Arrow.”)

Ms. Swift hasn’t been the type to ask permission in her career, but she has long seen herself as a stranger to the grand-scale fame that New York signifies. “Someday I’ll be living in a big ol’ city” she taunted a critic on “Mean,” from her 2010 album “Speak Now”; now here she is, making the New York spotlight her backlight.

On this new stage, Ms. Swift is thriving. And crucially, she is more or less alone, not part of any pop movement of the day. She has set herself apart and, implicitly, above.

The era of pop she channels here was a collision of sleaze and romanticism, of the human and the digital. But there’s barely any loucheness in Ms. Swift’s voice. Her take on that sound is sandpapered flat and polished to a sheen. The album, named for the year she was born, is executive produced by Ms. Swift and Max Martin, and most of the songs are written with Mr. Martin and his fellow Swede Shellback. Both men have helped shape the last decade of pop but what’s notable here is their restraint. (Mr. Martin also did almost all the vocal production on the album.) Ms. Swift’s old running buddy Nathan Chapman produced “This Love,” a mournful ballad that would have been at home of the “Hunger Games: Catching Fire” soundtrack, and the only song here that could be mistaken for a concession to country.

There are a few songs in which production dominates: the two songs written and produced with Jack Antonoff (of fun and Bleachers). “Out of the Woods” and “I Wish You Would,” which burst with erupting drums, moody synths and sizzling guitars; and “Bad Blood,” which has booming drums reminiscent of the Billy Squier ones often sampled in hip-hop.

But these are outliers. Ms. Swift has always been melody first, and if she wanted to give herself over to a producer and sound of the moment, she could have gone several different, more obvious routes, or even stayed in country, which is as hip-hop inflected as pop is these days. (For the record, there are a few sort-of-modern phrases sprinkled through the lyrics — “this sick beat,” " mad love” and the chorus of “Shake It Off,” where she squeaks “the players gonna play, play, play, play, play/and the haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate” — though they are mostly there to underscore just how out of place Ms. Swift sounds singing them.)

But by making pop with almost no contemporary references, Ms. Swift is aiming somewhere even higher, a mode of timelessness that few true pop stars — aside from, say, Adele, who has a vocal gift that demands such an approach — even bother aspiring to. Everyone else striving to sound like now will have to shift gears once the now sound changes. But not Ms. Swift, who’s waging, and winning, a new war, one she’d never admit to fighting”.

Before getting to a couple of reviews, I want to come to a feature from Stereogum. They offer up different angles and perspectives on 1989. I think this was the first Taylor Swift album I discovered and heard. Ahead of its tenth anniversary, you can feel its influence today. Maybe Swift re-recording it recently has compelled a new wave of Pop artists. Distinct nods to 1989 on the current scene. Even if some would argue it is not her very best album, it is definitely one of her most important:

“Every one of her albums sounds like a lesser artist’s greatest-hits album; 1989 makes her five for five. Swift’s albums aren’t singles-plus-filler; they’re singles-plus-potential-singles, and the songs that never dominated the radio are just the ones she never got around to releasing as singles. Swift’s voice is an instrument capable of both colossal uplift and soft empathy; she’s kept the lost-little-kid openness that made her so appealing in the first place. 1989 gleams and shimmers the way all her past albums have gleamed and shimmered; they’re just playing around with a new set of stylistic toys. But she’s using those toys to deceptive ends. On first listen, 1989 sounds like the resistance-is-futile robo-pop hydrogen bomb that Katy Perry’s Prism tried and failed to be. And it is that. But it’s also a concept album, a ’70s singer-songwriter-style song cycle about the beginning and end of a relationship. On her last album, Swift was lyrically bragging about how many James Taylor albums she owned. This time around, she’s not showing those records off, lyrically or musically, but she’s quietly emulating them.

Most of the songs on 1989 seem to concern Harry Styles, the most visible member of One Direction, who Swift dated a while back. She never names him, or even alludes to his name, though clues are there if you want to mine for them. (She makes constant reference to a car crash; she’s probably really alluding to a serious snowmobile crash that she and Styles apparently once got into.) But the specifics don’t matter as much as the subtle but genuine arc that the LP traces. It starts with excitement and play and intrigue, and it blossoms into something deeper around the time “Out Of The Woods” kicks in. But things turn bad quickly, and most of the album is Swift dealing with a breakup. She gets fire-eyed pissed on “Bad Blood,” cajoles on “I Wish You Would,” provides an exact roadmap for how to rekindle things on “How You Get The Girl.” By the time closing track “Clean” kicks in, she’s convinced herself that she’s OK with the whole thing, that she’s ready to move on.

The trick with this whole concept-album thing is that all the songs stand on their own; they don’t depend on the album’s narrative (which, to be honest, I could just be making up anyway). First single “Shake It Off” (probably my least favorite Swift song ever, at least if we’re not including the “Santa Baby” cover from the Target-exclusive Christmas EP she released a few years ago) is Swift’s stab at “Mickey” or “Hollaback Girl” or “London Bridge” or Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” — the chanty brat-out that recasts Swift as a mall-pop auteur while at the same time cheerily snarling at haters and making self-deprecating jokes about Swift’s own dancing ability. (Seriously, “Shake It Off” is doing too much.) Heard in the context of the album, though, it’s her early attempt to act like the relationship never really mattered that much to her, before a sadder reality kicks in. “Style” is the song for the inevitable Target ad campaign, if that’s what you want it to be, but it’s also a horny plea for a fling to become something bigger. “Bad Blood” could be the Katy Perry ethering that wags are already calling it, but the lyrics could just as well be directed at an ex. “I Know Places,” coming so close to the end of the album, isn’t just a whispered crush song; it’s Swift’s attempt to blame the relationship’s end, retroactively, on the paparazzi who wouldn’t stop hounding the couple. And then there’s the album-opening “Welcome To New York,” a tired thinkpiece subject even before the city of New York named Swift its Global Welcome Ambassador.

Since Swift dropped “Welcome To New York,” self-righteous New Yorkers have been clogging up my Twitter timeline making jokes about it. Swift is now a jet-set oligarch using the city as a cultural signifier without thinking about what that means. I’ve seen people link the song, in vague ways, to rising police brutality and apartment rents. If you think as Taylor Swift as a brand, a song like “Welcome To New York” another indicator, like another DIY space shutting down or another corporate chain opening a flagship store in Williamsburg, that New York is not what it once was. But if you think of Taylor Swift as a human being (which is what she is), then “Welcome To New York” is a song about moving to New York. And as someone who once moved to New York, I find the song weirdly, terribly moving. Swift moved to the city in April. She’s 24. I moved there when I was 25 and at least as clueless about it as Swift seems to be. The song is a little thin and underwritten, sure; “kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats under coats” should not be the second line on your blockbuster pop album. But its Human League bleep-riff does something to me, and so does the wide-open wonderment in Swift’s voice. I felt a bit of that same feeling when I moved to New York.

The crucial distinction is that the other feeling in there — the whole oh shit, I’ve eaten Ramen every night for months and I’m still falling into deep debt thing — isn’t there. It makes sense. Swift is richer than God, and the Russian landlord who won’t fix your ceiling leak is not a part of her New York experience. She is singing about what she knows. (There’s empathy in there too: “You can want who you want / Boys and boys and girls and girls.” There’s nothing radical about that sentiment, but she’s spent her life in exurban Pennsylvania and then Nashville, and she’s amped about the idea that people can be who they are in her new hometown. It’s sweet.) Really, it’s smart for the city to snatch up her endorsement now, before the year-two ugh, fuck this place feeling sets in and she can’t convincingly feign enthusiasm for the word “bodega.” And in the album’s larger story, “Welcome To New York” isn’t about a boy, but it is about a sense of possibility, of that idea that you can do whatever you want. It creates a context for a time in your life when, say, falling in love with the guy from One Direction might start to look like a good idea.

That whole relationship-based album structure allows Taylor to do some new things with her persona, finding new wrinkles for a character that’s been established for years. She’s grown-up now, and she’s not singing about high school crushes anymore. She never sings directly about sex, but she at least alludes to the idea that she could be fucking in ways that she’s never been comfortable doing before. And she also plays around with her tabloid image as someone who’s desperate to keep a relationship together but who just can’t do it. On “Blank Space,” for example, she has fun with the idea that she’s really secretly a maneater, someone who absorbs lives completely but temporarily. “I can make guys good for a weekend,” she cackles. Or “I’m dying to see how this one ends.” She knows it’s ending. She doesn’t care.

The album’s structure, though, is less interesting than the building materials she’s using this time around. After all, there have been many, many relationship-centric concept albums with more to say about the ways people fall in love than 1989. But it’ll be a while before we hear a collection of polished steel hooks that gleam quite like this. Now that Taylor is no longer making cosmetic attempts to sound country, even a little bit, she’s openly announcing herself as a polyglot for the first time ever. And it’s fascinating to see her absorbing a new set of influences and using them as raw material. 1989 is named after the year of Swift’s birth, but she also intends it as an homage to late-’80s pop music.

She’s mentioned Madonna and Annie Lennox as inspirations, but there’s more 1989 going on on 1989. “Clean” is a Richard Marx power ballad sung more sweetly than Marx could ever manage. “I Wish You Would” has more of that classic Edge guitar tone than anything on U2’s own new Songs Of Innocence. “How You Get The Girl” has a Debbie Gibson sparkle to it. Pop music in 1989: disco and new wave and Prince’s Minneapolis sound had all been fully integrated, Latin freestyle had helped lay a foundation for the NKOTB-style teen-pop that would follow, craggy rockers like Don Henley and Tom Petty were playing around with keyboards and getting a whole lot richer by doing it, and acid house and rap were just starting to make mainstream-pop inroads. There was a pop mainstream in 1989, but it was in a messy and interesting place. If there’s a pop mainstream in 2014, that mainstream belongs entirely to one person, and that person is Taylor Swift. She’s the whole of it. And she’s in a messy and interesting place, too.

But even as she pulls in all these things from outside, she is still doing Taylor Swift things with them. Consider, for example, “Wildest Dreams,” which has Swift adapting Lana Del Rey’s phrasings so baldly that it has to be intentional. If “Wildest Dreams” is Swift’s Lana Del Rey song, though, it’s still a Lana Del Rey song that Lana Del Rey would never record. She would never rewrite Madonna’s “Live To Tell” as a 2017 prom theme, and that’s what Swift does here. Del Rey might not ever write a song this obviously, crushingly catchy, either”.

I am going to move to some reviews for 1989. Upon its release in 2014, Rob Sheffield sat down with the album and provided his thoughts for Rolling Stone. Such a truly fascinating and compelling artist, you can really see how far Taylor Swift has come in the past decade. In 2014, she was this artist on the edge of something truly wonderful. I think 1989 was the start of this transformation and realisation. Revolution and revelation from the biggest artist of her generation:

“When Taylor Swift decides to do something, the girl really knows how to overdo it. So on her fifth album, when she indulges her crush on Eighties synth-pop, she goes full blast, spending most of the album trying to turn herself into the Pet Shop Boys. 1989 is a drastic departure – only a couple of tracks feature her trademark tear-stained guitar. But she’s still Taylor Swift, which means she’s dreaming bigger and oversharing louder than anyone else in the game. And she still has way too many feelings for the kind of dudes who probably can’t even spell “feelings.”

Swift has already written enough great songs for two or three careers. Red, from 2012, was her Purple Rain, a sprawling I-am-the-cosmos epic with disco banjos and piano ballads and dubstep drops. But as every Eighties pop star knew, you don’t follow one epic with another – instead, you surprise everybody with a quick-change experiment. So rather than trying to duplicate the wide reach of Red, she focuses on one aspect of her sound for a whole album – a very Prince thing to do.

Max Martin produced seven of these 13 songs, and his beats provide the Saturday-night-whatever soundtrack as Swift sings about the single life in the big old city she always dreamed about. In “Welcome to New York,” she finds herself in a place where “you can want who you want/Boys and boys, and girls and girls.” She hits cruise mode on the floor in “Blank Space” (“I can make the bad guys good for the weekend”) and the hilariously titled “Style,” where she swoons, “You got that James Dean daydream look in your eye.”

The best moments come toward the end, when Swift shakes up the concept. “How You Get the Girl” mixes up the best of her old and new tricks, as she strums an acoustic guitar aggressively over Martin’s expert disco surge. “This Love” brings back her most simpatico producer, Nathan Chapman, for the kind of tune that they were just starting to call a “power ballad” in 1989. (The precise equivalent would be Bon Jovi’s “I’ll Be There for You.”) On the killer finale, “Clean,” English singer Imogen Heap adds ethereal backup sighs to Swift’s electro melancholy (“You’re still all over me like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear anymore”).

If there’s nothing as grandiose as “All Too Well” or “Dear John” or “Enchanted,” that’s because there wasn’t meant to be. 1989 sets the record for fewest adjectives (and lowest romantic body count) on a Swift album. Most of the songs hover above the three-minute mark, which is a challenge for Tay – she’s always been a songwriter who can spend five minutes singing about a freaking scarf and still make every line hit like a haymaker. But if you’re into math, note that the three best songs here – “How You Get the Girl,” “This Love,” “Clean” – are the three that crash past four minutes. This is still an artist who likes to let it rip. Deeply weird, feverishly emotional, wildly enthusiastic, 1989 sounds exactly like Taylor Swift, even when it sounds like nothing she’s ever tried before. And yes, she takes it to extremes. Are you surprised? This is Taylor Swift, remember? Extremes are where she starts out”.

I will end with a review from The Guardian. Even if some critics were a bit mixed and unsure in 2014, a lot has changed since then. Considering the re-recorded version of 1989 and Taylor Swift’s other albums. The fact that 1989 has influenced so many other artists and albums since 2014. I really love 1989. It is an album with no filler in my opinion:

“At 24 years old, Taylor Swift inhabits something of a unique position within the teen pop firmament. It’s not merely the fact of her immense popularity, although the sheer devotion of her fans can sometimes knock you back a bit: earlier this week, when Swift released a track consisting of eight seconds of static to iTunes – alas, the result of a technical malfunction, rather than a radical new power-electronics direction influenced by Right to Kill-era Whitehouse and Genocide Organ – her fans in Canada bought it in such quantities that it went to No 1. It’s more that Swift’s music attracts the kind of serious critical attention afforded almost none of her peers. You don’t get many learned articles in the New Yorker about the songcraft of Swift’s mortal enemy Katy Perry. No acclaimed noveliest has felt impelled to take to the pages of Salon to defend the fact that he doesn’t like Jessie J, which Rick Moody did after expressing a dislike of Swift.

On one level, that is irrelevant. What do the vast majority of Taylor Swift fans – the tweenage Instagrammers to whom Swift, according to her ghastly record company biography, represents a “loyal friend, fierce protector of hearts and one of the world’s greatest ambassadors for the power of just being yourself” – care whether their tastes have been anointed by the New Yorker? But on another, it’s intriguing: what is it about Swift’s music that causes it to be singled out in this way?

At first glance, her fifth album doesn’t offer any obvious answers. 1989 has been widely boosted as being Swift’s first pure pop album, the record on which she finally divests herself of the last remaining musical vestiges of her roots as a teenage Nashville star. But that isn’t saying much, given that you’d have needed an electron microscope to detect any last remaining vestiges of those roots in its predecessor, Red. Much has been made of Swift as a self-contained singer-songwriter, but this time around the credits look pretty much the same as the credits for every big pop album: representatives from Scandanavian hit factories (Max Martin, Shellback); a moonlighting member of a mainstream indie-rock band (Fun’s Jack Antonoff); an EDM producer chancing their arm in the world of pop (Ali Payami); the omnipresent Greg Kurstin, of Lily Allen, Lana del Rey, Ellie Goulding and Kylie Minogue fame.

Given the cast list, you would expect 1989 to be an extremely polished product, which it undoubtedly is. Even its least interesting tracks sound like hits, which is what one pays Max Martin for: at its best, 1989 deals in undeniable melodies and huge, perfectly turned choruses and nagging hooks. Its sound is a lovingly done reboot of the kind of late 80s MTV pop-rock exemplified by Jane Wiedlin’s Rush Hour. It’s bold enough in its homage to take on one vintage sound thus far avoided by 80s revivalists – the booming, stadium-filling snare sound that all artists were legally obliged to use for the latter half of the decade makes a reappearance on I Wish You Would – but not so slavish as to preclude everything else: I Know Places is powered by drum’n’bass-influenced breakbeats; single Shake It Off pitches a My Sharona-ish beat against blaring hip-hop synths; the alternately pulsing and drifting electronics of Style and Clean mark 1989 out as an album made in the wake of Random Access Memories and Cliff Martinez’s 2011 soundtrack to Drive.

But the really striking thing about 1989 is how completely Taylor Swift dominates the album: Martin, Kurstin et al make umpteen highly polished pop records every year, but they’re seldom as clever or as sharp or as perfectly attuned as this, which suggests those qualities were brought to the project by the woman whose name is on the cover. As a songwriter, Swift has a keen grasp both of her audience and of pop history. She avoids the usual hollow platitudes about self-empowerment and meaningless aspirational guff about the VIP area in the club in favour of Springsteenesque narratives of escape and the kind of doomed romantic fatalism in which 60s girl groups dealt: the protagonists of I Know Places don’t end the song being pulled lifeless from a mangled car wreck, as they would have done had the Shangri-Las been in charge of proceedings, but they sound like they might, quite soon.

She also has a neat line in twisting cliches until they sound original. Shake It Off takes as its subject that great latterday pop bugbear, the haters, but avoids the usual line – the rather brittle insistence that their presence has somehow contributed to the artist’s inner strength – in favour of suggesting you just ignore them. If you were the kind of person wont to describe pop songs as “meta”, you could apply the term to How You Get the Girl, a knowing checklist of the kind of love-song platitudes that Swift’s peers might easily punt out with a straight face. If Wildest Dreams bears a hint of Lana del Ray, there’s something hugely cheering about the way Swift turns the persona of the pathetic female appendage snivelling over her bad-boy boyfriend on its head. Ramping up the melodrama by way of Be My Babyish drums, Wildest Dreams paints the man as the victim, doomed to spend the rest of his life haunted by what he’s carelessly lost.

“The drought was the very worst,” she sings at the outset of Clean. It’s not just that this is a pretty striking line with which to open a pop song, it’s that you can’t imagine any of Taylor Swift’s competitors coming up with anything remotely like it. Whether that’s because they couldn’t be bothered – you’d have to be hard of hearing to miss the distinct, depressing air of will-this-do? that currently runs through pop music – or because they just couldn’t is debatable. Either way, on 1989 the reasons she’s afforded the kind of respect denied to her peers are abundantly obvious”.

On 27th October, it will be ten years since Taylor Swift released her incredible fifth studio album. Look at album ranking features such as this by Rough Trade, where they put 1989 first (“This album stamped a moment in time so perfectly and found me at the height of my teenage years where it felt like there was nothing but freedom and future ahead. I like to think that Taylor was feeling the same. Her graduation into pop music was immediate, armed with the powerhouse lead single Shake it Off engineered by pop legends Max Martin and Shellback, one of 3 number one singles that helped secure Album of The Year at the Grammys. The authenticity of the 1980s production combined with Taylor’s masterful one-note melodies and sense of rhythm creates a sound that is familiar and fresh at the same time, like it is literally at the edge of one decade and leaping into the next. These songs are crafted without leaving anything on the cutting room floor, like every detail belongs exactly where it is. It’s impossible to pick a favourite song because they’re all just so good”). Maybe reacting to Taylor’s Version, NME ranked it number one this year (“1989’ is a masterclass in how to make a timeless pop record. Here Taylor sacked off her country roots and embraced full-blown pop. Working with a who’s who of trendy producers and writers (Jack Antonoff, Max Martin, Ali Payami alongside indie darling Imogen Heap), she crafted a collection of glossy belters, that flit from fluffy dance-pop (‘Shake It Off’) and sophisticated electronic-tinged bops (‘Blank Space’, ‘Style’), to glorious indietronica (‘Out of the Woods’, ‘Clean’).

Stuffed with ‘80s influence, it also saw a step up in Swift’s song writing, with her sharp, pithy lyrics feeling refined and sleek, hook-laden melodies dominating the entire record. It won a mantelpiece of awards – including the Grammy for Album of the Year – but perhaps even more impressive is the fact it’s already left a massive impact, less than a decade after it was first released. And with the release of ‘1989 (Taylor’s Version)’ we have the chance to dive back into this world, the sparkling sonics sounding better than ever. From the cinematic instrumentals of ‘Wildest Dreams (Taylor’s Version)’, to from phenomenal “From the Vault” tune ‘Now That We Don’t Talk’ (which includes brilliantly Swiftian eye-rolls: “Now that we don’t talk/I don’t have to pretend I like acid rock/or that I’d like to be on a mega yacht”), it’s a welcome trip down memory lane. The songs are as fresh as they were when first released in 2014 with the choruses still getting embedded in your head. In short: ‘1989’ is Taylor Swift’s masterpiece”). GQ and Cosmopolitan had different takes on the album and where it should fit in the ‘best of’ Taylor Swift. As you can see, there are people who think 1989 is the best Taylor Swift album. If they prefer Taylor’s Version, they still nod to the original and how it is this magnificent work. Pop that is near-perfect. Ten years after its release, and it still feels so fresh and relevant. The title referencing the year Taylor Swift was born, it could have been an album that was stuck in 2014 or would go out of fashion or sound dated. As it is, this incredible album from a global superstar will endure and inspire…

FOR years to come.

FEATURE: One Size Fits All: Making Music Clothing More Interesting

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One Size Fits All

PHOTO CREDIT: NIX PHOTO/Pexels

Making Music Clothing More Interesting

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I can appreciate that it is quite hard…

IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney of The Beatles photographed by Linda Eastman at the press party for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 19th May, 1967

to put out merchandise that is durable, engaging and original. Maybe this point does not apply as much to merchandise stalls at gigs and more about bigger chains like HMV. Band T-shirts especially I find so samey and bland. Most T-shirts with a black background and a print that is sort of stuck on. One which will fade if you put it through the wash enough times. It will crack and not last. Most of the T-shirts you see are also for male acts. It is this case of the music T-shirts all having the same look and feeling a bit cheap. It would be nice if there was more variety and eye-catching designs. On many artists’ websites, you do get a choice of clothing. From hoodies and T-shirts through to other garments, you can wear your favourite artist with pride. I think that music clothing used to be more exciting. I want to go out and be able to find something unique and standout. I have been thinking a lot about psychedelic clothing and the sort of clothes The Beatles work in the 1960s. Especially Paul McCartney in 1967. It was a really interesting time for fashion. Not to say it lacks inspiration and colour today. You can get some incredible clothing on the high street. Even so, you have to go a bit off-piste or find hidden shops and alleyways to discover the most eclectic and distinct clothes. Unless you can go to a gig and get memorabilia there, you often have to rely on websites and the high street. It may be a cost thing that means music T-shirts and clothing has to look the same and be made to cost. So that people can afford to buy them. It just feels like one size fits all. Producing a similar sort of thing. When I walk into a chain like HMV, you get all these black T-shirts with the logos and nothing more. No real choice or anything that seems either durable or eye-catching. There are websites like Etsy where you can buy music T-shirts.

Again, there is a lot of choice in terms of the artists listed, though the designs and colour scheme is very samey. I do like music clothing and it can be a real conversation starter. Maybe other people feel differently. As a massive fan of The Beatles, what you get on the high street is all the same. Nothing that is interesting. Not too much in the way of options when you look online. Even, dare I say it, Kate Bush’s website is a bit bland regarding clothing. There might be something prohibiting artists and stores from increasing their range of taking risks with designs and colour. When I was growing up, band and artist T-shirts and clothing were a big deal. They were a real way of bonding with others, whilst showing your support and love for an artist. A real sense of flair and thought has gone our of music clothing. Again, this might not apply to the memorabilia stands. Most of us are going to be shopping online or the high street. Trying to find something in the way of a T-shirt, hoodie or something else that we can wear out and keep for a while. I have found the last few music T-shirts I have bought shrink quite quickly or the designs on them fade. They are not really made to last at all. The t-shirts I wear the most are ones that do not have prints on them or anything that can come unstuck or crack. Cost might be a factor, yet there are ways that you can make music-related clothing accessible and exciting at the same time.

Maybe this malaise and issue reflects on an industry where design and aesthetic is not as important as perhaps once it was. I find a lot of album covers insipid or lacking. A big opportunity missed. There was some great memorabilia and music clothing decades ago. I think people would invest in music clothing if it were a bit more expensive but it was more than something simple and stick-on. It is no offence to the people who design and make this clothing. They are okay for a short time though, like vinyl, you do want to keep hold of your music T-shirts. BBC Radio 6 Music does a T-Shirt Day every year where people sport artists on their chest and get a song by that artist played. A lot of these T-shirts are from years ago. I wonder whether most have bought them from gigs. I look on websites selling music T-shirts and most are quite generic. Whether artists feel it would be too costly and not profitable enough putting out a range of T-shirts or any other clothing. Legacy artists too are subject to the bare minimum. It seems a shame. I go out hunting for music T-shirts and stuff like that. Wanting something cool that I can keep wearing. What I buy either doesn’t last long or I get depressed finding nothing appealing or original. I hope that this changes in years to come. It is important that design and making something distinct and standout is important. Not mass producing the same type of hoodie, jumper or T-shirt. Quite hard to find, especially on the high street, I and so many others yearn to discover something…

PHOTO CREDIT: Panos Sakalakis/Pexels

EXCITING and long-lasting.

FEATURE: One Last Look Around the House Before We Go: Will Kate Bush’s Albums Ever Come Out in Cassette Form?

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One Last Look Around the House Before We Go

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in Copenhagen in 1979/PHOTO CREDIT: Jorgen Angel/Redferns

Will Kate Bush’s Albums Ever Come Out in Cassette Form?

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I may have touched on this previously…

ILLUSTRATION CREDIT: Adobe Stock

though, as I have written God knows how many Kate Bush features – actually, about 862 in all! -, I don’t think people will object me covering this subject again. I love how Kate Bush has reissued her albums on vinyl. She definitely wants people to experience her music physically. That is a commendable and noble quest. An ethos or attitude that many other artists share. Some have criticised Kate Bush for reissuing her albums a couple of times now. Most recently, she redesigned the vinyl for each of her studio albums for independent record stores. Even though they are distinct and different from the original albums’ look, the cost of each was quite steep. However, it does mean that the albums are being brought to new listeners’ attention. The fact there was a time now long ago when you could not get Bush’s albums on vinyl. Not all of them. At least not affordably. Now, we can get the studio albums and keep them for years to come. That is the same with C.D.s. Although they have not been given the same treatment and focus, I know that Bush values that format. You can access her albums on compact disc, though I don’t feel they have been provided the same prominence as vinyl. Maybe that is understandable. It is important that her albums are more portable. Even if new cars are being made without C.D. players, people still have cars that have them and devices where you can play C.D.s. You can go to Amazon or independent record stores and find Kate Bush’s albums on C.D. I don’t think there are ones that are hard to find. Even if the vinyl versions are perhaps a greater priority for Kate Bush, she has not neglected compact disc. That is great. As the format is still very much here and will sustain for years to come, restricting her albums to one physical format (vinyl) would be short-sighted and limiting. An artist that values the tangible nature of an album can appreciate that owning her music in a handheld format that you can play portably is very important. It allows the same sort of freedom as digital music. There is a third physical format that is almost neglected entirely when it comes to Kate Bush’s albums.

Are cassettes part of Kate Bush’s equation? When we think about her music and how it can sustain and impact physically, are cassettes viable and treasured enough? Sure, modern artists from Taylor Swift to Kylie Minogue offer new albums on cassette. In a range of colours or as part of various bundles – with vinyl, C.D., a T-shirt or any other combination. I think that the more we normalise and produce albums on cassette, the more choice it gives the listeners. They in turn will seek out devices on which to play them and be able to play albums portably. The benefit of being able to listen to music on the move but having something tangible. Where you cannot skip tracks easily. Some may argue cassettes are fragile and can easily break. That devices to play them in are rare or not attractive. Thinking about Kate Bush, I remember the buzz around Stranger Things and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God) and one of the characters on the show, Max, playing that song (which is on Hounds of Love) and how evocative that moment was. Rather than it being retro or of the 1980s, instead it gave that song more gravitas because it was being played on cassette. It was not in the background or on a record player in a room. This character was more entwined and connected with the album because they were playing a physical thing and was listening to it through headphones. An experience I don’t think you get with either C.D. or vinyl. I can understand that there is perhaps not the same demand for Kate Bush’s ten studio albums (you can throw in 1986’s The Whole Story and 2016’s Before the Dawn on that format too). I have said before how it would be a dream to have a Kate Bush pop-up again – similar to the one that was in London in 2018, where she raised money for charity and sold T-shirts with Never for Ever and Hounds of Love prints/designs, together with books like the Cathy photobook alongside biographies by Graeme Thomson and Tom Doyle. Maybe a tour poster replica.

I have said before how it would be incredible having a vending machine similar to what they have in countries like Japan. Where each of her albums would be on cassette. You would have a couple of rows of each. Maybe costing £10 each, you would then dispense them and they would be good to go. A novel and cool way of attracting people to those cassettes. Vinyl is for a particular place and time as I keep mentioning. People spending time dedicated to the album. C.D.s in cars allow people to listen on the go, but they (in-car C.D. players) are becoming rarer now. Listening to albums portability is a perfect way to experience Kate Bush, so that is why I think cassettes would be the best way to get that sort of connection. Allow people to affordably collect her albums, have physical products and listen to them at any time. Rather than rely on streaming and phones to get her music, people would have them something they can hold. Pass the albums down through the generations maybe. Some would say the volatility of cassettes would be an issue. At £10 each, people can replace them if they needed without breaking the bank. Also, we have to accept that cassettes have a place and there are plenty of artists releasing their albums on them. Others will say Kate Bush is not putting out new music and does not have the pull of someone like Kylie Minogue. Even so, Bush has reissued her albums to vinyl. That takes expense and a lot of time to get them pressed and out to shops. She also has no issue with revisionism and ensuring people know about her albums. She also adores physical music so could not object to cassettes. I think they would sell really well and could attract younger listeners. Those maybe not who are into vinyl yet and feel C.D.s are a bit old-fashioned. I think there is something different about cassettes. Their look and portability. How they are old technology but also attracting new and huge artists. Fans buying cassettes.

I come back to an artist like Kylie Minogue. Her upcoming TENSION II album is a companion to 2023’s TENSION. Its thirteen tracks features nine new cuts. The Coral Cassette version is £9 and looks amazing! It is affordable and a great buy. The more we normalise cassettes and make them affordable, that will encourage people to listen to them and collect other albums on that format. Most studio albums will fit on one cassette. Kate Bush has two albums that may require double cassette. 2005’s Aerial definitely would need to be on that format. As would 2011’s 50 Words for Snow. Bush could put out her albums through Fish People (her own label) and it would be a fresh venture. Not another reissue of the vinyl editions. People might balk at yet another reissue that would earn her money! Hankering for new music or something different. In lieu of Before the Dawn coming out on DVD (which is all but dead in the water), what can we see from her in the next year or two? I actually think cassettes are long overdue. You can find Kate Bush cassettes on sites like eBay and Discogs, though not through HMV, Rough Trade, Amazon or anywhere like that for the most part. You have to dig deep and explore. The prices can also be quite high too.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Rik Mayall

Having her ten albums out there, each in a different colour (The Kick Inside in pink; Never for Ever in silver; Hounds of Love purple; Aerial in yellow; The Red Shoes in red; 50 Words for Snow in white; The Sensual World possibly in orange or green) with maybe lyrics printed in the inlay. There is something almost foreign and unusual about Generation Z picking up a cassette. At the moment, the market for cassettes seems to be for contemporary artists. Normally bigger artists. Many legacy and classic albums are reserved for vinyl and also C.D. The demand for the cassette versions is unsure at the moment. With Kate Bush, I definitely think there is a market. Cassettes can last thirty years and, if treated well, they are not going to instantly get jammed in a cassette player or break. I personally would grab at least four of her studio albums on cassette, buy a decent portable cassette player, good headphones and spend more time outside listening to her music. It would connect me with the past but also lead me from streaming and ensure I experience her albums in full without distractions. Not a cash-in or novelty, it is another way we  can keep her music alive and physical for future generations. If this was a possibility for 2025, I think we could have a whole new generation picking up Kate Bush’s phenomenal albums…

ON cassette.

FEATURE: The View from the Lighthouse: Bringing Abortion Rights into Music

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The View from the Lighthouse

IN THIS PHOTO: Stevie Nicks

Bringing Abortion Rights into Music

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I have said before…

PHOTO CREDIT: MART PRODUCTION/Pexels

how politics and big subjects is not coming into music as much as it should be. A Hip-Hop community once ignited and united against by injustice, oppression, racism and social inequality seemingly far less concerned and motivated at a time when it is rife and widespread. Pop music once confronting subjects like the AIDs epidemic, inequalities and serious subjects. That is not to say that music is devoid of this sort of activism and awareness. In fact, many artists are addressing bigger themes and things beyond their own lives. However, as we are seeing genocide and bloodshed on the news every day, there is a definite vacant space. Where artists should be shouting and asking for action! Think about women’s rights and violence affecting them. Whereas a few female artists are tackling this, why is this not a bigger topic and talking point in the modern landscape?! There should be nothing preventing artists across every genre speaking out. Label consequences, fan division or a lack of commercial and radio play success should not hold back bringing very important subjects to the fore! And yet it is. More than it should be. I do wonder about the motivation of a lot of artists. Those with the most lure and appeal should be using their platforms to really tackle vital areas. Reproductive rights are especially vital when it comes to song subject matter. Though it does not really affect women in the U.K. music, it is a major issue in the U.S. The almost illegality of abortion right across wide swathes of the nation. Throughout many states there is a Stone Age and biblical approach to abortion rights, it is insanity that the most powerful nation on Earth dictates women’s bodies! Forcing countless women to carry children against their wills. Dictating their safe right to abortions. This seeming puritanical approach is endangering so many women and forcing many to travel to other countries to abort. Others self-aborting or carrying through delivery and then giving children up for adoption. We should not live in a time when governments and controlling women’s rights and bodies. It is shocking enough to see it in countries in other continents. Where women are not allowed to show their faces in public or even speak. Seek education. Prehistoric and barbaric conditions that exist here are often seen as less appalling though, no matter how wealthy or progressive a country might seem, any prohibition or law like this is barbaric!

PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Guliani/Pexels

In the U.S., in 2024, women have fewer rights over their bodies then they did a decade ago! Every year should see progress towards equal rights and greater respect for women. That may sound horribly naïve and idyllic of me, yet how can we go backwards?! In music, abortion rights seem almost taboo. How many artists are discussing it right now?! Why left only to women to discuss an issue that also affects men too. Not only from a paternal viewpoint, also their care and consideration for women’s autonomy and reproductive rights?! Perhaps many artists feel like it is too divisive an issue or a hot potato. Something that could split their fanbase or incur backlash. As I say, there are moments when artists need to cross a picket line or barrier and speak out regardless of the consequences. Especially when it comes to something as important as abortion rights in the U.S. That is why Stevie Nicks’ new song. The Lighthouse, is so important. The music icon released the track last week. The Guardian provide more details about a very urgent, important and timely musical release:

“Stevie Nicks has released a forthright new single, The Lighthouse, inspired by the fight to reinstate abortion rights in the US.

Nicks wrote the robust, swaggering rock song in the aftermath of the June 2022 decision by the US supreme court to overturn the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that Americans had a constitutional right to abortion.

“It seemed like overnight, people were saying, ‘What can we, as a collective force, do about this?’” Nicks said. “For me, it was to write a song. It took a while because I was on the road. Then early one morning I was watching the news on TV and a certain newscaster said something that felt like she was talking to me – explaining what the loss of Roe v Wade would come to mean. I wrote the song the next morning and recorded it that night.

“That was September 6, 2022. I have been working on it ever since. I have often said to myself, ‘This may be the most important thing I ever do. To stand up for the women of the United States and their daughters and granddaughters – and the men that love them.’ This is an anthem.”

In the song, Nicks casts herself as the titular lighthouse, guiding women to campaign for their rights. “I want to teach them to fight / I want to tell them this has happened before, don’t let it happen again,” she sings.

The chorus is similarly a call to action: “They’ll take your soul, take your power, unless you stand up, take it back / Try to see the future and get mad / It’s slipping through your fingers, you don’t have what you had / And you don’t have much time to get it back.”

Nicks is backed by Sheryl Crow, who plays guitar and bass as well as singing backing vocals. Crow also co-produced the song with 13-time Grammy winning Dave Cobb.

The Lighthouse has been released amid a US election campaign where abortion access has been at the forefront of campaigning.

Trump installed the supreme court justices who overturned the decision during Joe Biden’s presidency, and has boasted about it: “After 50 years of failure, with nobody coming even close, I was able to kill Roe v Wade,” he said in May. In August he said he had “no regrets” about the court decision, saying: “The federal government should have nothing to do with this issue. It’s being solved at the state level and people are very happy about it.”

Kamala Harris has repeatedly criticised Trump on the issue, characterising him earlier this week as “the person who said women should be punished for exercising a decision that they, rightly, should be able to make about their own body and future”.

With abortion law now decided at a state level, 14 states have banned abortion with another 11 described as “hostile” to it by the Center for Reproductive Rights. Research published this month by Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health found that doctors are being forced to provide substandard care by making women take unviable pregnancies to full term”.

Think about songs that tackled abortion rights back then. Even though abortion is not Illegal throughout the whole of the U.S., it is looking more likely more and more states will outlaw it. Let’s hope that if Kamala Harris is elected President later this year, there is going to be a bigger push to put abortion rights for all women on the table and through Congress. That there is a chance that all states across America one day will legalise abortion without any addendums or caveats. That is the basic right of every woman! Yet abortion, in so many states, is seen as shameful or murder. Even if 2022 was a year when many artists spoke out against the prohibition of abortion across multiple U.S. states, the desired wave of songs tackling this did not quite occur. I want to bring in some of this article from 2022. Pitchfork talked about the soundtrack of abortion rights – not a mix one would see popping up on Spotify! – through the past fifty years. How it has been highlighted by many women in powerful and different ways:

“It felt like 110 in the sun when the Reproductive Liberation March paraded through downtown Dallas in July, following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But even amid the heat wave, the Black women from the Afiya Center who organized the event, as well as hundreds of other protestors, gathered with their signs and all the water they could carry to march and chant.

Joining them was a local band called the Hot Topics, who played several 1990s alt-rock classics. Desera “Dez” Moore, the group’s singer, said this choice was purposeful. “I was trying to keep the energy light and encouraging toward the beginning, with songs like ‘Drops of Jupiter’ and ‘Semi-Charmed Life,’ to bring people in with a positive light. Then halfway through, switch to songs that conveyed my frustration and rage.” Moore’s fury included a double hit of Alanis Morissette (“Ironic” and “You Oughta Know”) and the Foo Fighters’ “Everlong.” The crowd’s visceral reaction to these songs offered yet another reminder that this protest was an unflinching response to the loss of human rights.

Over the last few months, the sound of the abortion rights movement has been expressed through various styles and emotions, some more forthright than others. It’s Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen singing “Fuck You,” retrofitting a bratty pop song with lyrics that speak to what’s happening now. It’s Megan Thee Stallion leading chants of “my body, my motherfucking choice” alongside gloriously blunt rap anthems like “Plan B.” It’s the catharsis of screaming “I Know the End” along with Phoebe Bridgers, who has been transparent about her own abortion. The music often serves as an acknowledgement of the sadness and grief around the difficult decision to have an abortion in the first place.

There haven’t been many songs released that speak directly to the issue, so people are getting creative, sometimes retrofitting unlikely pop hits to bolster the cause. Hence the Chainsmokers’ “Paris,” with its chorus of “If we go down then we go down together,” becoming an unofficial anthem of solidarity for women on TikTok. This isn’t a new phenomenon; there never have been a lot of songs about abortion specifically. But, historically, whenever abortion rights are threatened, songs about inequality are used to meet the moment.

Musical protest around abortion dates all the way back to the second wave feminist movement in the ’60s and ’70s. Music was only a small part of the overall movement at the time, but the songs that were inspired by it were brash and audacious. In 1968, Dolly Parton released Just Because I’m a Woman, her first solo album after ending her longtime musical partnership with fellow country star Porter Wagoner. The most powerful song on that album is “The Bridge,” a first-person story of a woman who is pregnant and was abandoned by her lover. At the end of the song, she dies by suicide. Abortion wouldn’t become federal law in the United States until 1973, but that character embodied all of the women dealing with a significant wage gap, an injustice that would stop them from caring for their unborn children alone. It also illustrated the reality that women were prohibited from getting a line of credit in their own names, and faced the possibility of being fired if they got pregnant. If “Just Because I’m a Woman” was a protest song about society’s sexist double standards, then “The Bridge” was the sound of an internal revolution.

That same year, Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools” and “Think” dropped a hammer on the idea of putting up with trifling men, as did the Supremes’ “Love Child,” in which a woman asks her lover to wait to have sex and consider how tough the life of a child of two unprepared parents could be. In 1969, Roberta Flack mentioned that “unwed mothers need abortion” in “Compared to What,” an anti-war song. Loretta Lynn’s 1971 song “One’s on the Way” includes a passionate mention of “the girls in New York City, they all march for women’s lib,” followed by the hope that the birth control pill, which would become available to single women in 1972, would change the world. But its main character still faces the issues of the day: She has too many kids, too much work to do around the house, and a husband who is no help at all.

The universally recognized song of the women’s movement in the ’70s was Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman.” But it wasn’t exactly compatible with the abortion rights movement, thanks to the lyric, “I’m still an embryo/With a long, long way to go.” For some, though, the overall sentiment of the song still gave a sense of empowerment they craved. Second wavers including Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Nico, and Carly Simon released career-defining albums around the time Roe was decided, with songs about the inequities that the women’s liberation movement aimed to change, or the freedoms that sexual agency brought women. But very few wrote about the desperation of not having control over their bodies. Instead, many of these songs tapped into the dark, melancholy feelings that came from experiences of oppression”.

Artists did react to the decision by the Supreme Court’s “decision on Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization on Friday, effectively overturning the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that codified the right to abortion, social media predictably exploded with myriad responses”. This article showed there was a lot of anger and disgust. This article names ten songs around abortion/abortion rights; songs that might not have explicitly been about abortion/abortion rights but take on new context now. Whilst this article mentions how some artists reacted fast to devastating news in 2022, how much momentum has there been since then?! In the past two years, how many artists have put reproductive and abortion rights at the front of their music? I hope that more and more do following Stevie Nicks’ latest song. In fact, another song that she wrote, Sara, is about her having an abortion. That song was released in 1979:

“Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar, Olivia Rodrigo and Megan Thee Stallion used the stage at Glastonbury Festival as their platform to vent.

Janelle Monae turned her presenting gig at the BET Awards into an opportunity to voice her concern.

Halsey spoke passionately during her live performances and artists including Pink, Lizzo and Eminem tweeted messages filled with fury, sadness, vows to keep fighting and financial pledges to Planned Parenthood.

Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade after 50 years, which negated the constitutional right to an abortion, netted a swift reaction from the music community.

Some artists quickly spun their concern into new music: Ani DiFranco and Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard released “Disorders” and Promise of the Real’s Lukas Nelson (son of Willie) unveiled a harrowing ballad about a trio forced to have babies despite extreme circumstances such as incest and date rape”.

It is staggering that women should be denied access to abortion clinics/facilities in this day and age. Anywhere in the world! The fact that it is quite common throughout the U.S. is reprehensible and abuse. Women not only being denied something as fundamental but also having their rights stripped. How any government thinks it can control women’s bodies and will is insanity and frankly inhumane! I don’t know how powerful music is when it comes to sparking change and activation, though the more and more artists that cover it in music, the greater the pressure gets. It is not down to anyone other than women who get pregnant to decide if they keep a foetus. The partner should have say, though it is women’s bodies and it is their decision! It definitely should not be something politicians feel they should be involved in. When it comes to women and their abortion rights, it is entirely…

THEIR choice.

FEATURE: Protection: Not Erasing Women’s Involvement in Their Own Work

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Protection

Not Erasing Women’s Involvement in Their Own Work

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WHEN on Twitter yesterday…

IN THIS PHOTO: Tracey Thorn/PHOTO CREDIT: Katherine Anne Rose/The Observer

I saw a post by Eric Alper that was met with some angry reaction. It said this: “Massive Attack's "Protection" was originally written for Madonna, but due to scheduling conflicts, Tracey Thorn of Everything but the Girl ended up lending her iconic vocals to the track”. Massive Attack’s Protection album turned thirty on 26th September. The title track opens the album. It memorably features the vocals of the legendary Tracey Thorn. The Everything But the Girl lead not only sung the vocals but penned the melody and the lyrics. Her response took no prisoners: “That's a very weird take. I didn't "lend my vocals" to the track, I wrote the entire melody and lyrics. It's an entirely collaborative track, so not really true to suggest that it existed already as a song and might have been sung by someone else”. Four years later, Cocteau Twins’ Elizabeth Fraser co-wrote the iconic Teardrop. From Massive Attack, Mezzanine, would anyone say that she ‘lending her vocals to the track”, iconic or not?! She probably would get that! The issue is that many people – and not just men, most they are the vast majority – assume that women that sing on songs by other artists are merely showing up to sing. No agency or credit. They are wheeled in to make a song sound a particular way but dismissed and marginalised when it comes to their creative input. You can see what Tracey Thorn meant! She was not a ringer or in vogue singer who Massive Attack though could do something good with the track. Her melody and lyrics make the song what it is! One of the best Massive Attack tracks ever (just behind Unfinished Sympathy in my view), the title cut of one of their greatest albums was made what it was by Tracey Thorn. It is diminishing and almost sexist to think that it was only her vocal that went into the track! In fact, Shara Nelson, who sung on the timeless Unfinished Sympathy, co-wrote the song. These incredible women whose words and ladies essentially provided the heartbeat and bones of Massive Attack’s finest moments.

It is not only misguided voices like Eric Alper that undervalue and almost dismiss women’s contributions. Even this anniversary feature for Massive Attack’s Protection mentions Tracey Thorn once. As a contributor. Think about women like her and what they helped to build. So many genius songs through the years are credited to male acts/bands and we forget the women who sung on them did a lot more than that! There are articles that explore the women written out of Indie history. Those who have practically been erased from Pop. Even if women have been dominated Pop and other genres for years now – and most of the new breed coming through is defined by female brilliance -, we still consider the genres (and all others) to be defined by men. That they make the greatest music. I remember a lot of those incredible Dance and Pop tracks from decades ago where you had this amazing woman singing. How they often were vastly underpaid and credited. Maybe not having their names down as songwriters. Seen as props or almost a gimmick. Sometimes sexualised and reduced to their gender. In essence, they were considered to be novelty and a voice. In many cases these amazing women helped write the songs and, inarguably, where the driving force behind them. Are we still living in a time when music is still male-centric?! It definitely seems to be the same when it comes to female collaborations. I think it goes further than this. Even in the modern time, there is sexism and misogyny running through the industry. In terms of the incredible women songwriters and their huge input into music. What galled me so much about the Eric Alper/Tracey Thorn interaction is that this sort of attitude pervades. Thorn could argue and dissect this much better than me. The way women’s creativity and value is so undermined and ignored. If you have a woman singing the song, that is all she is. Assumed that the blood and soul of a track is made by men. As we can hear in tracks like Protection, that is not the case!

It brings to mind books such as This Woman’s Work: Essays on Music. This book is female writers penning essays about women who inspire them. It is important that the narrative is changed. That women’s contributions and incredible work is recognised. Not assuming that women are secondary, supplementary or silent. Not only has that post by Eric Alper unintentionally opened up debate and a new conversation about how women are still seen and viewed in music. In terms of these classic songs that feature women on vocals. Not assuming they were produced and written for by men. Giving a lot more weight to female pioneers and innovators. These amazing artists that offers get snubbed and disrespected. I feel that the Eric Alper tweet was a blunder or misworded. That he meant to celebrate Tracey Thorn’s amazing vocal, whilst forgetting that she also wrote the melody and lyrics. Do people still see women as singers but no genuine writers and composers? This assumption men are the wheels and driving force. That certainly needs to be addressed and reversed. From women fronting House classics to those through Disco and Techno that have gone unpaid and under-valued, right alongside to women being underrepresented today, there is an issue through the industry and through society. The depth, value and worth of female songwriters and creativities. We need to stop with this ignorance. If nothing else, I hope that the celebration of Massive Attack’s Protection recognises the amazing woman who made the title track the stunning and moving classic it is. Tracey Thorn is not the only woman who’s true value and creativity is truncated and reduced to one thing. It has been going on for decades and it needs to stop. Phenomenal and inspiring women through music should be given…

THE credit they deserve!

FEATURE: Aces and Jokers: Inside Lady Gaga’s Harlequin

FEATURE:

 

 

Aces and Jokers

Inside Lady Gaga’s Harlequin

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I do love a surprise album…

as it means we do not have to go through the normal promotional cycle and all that predictable build-up. This one comes Lady Gaga. A companion piece to the new film she appears in, Joker: Folie à Deux, I am interested in the reviews for the album. How there is some mixed reception. People saying Lady Gaga’s vocals are phenomenal and she is a natural when it comes to covering standards. Others feeling that there are a few weaker tracks in the pack. I really love the album and feel it is important and really strong. I just love artists tackling standards and older songs. Immersing themselves in that world. More should do it. I will end with a couple of reviews for Harlequin. Prior to that, I am featuring an interview from Rolling Stone, where Lady Gaga spoke about the new album. It is interesting reading what she had to say:

“When Lady Gaga wrapped her third movie — the upcoming Joker sequel, Folie à Deux — she realized she wasn’t ready to move on from her character, Harleen “Lee” Quinzel, a.k.a. Harley Quinn. “I had such a deep relationship with Lee,” she tells Rolling Stone. “And when I was done filming the movie, I wasn’t done with her.”

With the help of her fiancé, Michael Polansky, the superstar recorded Harlequin, a companion record to the film that mostly contains sparkling renditions of standards — her first time doing so since the death of her collaborator Tony Bennett. Over 13 tracks, she interprets classics that include “Get Happy” (made famous by Judy Garland) and “That’s Life” (Frank Sinatra) while putting a modern spin on them. Harold Arlen and Ted Koehler’s 1932 song “I’ve Got the World on a String” is transformed into a seductive rocker — ideal for introducing it to younger generations. On a Zoom call from London, Gaga spoke to us about Harlequin, defying genres, and what fans can expect on her upcoming pop album.

What were your goals going in to this album?

We decided we wanted to create an album that celebrated her complexity through the lens of a lot of the music in the film, as well as originals, that would touch on the breadth of her as a woman — her darkness, her chaos, her vibrancy, her manic nature — and create a modern take on vintage pop.

You describe the album as “LG 6.5.” Do you view this more as a Harley album, or solely a Gaga record?

I view this as both, actually. That’s kind of the way that I see all of this. It is my record. It’s a Lady Gaga record, but it’s also inspired by my character and my vision of what a woman can be. It’s why the album does not adhere to one genre. I called it “6.5” because it’s not my next studio album that’s a pop record, but it is somewhere in between, and it’s blurring the lines of pop music. As you know, my collaborator Tony Bennett, who’s no longer alive, was young singing this music. It was just pop music. And I thought it was so interesting, the songs that were chosen to create this film. I wanted to explore what this music could mean today through the lens of her.

You described Joker as meta-modern, and how you can’t really pin it down to one genre. That’s how I see this album, too. Jazz is at the forefront, but there’s so many different sounds.

Thank you. I would say that that meta-modernism actually played a real role in how we approached this in the studio. I co-produced this album with Ben Rice. Michael also had a very heavy hand in the music. We talked a lot about her being somebody that you can’t clarify, because she is too unpredictable and rare. [We] used genre as a way to express that something is rare — by not adhering to one and going heavily into the avant-garde. I’m basically saying, “As a woman, I choose to be whatever and whoever I want to be at any given moment, no matter how I feel. And no matter what you want from me, I will be myself. Thank you. Love, Harlequin” [laughs].

You basically had to unlearn singing and tone down your technique while shooting the film. What about here? Were you just being Gaga and not holding back?

I did both on this record. There’s moments where I definitely tap into Lee’s voice and her childlike immaturity with song. She has this naivete. You imagine that she heard the song two times and she’s humming by herself, because she’s uncomfortable and wants to soothe herself. That made it in there. For example, the opening of “That’s Entertainment” almost sounds like a 13-year-old at a school play. In the context of a 38-year-old woman, it’s kind of unsettling. But then, “That’s Entertainment” launches into a much softer vocal that is extremely nostalgic. And I worked on that as well.

Vocally, I played with using my voice in a way that I also didn’t use ever with Tony. So this was a bit of Lee’s voice, and a new voice for me with some of the more jazz-inspired records. And then exploring — how would I sing over surf punk? How would I sing over a waltz? How could we create a version of “Smile” that feels inherent to the film? And then with “Happy Mistake,” there’s this raw fragility that’s totally Gaga, but it’s also maybe me singing on a record in a way that I never have before. So I would say that for as genre-defying as the album is, the vocal is, too. The vocal’s kind of schizophrenic, but that makes sense for Harley Quinn. And that was part of the joy of making it — the freedom of it all.

This your first time recording standards without Tony. Was he in your mind at all? I’m sure it was emotional.

Yeah. This was my first time without Tony, and it wasn’t emotional probably in the way you’re thinking. It wasn’t sad. It was actually like he was with us all the time. And also, in a funny way, if I had put rock & roll chords over production in a record that I did with Tony years ago, I don’t know how he would’ve felt about that. Tony didn’t love rock & roll. But he would’ve said, “Wow, that’s amazing.” He was somebody who loved how risk-taking and different I am, and I always thought that was so cool. He was 60 years older than me, and he would flinch less than young people that I would meet. People that would be like, “Why is she dressed that way? Why is she singing that way? Why is her stage performance so theatrical?” Tony, he just never even flinched. He was just a really compassionate, inclusive person. So he was definitely with us [in the studio], but he was mostly inside of me.

As a female producer and singer, I feel that I’ve earned my ability to show my way around this music. And that was exciting for me, because that’s also something I love to share with young people that are listening to these songs. Some of these songs are from the Thirties. It’s nice to be able to show how these things can be reimagined beyond just the notes and the style of the way they were written. Rather… what if you just tore up the book and lit it on fire and did it in a completely new way? I wanted it to be fun”.

Before wrapping things up, I want to come to a couple of reviews for Harlequin. The surprise of the album coming out. I love Lady Gaga’s work and this is her embracing and exploring her full vocal range. It is a fascinating collection of songs that is much more than a side project or lesser work. I am interested in different takes on Harlequin. I am going to end with another review in a minute. First, this is how Consequence approached the stunning Harlequin:

“The story begins, for example, with a slightly updated version of “Good Morning,” originally performed by Judy Garland and further popularized by its inclusion in Singin’ in the Rain. And while nothing can ever top the sheer joy of Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor, and Debbie Reynolds dancing around a Los Angeles set piece in the wee hours of the morning, Gaga takes it out for a cheeky spin with a handful of references to inmates, wardens, and other plot elements waiting in Joker: Folie à Deux. When it comes to sifting through the many classic tracks she could have chosen for this collection, Gaga’s instincts are, overall, fantastic. She pulls heavily from beloved Technicolor musicals, mining Sweet Charity for “If My Friends Could See Me Now” and The Band Wagon for “That’s Entertainment.”

“That’s Entertainment,” in particular, feels like a turning point for the story Gaga is telling. Regardless of how Lee’s arc will play out in the movie, Dr. Harleen Quinzel is a character who canonically finds herself consumed by the charismatic Crown Prince of Crime to the point that she sheds most of her own identity to step into the role of Harley Quinn. She wants so desperately to be loved and affirmed by him that she’ll let her life fall to pieces in order to get his approval. All the world’s a stage, and “That’s Entertainment” feels like the moment she accepts her role.

The one glaring miss immediately follows with  “The Joker,” which Gaga pulled for obvious reasons from the little-seen 1965 production The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd. It comes across as too heavy-handed to mesh evenly with everything else happening here. The other tracks feel peppered with dark irony or devil-may-care awareness in a way that feels self-aware, while the references in “The Joker” to “the lonely clown” as the ultimate “loser in the game” are just a bit too on the nose to work. Even so, “The Joker” is clearly the point where our narrator — Gaga, Lee, Harley, or any mix of the three — takes the turn for the worse, which makes the tender “Smile” a powerful emotional centerpiece.

Harlequin then offers the first of two original tracks, “Folie à Deux,” written solely by Gaga. “Folie à Deux” is a trippy, cartoonish waltz with a haunting background vocals and explosive piano that feels entirely in line with her narrative. The other original, “Happy Mistake,” emerges in the final third as a reserved guitar ballad that wouldn’t have felt out of place on 2016’s Joanne, one of the first times Gaga began to peel back the layers of protection offered by her chameleonic stage persona.

This idea of exposure is present throughout Harlequin, too. “Playing a strung-out girl my whole career was a way for me to split off from my true self, but, it’s all me,” she told Entertainment Weekly of “Happy Mistake.” “That song says if I was ever going to find joy or happiness in my life, it would probably feel like an accident…My dedicated fans know this about me, that playing a persona had a price, and it has a price for Lee and her love of Joker. There’s definitely a way that I address that on this record.”

While Lady Gaga isn’t quite a method actor, she certainly intertwines her characters with her own DNA, a concept she’s reinforced throughout the press cycle for the film. “This idea of dual identities was always something that was a part of my music-making,” she noted on a recent episode of The Zane Lowe Show. “I was always creating characters in my music, and when I made Lee for Joker, she just really had this profound effect on me.” She’s obviously far from the first to undertake this type of project, one that uses a film as its launchpad, but there are few creators out there as committed as Gaga.

We already know that Lady Gaga can absolutely body a jazz track, which she does frequently throughout Harlequin. Her vocal prowess remains undeniable; she jumps the octave in “Gonna Build a Mountain” with such ease that Sammy Davis Jr. himself would approve. The transition between “Folie à Deux” and the determined “Gonna Build a Mountain” positions itself as that final narrative turning point, and the closing third of the project brings the storyline home. There’s certainly no happy bow, and following the thread of a toxic relationship takes us to this line in album’s closing track: “I thought of quittin’, but my heart just won’t buy it.”

The arrangements throughout the LP demonstrate the clear reverence and care she has for these standards, and the tweaks she makes and lyrical additions she adds feel playful, not flippant. She is listed as a producer on every song on Harlequin, with Benjamin Rice as her lone co-producer for most of the album. Rice has worked with Lady Gaga throughout the majority of her career, including, crucially, on the soundtrack for A Star Is Born. He has a clear and deep understanding of her vision here.

In recent days, Lady Gaga has been referring to Harlequin as “LG6.5,” placing it as a “half” project ahead of her seventh studio album. It’s a description that feels correct; Harlequin is interesting and stylistically excellent, but at the same time, it probably won’t float to the top in conversations around Lady Gaga’s best work”.

Although there have been some more mixed reviews for Harlequin, I do find it fascinating. A terrific and solid work from Lady Gaga, it does lead me to think that more artists should cover standards. It may seem tried and tired, yet Lady Gaga has revealed new sides to her with this album. Whether Harlequin is a palette cleanser or a stepping stone to a new album, it is compelling in its own right. I will end with a couple of reviews for Harlequin. This is what The Arts Desk wrote about an album that people should really check out:

“Lady Gaga has made clear this is not her official new artist album. It’s a side project, inspired by Harley Quinn, the nom-de-chaos of the Arkham Asylum inmate she plays in Todd Phillips’ much-anticipated sequel Joker: Folie à Deux. The original Joker, deep-dipped in Seventies Scorcese aesthetics, saw DC Studios demonstrate they could take superhero fictions to exciting new places. Setting the bar higher, the new film is a musical.

Judging from this album, it’s going to boast a whole heap of swingin’ jazz energy.

As a stand-alone album, it’s very much in the vein of her two albums with Tony Bennett, rather than her usual stadium cyber-pop. It contains songs featured in the film and a few that aren’t. Two of the 13-track set are Gaga originals. The rest are mostly well-known standards. The territory has been relentlessly trampled over the decades - everyone from Sinead O’Connor to Robbie Williams to Rod Stewart has had a go – but Gaga acquits herself with aplomb. Partly this is because she has a stunning voice, whether foghorn belting, gospel diva-ing or deep cabaret playful.

Sure, there are throwaway bits; Charlie Chaplin’s schmaltzy old “Smile”, a predictable easy-listening “Close to You", and a so-so “Oh, When the Saints”. None are horrid and they may well work onscreen, but they don’t show off Gaga’s unique character. Happily there’s plenty that does, notably the rockin’ Cher-goes-burlesque of “The Joker” (the Anthony Newley one, not the Steve Miller Band one!), the Gene Krupa-ish “If My Friends Could See Me Now”, the showbiz explosion of “That’s Life” and a smokey, Winehouse-y take on Dixieland gem “I’ve Got the World on a String”.

Her own songs sit easily next to well-worn classics. One is the lush waltz-time slowie “Folie à Deux”, which sounds as if it hails from a long-ago Disney princess film (albeit spiked with deliberately off-key notes), and the other is a strummed melancholic torch song, “Happy Mistake”. Lady Gaga is one of pop’s true one-off’s, often magificently so, and this outing is sprinkled with enough of her stardust”.

Whether you prefer Lady Gaga’s studio albums and her more traditional sound or do like when she takes on classic and older tracks, Harlequin offers both worlds. It is a wonderful set that will please Lady Gaga fans and those who might not have truly discovered her work. With very few jokers in the pack, Harlequin offers up…

PLENTY of aces.

FEATURE: In These Shoes? Remembering Kirsty MacColl at Sixty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

In These Shoes?

PHOTO CREDIT: KPA/United (via The New York Times)

Remembering Kirsty MaCcoll at Sixty-Five

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ON 10th October…

we will mark what would have been Kirsty MacColl’s sixty-fifth birthday. We sadly lost her at the age of forty-one in 2000. It was such a tragedy and shock. A truly distinct and wonderful voice in music, I wanted to celebrate her amazing work ahead of that birthday. Before getting to a playlist of songs from throughout her career, I want to bring in some detailed biography from AllMusic:

“A talented and eclectic British singer/songwriter, Kirsty MacColl's genius was apparent, though woefully unrecognized, during her lifetime. Despite a dazzling catalog of original work, her two best-known performances were written by others. Most recognizably, she is Shane MacGowan's feisty duet partner on the Pogues' perennial classic "Fairytale of New York," while her most successful solo release is a shimmering cover of Billy Bragg's "A New England." She could have followed in the footsteps of her father, U.K. folk legend Ewan MacColl, but instead devoted her life to pop music of every conceivable stripe. Her first single, 1979's "They Don't Know," fused classic girl group themes with jangly power pop, and over the following two decades she explored country, jazz, synth pop, alt rock, and even Latin. MacColl's innate curiosity and willful attitude often precluded her from settling into any single role, which is possibly why audiences found her hard to pin down. She was a trailblazing multi-hyphenate who could write, produce, and arrange while collaborating with acts ranging from Tracey Ullman to the Smiths. Her own albums, particularly 1989's Kite and 2000's Tropical Brainstorm, were exciting stylistic fusions that combined unpredictable melodies, sharp wit, and detailed storytelling. Following her death in 2000 at age 41, subsequent generations have begun to discover her work, though her legacy outside of England remains remarkably overlooked. Various compilations have sought to draw attention to MacColl's music, the most thorough of which is 2023's career-spanning box set See That Girl 1979-2000.

Born October 10, 1959, to British folk singer Ewan MacColl and dancer Jean Newlove, Kirsty Anna MacColl grew up in Croydon with her mother. Whereas her father was a noted folk purist, Kirsty was voracious in her musical tastes, embracing pop, rock, punk, country, and everything in between. Her entry into the local music scene came as the vocalist (under the pseudonym Mandy Doubt) for punk outfit the Drug Addix. The band went nowhere, but Stiff Records heard potential in their 18-year-old singer and signed MacColl to a solo deal. Her debut single, 1979's "They Don't Know" introduced the smart melodic sense and lush vocal layering that would become one of her hallmarks. While it wasn't a hit for MacColl, a version by Tracey Ullman reached number two in the U.K. four years later. Over the coming years she wrote several more songs for Ullman including "You Broke My Heart in 17 Places." MacColl's own chart debut came in 1981 with "There's a Guy Works Down the Chip Shop Swears He's Elvis," a jangly country-indebted novelty song that served as the lead single to her debut album, Desperate Character. It was her only release for Polydor, which dropped her just as she was wrapping up sessions for Real, the synth-heavy album intended to be her follow-up. The album was ultimately shelved for the remainder of MacColl's career and wouldn't see the light of day until 2023. She moved back to Stiff and resumed recording pop singles like "He's On the Beach" and "Terry" before landing her first hit with a reworked version of Billy Bragg's "A New England."

Released in 1985 and produced by MacColl's then-husband Steve Lillywhite, the song peaked at number seven on the U.K. Singles chart and remains her best-selling song. Bragg wrote a special verse for MacColl's version and the two remained close friends and collaborators for the remainder of her career. Despite its success, she avoided an immediate follow-up, choosing instead to focus on raising her two children with Lillywhite. She was far from inactive, though, and took regular session work as a singer, arranger, and all-around creative foil. During the mid- to late '80s, MacColl sang on records by the Smiths, Robert Plant, the Rolling Stones, Alison Moyet, Simple Minds, Big Country, and many others. She even sequenced U2's landmark album The Joshua Tree, which Lillywhite was mixing at the time. She returned to the pop charts later that year duetting with Shane MacGowan on the Pogues' holiday single "Fairytale of New York,'' another Lillywhite production.

In April 1989, a full decade into her career, MacColl finally released her second album. Now signed to Virgin Records, the smartly written Kite was easily her most accomplished work to date, earning critical acclaim and a respectable placement at 34 on the U.K. charts. It also ushered in her most prolific and creatively successful period. The vibrant and diverse Electric Landlady followed in 1991, yielding the U.S. college radio hit "Walking Down Madison," a dance track co-written with frequent collaborator Johnny Marr. Despite it being her biggest American release, Virgin opted not to renew her contract and she switched to Trevor Horn's ZTT Records for 1993's Titanic Days. Written and recorded during her divorce from Lillywhite, it was made with a significantly smaller budget, though no less ambition.

MacColl's lyrics skewed more toward introspective, though the music and arrangements were as eclectic as ever and it again received positive reviews, if middling sales. In 1995 Virgin compiled the greatest-hits collection Galore which featured two new recordings, the power pop highlight "Caroline" and a cover of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day" with Evan Dando. Galore became MacColl's only album to reach the U.K. Top Ten. Another compilation, 1998's What Do Pretty Girls Do?, collated her various BBC 1 live sessions, mostly from the front half of the '90s. During this period, MacColl had become increasingly enamored of Latin and Tropicalia music. She learned to speak Spanish and traveled to Cuba and Brazil, infusing the rhythms and grooves into a dynamic new set of songs. When it was released in March 2020, Tropical Brainstorm was a significant leap forward for MacColl, fusing bright, tropical rhythms with pop, jazz, electronic music, and various other styles. She sounded reinvigorated and sharper than ever. Critics loved it and it was a modest chart success as well. On December 18 of that year, just as her career seemed to be ramping up into its second act, MacColl was killed by a passing speedboat while swimming with her children off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. The boat was owned by a Mexican multimillionaire, though controversy remains over who was operating it at the time. In the aftermath of the accident, her family launched a Justice for Kirsty campaign and a 2004 documentary, Who Killed Kirsty MacColl?, examined the case in detail.

In the decades since her death, several compilations have been released celebrating MacColl's career, though outside of the U.K. she remains something of a cult favorite. Her 2000 song "In These Shoes?" has been featured in several commercials and television shows including Sex and the City, and "Fairytale of New York" has become a staple of the holiday season in Britain. In 2023, an elaborate eight-disc box set, See That Girl 1979-2000, was released by Universal and covered nearly every aspect of her career”.

On 10th October, I hope people will remember Kirsty MacColl. It would have been her sixty-fifth birthday. She should still be with us. Killed in such an avoidable incident, you wonder just how much more she would have given us. Regardless, we can remember and celebrate what she did leave us. An amazing legacy and a distinct and beautiful body of music from such a great (yet underrated) talent. I will be thinking about…

THE brilliant Kirsty MacColl.

FEATURE: When Kate Bush Became Catherine Earnshaw: The Reaction to and Legacy of the Beguiling Wuthering Heights

FEATURE:

 

 

When Kate Bush Became Catherine Earnshaw

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

The Reaction to and Legacy of the Beguiling Wuthering Heights

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IT is usually around…

IN THIS PHOTO: Emerald Fennell/PHOTO CREDIT: Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock

January that I focus on Kate Bush’s debut single, Wuthering Heights. I am pulling it forward because there is a new film adaptation coming up. Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi are going to be paired together. The Australian actors will play Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff in director Emerald Fennell's much-discussed adaptation of the classic Emily Brontë novel. The adaptation is getting a lot of mixed reaction. It is great brining the novel to the screen but, as there have been quite a few versions of the book and the definitive version is many years old, there is scepticism. I guess a modern twist or update could bring more people to Wuthering Heights. It is a novel that is still taught in schools and hugely popular. I want to talk about Kate Bush and her being inspired by the novel in 1977. The song Bush wrote around the book was a late addition to The Kick Inside. Even though the song was recorded quickly and Bush nailed her part on the first take, it might not have made it. In the sense it was written in the evening before going in to record the album, under a full moon on a midsummer’s night. Bush caught the last part of a 1967 BBC adaptation of the classic book. Starring Ian McShane as Heathcliff and Angela Scoular as Cathy, its atmospheric, haunting and strange ending captivated the teenager. Kate Bush was born Catherine Bush. Relating to another Catherine. Emily Brontë was also born on 30th July. There was connections between the author and Kate Bush. Bush could put herself in the song. Kate becoming Cathy! Producer Andrew Powell was blown away when Bush played the song for him on the piano. As Graeme Thomson writes in Under the Ivy: The Life & Music of Kate Bush, it is about the emotion details rather than the intellectual or overly-analytical. A song that hits you when you hear it. The connection it has!

Bush noted how this young girl/women was centre of a novel in a time (1847) when women’s roles and opinions were overlooked and seen as inferior. As we have this new film coming along, many people will ask whether Kate Bush’s song will feature. If Stranger Things catapulted Kate Bush to a new audience through this use in a powerful scene, will we get the same with Wuthering Heights?! It may be a bit on the nose including the song, though many have discussed her track in relation to the film. One of the things that defined how people perceived Kate Bush from 1978 is her vocal. This perception is was all high-pitched and girl-like. She was trying to improve her range and the high vocal for Wuthering Heights was deliberate. Embodying this spirit and ghost rather than anything with a heart and flesh. Released on 20th January, 1978, Wuthering Heights climbed to number one and announced this unique and startling musical talent. The fight to get that song released as the single is infamous. Bush was insistent that this was going to be her debut single. EMI wanted James and the Cold Gun. A more conventional and straight-forward song, you can see their reasoning. However, hit by this bolt of inspiration, Bush knew that Wuthering Heights had to be a single! Bob Mercer maintains that Bush burst into tears when things got heated. She strongly refutes it. It is clear that she was determined and strong-willed with her own music. Knowing that Wuthering Heights would translate. It was meant to go out on 4th November, 1977, however there were setbacks. Wings’ Mull of Kintyre dominated and was a massive number one at the end of the year. Also, the single cover with a photo by Gered Mankowitz was scrapped. It was a photo of Bush with her nipples showing trough a leotard.

Regardless, the delay did the single good. Two months before its release, promotional copies had been sent out to stations from EMI’s Automatic Mailing List. Eddie Puma, producer at Capital Radio, and presenter Tony Myatt did not follow EMI’s request to not play the single. They kept playing it! Thanks a lot to Graeme Thomson for that information! I love the whole gestation and life of the song. How it started outside the top forty and reached number one. Bush appeared on Top of the Pops several times. She never really enjoyed the experience. However, she performed the song live a fair few times and was asked about it. This idea Bush was hippy-like or something insignificant. Many dismissed her. However, plenty of people recognised her gifts and the wonder of Wuthering Heights. I always assumed that the white dress version of the Wuthering Heights video came first and then the red dress versions. The U.S. audiences being freaked by the wide-eyed and smoky video with the white dress. In fact, the red dress version came first. Keith MacMillan (Keef) directed both videos. The originals was shot in a day on Rockflix and was very low budget. EMI swiftly withdrew the version of Bush in a red dress on Salisbury Plain – exactly Baden's Clump, near Sidbury Hill – and it was recommissioned. The white dress version was shot in Ewart’s Studio A. The video was shot in the middle of the night. Brian Wiseman explains how they got halfway through and stopped and did something else. Wiseman would go on to direct the videos for Sat in Your Lap and Suspended in Gaffa.

In January, it will be forty-seven years since Wuthering Heights was released as a single. Her debut. This huge moment! Since 1978, Wuthering Heights has reached different generations. It remains flawless and endlessly fascinating. In May 2020, when selecting the one-hundred best U.K. singles ever, The Guardian placed Wuthering Heights fourteenth:

“Had the teenaged Kate Bush listened to the wishes of her record label, Wuthering Heights would not have been her debut single. EMI preferred the pop-stomp of James and the Cold Gun to the eerie, circular song that introduced her to the world. But by her late teens, Bush clearly knew herself and wisely pushed for Wuthering Heights instead. When it saw the light of day, in early 1978, it was a hit. By March that year, it had become a No 1 hit, the first single written and recorded by a female artist to top the British charts. It replaced Abba’s Take A Chance on Me, and remained at the top for a month.

It is sometimes worth remembering the incredible fact that Bush wrote Wuthering Heights when she was 18 years old, though perhaps its keen ear for adolescent angst is part of what makes it so special. She had been inspired by an old television adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel, which led her to seek out the book. Written from the perspective of the ghost of Catherine Earnshaw, a young woman pleading with the brutal Heathcliff, whom she loves and hates, to let her soul into the house, the song is a gothic melodrama that builds until it is thick with intensity. It is a magnificent achievement, though the writing of it was seemingly painless. “Actually, it came quite easily,” Bush recalled later, telling the story of a single moonlit night at the piano. The vocal was said to have been recorded in a single take. Bush found out that she and Brontë shared a birthday, and the fates were aligned.

The casual story of its creation belies the odd unwieldiness of the song itself. The piano gently heralds the arrival of this haunted tale of lost love and longing, then that tight, high melody reels you in. It loops and lilts, ascending, descending, as Bush’s vocal urges the story on, like Catherine striding across the moors. In the BBC’s 2014 documentary The Kate Bush Story, artist after artist recalls hearing it on the radio for the first time, thinking some variation of: what on earth was that? “You can hear one note of a Kate Bush song or one note of her voice and know what it is,” said Annie Clark, AKA St Vincent, and it has been that way from the start”.

Before getting to a few other features, there is one from Literary Hub published in 2019 that makes some interesting observations about Kate Bush’s interpretation of Wuthering Heights. How the song is almost like an essay or critique of the novel on how women were perceived when Emily Brontë wrote Wuthering Heights. Such a phenomenal songwriter, Bush opened up people’s minds and attitudes. Looking at Wuthering Heights in a deeper and new way:

“According to the lore that surrounds the song, Kate Bush’s first encounter with Wuthering Heights came in 1977 when she caught the closing minutes of the BBC miniseries. She wrote the song in a single night, mining lyrics directly from the dialogue of Catherine Earnshaw Linton, one of the star-crossed lovers at the heart of the novel.

But as Bush borrowed from the dialogue, she made a crucial transposition in the point of view. When she sings, “You had a temper, like my jealousy / too hot too greedy,” the my refers to Cathy and the you to Heathcliff, the novel’s brooding protagonist/antagonist/antihero/villain (depending on your point of view). But the novel itself never inhabits Cathy’s consciousness: she is seen and heard, her rages and threats vividly reported, but everything we know about her comes from either Nelly Dean, a longtime housekeeper for the Earnshaw and Linton families, or through Lockwood, a hapless visitor to the Yorkshire moorlands and the principle first-person narrator of the novel (most of the novel consists of Nelly’s quoted speech to Lockwood, who is eager to hear the complete history of the inhabitants of Wuthering Heights and its neighboring property, Thrushcross Grange). Although the novel spans decades and multiple generations of Earnshaws and Lintons, Kate Bush’s shift into Cathy’s point of view centers the song entirely on Cathy and Heathcliff—which is fittingly how Cathy, in the novel, views the world. She and Heathcliff share one soul, she claims; everyone else, including her husband Edgar, is little more than scenery.

With this choice, Bush gives voice to a female character who—though an electric presence in the novel—is denied the agency of self-narrating, or even of being narrated through a close third person. Nelly may be presented to us by Lockwood as a simple, transparently objective narrator, but the novel is littered with moments where Nelly complicates the lives of those around her by revealing or concealing what she knows. Bush’s musical interpretation of the novel makes visible the questions that surround point of view: who does the telling? What is their agenda? Who can we really trust?

By opening up these questions, the song situates itself in the tradition of other so-called “parallel texts” that respond to or reinvent earlier, often canonical works of literature: think Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, or Kamel Daoud’s The Meursault Investigation and Albert Camus’s The Stranger. In each pairing of “parallel” and “source” text, the later work privileges characters narrated about, but never before narrated from within.

Like the novels by Rhys and Daoud, Bush’s song demonstrates how art can respond to art, and points to the ways in which crucial reevaluations of past works take place not only in scholarly articles but in one artist grappling with the erasures and silences of an earlier age. Rhys and Daoud both insist on a voice for a silenced, maligned, or dismissed colonial subject. Their aim is not to create a work that merely amends (or acts as a footnote to) the earlier text, but to produce a narrative that calls into question the primacy, and even the authority, of the earlier text.

Kate Bush’s shift into Cathy’s point of view centers the song entirely on Cathy and Heathcliff—which is fittingly how Cathy, in the novel, views the world.

Kate Bush may not have been aiming to supplant Emily Brontë, but just as the song itself points to issues within the novel, Bush’s role as its creator exposes the straitened public personae of the Brontë sisters in 1840s England. Remember that the Brontës—Charlotte, Emily, and Anne—published their own work under vaguely male pseudonyms: their first joint publication, in 1846, was The Poems of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell. Jane Eyre appeared a year later, attributed to Currer Bell, and a year after that Ellis Bell’s name appeared on the title page of Wuthering Heights.

It was unthinkable at the time that young, unmarried women would circulate their names so freely on books that portrayed the love between a wealthy man and his hired governess, or the flare-ups of passion and cruelty that marked the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff. The sisters also knew that women authors were routinely dismissed or pilloried by the all-male fraternity of critics, and they hoped that the Bell names would offer protection and a fair shake from reviewers. Still, one early review blasted the incidents in Wuthering Heights for being “too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive,” while even a more positive review called it “a strange book. It is not without evidences of considerable power: but, as a whole, it is wild, confused, disjointed, and improbable.” Two years after Emily’s death in 1848, an edition of Wuthering Heights was published under her own name, with a preface and biographical note by Charlotte defending her sister’s moral character against the aspersions cast on her.

Fast forward to the late 1970’s and Kate Bush finds herself a young female artist in a culture industry still dominated by men. Her record company, EMI, pushed for another song, “James and the Cold Gun,” to be her first single, but Bush insisted that her debut had to be “Wuthering Heights.” After winning that argument, she delayed the release of the single in a dispute over the cover art, and later referred to herself as “the shyest megalomaniac you’ll ever meet.” When the single was finally released in early 1978, it needed only a few weeks and a performance by Bush on Top of the Pops to claim the #1 spot on the UK charts, displacing ABBA’s “Take a Chance on Me.” Only 19, Bush became the first female singer to make it to #1 with a song that she herself had written. At a time when women were viewed primarily as interpreters of others’ lyrics—as instruments rather than creators—Kate Bush upended the narrative with her first piercing notes. She would narrate from within, and in her own words.

The song’s connections to debates about cultural literacy, art-as-critique, and the fraught space of the female artist are enough to earn the video its place in the classroom. But I also count on “Wuthering Heights” to speak directly to my students about some of life’s other, bigger questions. My students, like teenagers everywhere, often wonder when their real lives will begin: when their ideas will matter to the wider world; when the art they make will feel like more than another assignment to be graded. But if high school students campaigning across the country against gun violence can illustrate the political power of the young, then Kate Bush argues that your artistic impulses also matter, that they’re valid, and that there’s no reason to wait”.

There is this great feature I would recommend people check out. In 2012, NME named Wuthering Heights the eleventh-best Pop song ever. It is an inescapably moving and original song that will never fade in its power. The second-most streamed song on Spotify (behind Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), it is reaching new ears by the year. More people experiencing this song for the first time. I will end by discussing the new film adaptation of Wuthering Heights and why people need to think about Kate Bush’s astonishing debut single:

“A GP’s daughter from Bexleyheath in Kent, she began playing the piano at aged 11 and composed her first song at 13. Such was her precocious, unique talent that it attracted the attention of Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour who was a friend of the Bush family. After hearing her play, he helped the teenager gain a recording contract with EMI. The deal included two years of development that included dance lessons, vocal training and rehearsal time with the band the KT Bush Band.

The initial spark of inspiration for ‘Wuthering Heights’ came when the singer was 12 and had caught the last 10 minutes of the 1970 TV version of the book as a child. She recalled:

I’d just caught the very end of the film. It was really freaky because there’s this hand coming through the window and whispering voices and I’ve always been into that sort of thing, you know, and it just hung around in my head. I had to write a song about it.

She finally put pen to paper in March of 1977, composing the song in her South London flat, under typically ‘Bushian’ conditions. She revealed: “I wrote it in my flat, sitting at the upright piano. There was a full moon and the curtains were open and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon.

 

Having seen the TV adaptation, she also flicked through Bronte’s classic: “I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through,” she admits.

The track was apparently done and dusted in ten minutes, and to Bush it seemed clear that it should be the first track to announce herself to an unsuspecting British public. But EMI did not agree. They wanted the somewhat more obvious ‘James And The Cold Gun’ to come first, but she was adamant that it should be ‘Wuthering Heights’.

When the song hit the top of the charts she became the first female UK singer to get to the position with a self-penned track. It also lead the EMI boss to buy her a Steinway piano to say sorry for doubting her first single instincts.

Despite having pursued a career defined by lyrical inventiveness (much of which has been inspired by novels) and musical risk-taking, to many Bush will eternally be defined by the willowy lady from the mountains, singing about “Cathy” and “Heathcliff”. As she disappeared from view in the mid-90s, to some tabloids Bush had become the ageless spirit hovering around the dales. Fiction is definitely stranger than the truth.

‘Wuthering Heights’ remains an astounding track. Timeless in its authentic strangeness and the way Bush exudes the glee and borderline madness of mysterious, young love. Dismissed at the time as a novelty hit, instead it would begin the story of Bush’s expectation-defying career with a brilliant bang”.

The final feature/article I will bring in is from the Kate Bush Encyclopedia. There is a lot of depth and interesting information about the song. Wuthering Heights was unlike anything around in 1978. I wonder how it would fare if it was released today. Could it ever get to number one?! I do hope that the song has a new lease of life in some form very soon. It is a masterpiece:

“Critical reception

The music magazines in 1978 had different reactions to Kate’s debut single. Record Mirror described the song as ‘B-o-r-i-n-g’. Others were a bit more positive.

Kate is a complete newcomer, is 19, was first unearthed by David Gilmour, and has spent time with mime coach to the stars Lindsay Kemp… the theatre influence comes through strongly from the cover… to every aspect of Kate’s song. The orchestration is ornate and densely packed, but never overflows its banks, Kate’s extraordinary vocals skating in and out, over and above. Reference points are tricky, but possibly a cross between Linda Lewis and MacBeth’s three withes is closest. She turns the famous examination text by Emily Brontë into glorious soap opera trauma.

Melody Maker, 1978

Kate about ‘Wuthering Heights’

When I first read Wuthering Heights I thought the story was so strong. This young girl in an era when the female role was so inferior and she was coming out with this passionate, heavy stuff. Great subject matter for a song.
I loved writing it. It was a real challenge to precis the whole mood of a book into such a short piece of prose. Also when I was a child I was always called Cathy not Kate and I just found myself able to relate to her as a character. It’s so important to put yourself in the role of the person in a song. There’s no half measures. When I sing that song I am Cathy.
(Her face collapses back into smiles.) Gosh I sound so intense. Wuthering Heights is so important to me. It had to be the single. To me it was the only one. I had to fight off a few other people’s opinions but in the end they agreed with me. I was amazed at the response though, truly overwhelmed.

Kate’s Fairy Tale, Record Mirror (UK), February 1978

I wrote in my flat, sitting at the upright piano one night in March at about midnight. There was a full moon and the curtains were open, and every time I looked up for ideas, I looked at the moon. Actually, it came quite easily. I couldn’t seem to get out of the chorus – it had a really circular feel to it, which is why it repeats. I had originally written something more complicated, but I couldn’t link it up, so I kept the first bit and repeated it. I was really pleased, because it was the first song I had written for a while, as I’d been busy rehearsing with the KT Band.

I felt a particular want to write it, and had wanted to write it for quite a while. I remember my brother John talking about the story, but I couldn’t relate to it enough. So I borrowed the book and read a few pages, picking out a few lines. So I actually wrote the song before I had read the book right through. The name Cathy helped, and made it easier to project my own feelings of want for someone so much that you hate them. I could understand how Cathy felt.

It’s funny, but I heard a radio programme about a woman who was writing a book in Old English, and she found she was using words she didn’t know, but when she looked them up she found they were correct. A similar thing happened with ‘Wuthering Heights’: I put lines in the song that I found in the book when I read it later.

I’ve never been to Wuthering Heights, the place, though I would like to, and someone sent me a photo of where it’s supposed to be.

One thing that really pleases me is the amount of positive feedback I’ve had from the song, though I’ve heard that the Bronte Society think it’s a disgrace. A lot of people have read the book because of the song and liked it, which I think is the best thing about it for me. I didn’t know the book would be on the GCE syllabus in the year I had the hit, but lots of people have written to say how the song helped them. I’m really happy about that.

There are a couple of synchronicities involved with the song. When Emily Bronte wrote the book she was in the terminal stages of consumption, and I had a bad cold when I wrote the song. Also, when I was in Canada I found out that Lindsay Kemp, my dance teacher, was in town, only ten minutes away by car, so I went to see him. When I came back I had this urge to switch on the TV – it was about one in the morning – because I knew the film of Wuthering Heights would be on. I tuned in to a thirties gangster film, then flicked through the channels, playing channel roulette, until I found it. I came in at the moment Cathy was dying, so that’s all I saw of the film. It was an amazing coincidence.

Kate Bush Club Newsletter, January 1979”.

On 24th September, British Vogue gave their take on the upcoming Wuthering Heights film from Emerald Fennell. There have been accusations that the film is whitewashing the book. That the casting is flawed and strange. Most articles about the film mention Kate Bush’s classic debut single. It makes me wonder if it will feature in some way:

“On 12 July, the director took to X to share an illustration of a ghostly skeleton by artist Katie Buckley. At its heart sits the title Wuthering Heights, and below it the strapline “A film by Emerald Fennell”. Above the image, it reads, “Be with me always. Take any form. Drive me mad,” the immortal words Heathcliff utters after the tragic death of Catherine Earnshaw.

Given her last feature, and Promising Young Woman before it, were both about obsession – the former about one student’s infatuation with another, and the latter about a woman’s single-minded determination to avenge the death of her best friend – the decision to adapt Emily Brontë’s seminal tale of doomed love, as well as the accompanying tagline, make perfect sense.

However, it did leave us with a number of questions, too. Will this be a faithful period adaptation, or a modern-day update? How will it compare to the countless other big-screen renderings of this particular story, from Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon’s 1939 version, to the 1992 film starring Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes, and Andrea Arnold’s 2011 reimagining with Kaya Scodelario and James Howson?

Would it be Barry Keoghan, I wondered, who’d don a waistcoat and scraggly mane to play our brooding Byronic hero? And who could possibly take the part of Cathy? Well, at least on that front, we now have some answers: on 23 September, it emerged that it was not the Irish Oscar nominee but – staggeringly – his Saltburn co-star Jacob Elordi who’d be delivering Heathcliff’s impassioned monologues, while Margot Robbie, now the world’s most ubiquitous blonde after Barbie herself, would (presumably) be going brunette to embody his tormented paramour. The latter will also be producing through her company, LuckyChap, after having backed Fennell’s last two films, too.

It’s not yet clear who else will be filling out the predictably starry ensemble (personally, I hope Carey Mulligan makes an appearance again, as she has in Fennell’s past two hits, in some bonkers and unexpected role), though we do know that Fennell will be writing and producing as well as directing, and that the film is already in pre-production ahead of a UK-based shoot in 2025. So, I say to my fellow Brontë obsessives: this is not a drill. It’s time to blast Kate Bush and dig out your own battered copy of this literary classic once again”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Margot Robbie/PHOTO CREDIT: Lachlan Bailey

Although Emerald Fennell is a Kate Bush fan, I don’t think that Wuthering Heights will feature in the film. It might seem a bit shoehorned and jarring. However, what is happening is people discussing the song. How Bush was inspired to write it after watching a 1967 BBC adaptation (I think Graeme Thomson said Bush saw a 1970 film of the novel with Timothy Dalton playing Heathcliff, so maybe Kate Bush would have to confirm exactly which version she saw). I do like how there has been a shift away from Hounds of Love and Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). Army Dreamers had a bit of a viral moment this year, though we do hope that Wuthering Heights gets this new focus. Maybe not as big as the Stranger Things effect. Emerald Fennell might include the song. You never know! I wanted to revisit it, as I think so many people have discovered Wuthering Heights because of Kate Bush. Can a modern film do the same thing?! I don’t think so. In 2018, Bush returned to the song and the author of the novel that inspired it. The Brontë Stones are a collection of four stones engraved with specially commissioned poems by Carol Ann Duffy, Jeanette Winterson, Kate Bush, and Jackie Kay. You can read more about Kate Bush’s 2018 contribution here.. Even if Wuthering Heights might not feature in the film of the same name, people are talking about Kate Bush’s 1978 debut single. That is a wonderful thing! Almost forty-seven years after its release, it remains a song that…

SOUNDS like nothing else!

FEATURE: 'Cause Somewhere There's a Place Where We Belong… Why Kate Bush’s Vocal on Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up Affects Me Hugely

FEATURE:

 

 

'Cause Somewhere There's a Place
Where We Belong…

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush with Peter Gabriel at the BPI (BRIT) Awards at Grosvenor House, London on 9th February, 1987/PHOTO CREDIT: Duncan Raban/Getty Images

Why Kate Bush’s Vocal on Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up Affects Me Hugely

_________

I was going to write this…

as a separate feature as something that has been playing on my mind. I will get to a very special duet in a minute. I was going to write a feature about feminism and whether I can be seen as a progressive and good feminist when, more and more, I am ashamed and angry at men. Ashamed of being associated with a gender that creates so much evil and abuse. Living in London, the difference between men and women is clear. Most of the noise, obnoxiousness, anger and awfulness that you encounter on a daily basis is by men. The extreme noise, anti-social behaviour, abuse, rudeness, sullenness, threat and general aggression is from men. With no male friends myself, I am always drawn to women and have a huge bias towards them. I gravitate towards women and always have much more affection and respect for them. I do not hate all men because I know there are some really kind and good ones! I am in a position where I dislike a large proportion of men and find my life is much more stressful and depressing because of them. I will never like or embrace my gender fully. I am hugely embarrassed and disgraced regularly by witnessing other men. Seeing on the news the abuse and violence they bring into the world. Even though it applies to a minority of men, it doesn’t excuse the fact that they are responsible for over 90% of all the crimes of sexual abuse and violence. My faith in human nature has been rocked by them. I don’t think I will ever recover in that sense. Rather than attack or call out men, instead I find myself much more invested in women and their rights. In embracing and celebrating them. Trying to be a more committed and conscientious feminist (and human being), I wonder whether my dislike of many other men makes my words and work insincere. My bias towards women means I feature fewer men on my blog.

I acknowledge that there are loads of great male artists but, more and more, controversy caused by male musicians makes me hesitant to embrace others in case they are disgraced and make the headlines for all of the wrong reason. I also find that the diversity and quality women are producing is vastly superior to that provided by men! It is an issue that I have to address but, day on day, I do think that I am losing faith in men and wondering whether the gender is going to be defined and dogged by controversy and bad. I find women much kinder and more compassionate people. More concerned with others and much more conscious of their feelings. Less aggressive. I have bee extremely depressed and tired because of other men. Affected each day by their behaviour. This may not seem to relate to music but, as Peter Gabriel’s Don’t Give Up is thirty-eight on 27th October (the same day Kate Bush released her single, Experiment IV), I wanted to write how it has impacted me. A single from Peter Gabriel’s 1986 album, So, I am focusing more on Kate Bush’s vocal. The song won an Ivor Novello Award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically in 1987. Originally, Dolly Parton was considered for the song but she turned it down. You cannot imagine anyone but Kate Bush adding this material, compassionate, reassuring and hugely affecting vocal. It is one of the most affecting vocal performances on any song. I will talk more about the video, in which Bush and Gabriel embrace for the entire song. Gabriel quite rightly was quoted as saying “There are worse ways of earning a living”. So many people would kill to have been in his place! Don’t Give Up has helped so many people through their struggles. In 2014, Elton John credited his sobriety to that song. Particularly these lines from Bush: "Rest your head. You worry too much. It's going to be all right. When times get rough you can fall back on us. Don't give up”.

The late Matthew Perry had the song played at his funeral last year as the track made a big impact on him. It was also referenced in signed copies of his autobiography Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing, which was released a year before his death. He played that song because he felt that we should not give up. Because Bush’s delivers the title and gives this reassurance against Peter Gabriel’s hopelessness and on-the-edge-of-a-bridge solemness,  I think that her vocal is more impactful and important. It is Peter Gabriel’s song and lyrics, and there is this richness and perfect chemistry between the two. Bush had previously contributed to a couple of Gabriel songs prior to Don’t Give Up. Gabriel appeared on Kate Bush’s Christmas special in 1979 and performed solo and with Bush (on a cover of Roy Harper’s Another Day). They were firm friends and inspired each other. Gabriel influenced Bush embracing the Fairlight CMI and technology. Both adapted and constructed their own studios to work on their masterpieces – Gabriel for So (1986) and Bush for Hounds of Love (1985). They had a lot in common. Although Gabriel has never appeared on a Kate Bush album, many consider Don’t Give Up to be a Kate Bush song. So commanding and unforgettable is her contribution. I will end by writing about why her vocal has an affect on me. Not the same way Elton John and Matthew Perry were moved by it. I am going to start off by looking at the song and what people made of it.

Reaching number nine in the U.K., it arrived in a year when Kate Bush was still putting out singles from Hounds of Love. The Big Sky came out earlier in the year. The single from 1986’s greatest hits, The Whole Story, arrived the same day as Don’t Give Up (27th October, 1986). Experiment IV reached twenty-three in the U.K. It was a fascinating year in terms of Hounds of Love, but also Bush working with others and also being involved with her greatest hits collection. Hearing the vast contrast between The Big Sky, Don’t Give Up and Experiment IV! Don’t Give Up has this life-saving power. There is no telling how many people it has saved from the abyss. Either from dying or succumbing to addiction. Speaking to the lonely, it resonated with me. Feeling isolated and lonely in a busy city. One that seems to be a lot colder and less kind than many others. Not feeling at home or safe. Feeling exhausted all the time. Let’s move to a feature from this year by American Songwriter. They give background to the heartfelt and extraordinary powerful duet between Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush:

“There are several stories about how Gabriel was inspired to write “Don’t Give Up.” His wife at the time claimed to have shown him a newspaper story about a young mother’s suicide, and that was the main impetus for the song. Gabriel also mentioned Depression-era photographs as inspiring the notion of overcoming adversity. Some also claim Gabriel was undergoing his own dark period when he wrote the song.

In any case, “Don’t Give Up,” like the rest of So, was brought to life with the help of producer Daniel Lanois. His job, in addition to helping Gabriel realize the sounds he was hearing in his head, was to keep him to task. The producer insisted on not inviting musicians into the project until Gabriel had banged the songs into shape and had written the bulk of the lyrics, a process which was the antithesis of how the artist had worked on previous albums.

Gabriel created the foundation of “Don’t Give Up” from a drum-machine pattern. Tony Levin added a bass line that helped to form an absorbing groove. The slightly exotic and deeply moody music stood in sharp contrast to the singles on So, and that variety goes a long way into explaining why the album is so captivating.

Choose Your Partner

Because Gabriel had already worked with British pop legend Bush on a few occasions prior to So, you might assume that he wrote “Don’t Give Up” with her in mind. (You might also assume that because she does such a mesmerizing job on the track.) But in an interview with The Quietus, he explained that he had originally imagined someone else singing:

“There’s an interesting story about this song. Because there was this reference point of American roots music in it when I first wrote it, it was suggested that Dolly Parton sing on it. But Dolly turned it down … and I’m glad she did because what Kate did on it is … brilliant. It’s an odd song, a number of people have written to me and said they didn’t commit suicide because they had that song on repeat or whatever, and obviously you don’t think about things like that when you’re writing them. But obviously a lot of the power of the song came from the way that Kate sings it.”

One can only wonder what it would have been like had Parton accepted the offer. But it can’t be denied that the chemistry between Gabriel and Bush helped push “Don’t Give Up” to a level most duets can’t hope to achieve.

What is the Meaning of “Don’t Give Up”?

Whatever may have inspired “Don’t Give Up,” it seems like the narrator of the song has been pushed to the hilt by circumstances (societal, financial) that are beyond his control. In this proud land we grew up strong, he begins. Contrast that with his current situation: No fight left or so it seems / I am a man whose dreams have all deserted.

In the second verse, he mentions that he didn’t think he’d be affected by the tumult all around him. He also hints at labor problems: For every job, so many men / So many men no one needs. His home, once his rock and foundation, no longer can provide any consolation: As daylight broke, I saw the earth / The trees had burned down to the ground.

Yet each time this guy seems to come to his lowest point, Bush’s voice bursts through his clouds with words of love and comfort. You can imagine her as his wife, or, considering the song takes on a gospel vibe, an angelic voice sent to show him his worth. There’s a place where we belong, she concludes. Even though she may not have been the initial choice, Kate Bush certainly belonged on “Don’t Give Up,” helping Peter Gabriel deliver one of his most inspirational messages”.

In 1986, Adam Sweeting of Melody Maker said of Don’t Give Up: “The stand-out track [of the album So] is ‘Don’t Give Up’… set against his sombre narrative comes Kate Bush’s imploring counterpoint, begging him to believe in himself the way his family and friends do. Her fragile anguished performance gives the piece almost unbearable emotional impact”. You can read more about the track here. Released on 27th October, 1986, I am a bit early to the anniversary. It is a truly fascinating song:

“Written by Peter Gabriel, the song was produced by Daniel Lanois and Peter and engineered by Kevin Killen and Lanois and features the guest vocals of Kate Bush. Bush had previously provided vocals for the tracks Games Without Frontiers and No Self Control on Peter’s third solo album.

The song was inspired by a Dorothea Lange photograph, but was also informed by the high levels of unemployment under the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher of the 1980s, as Peter told the NME at the time of the release of So:

“The catalyst for ‘Don’t Give Up’ was a photograph I saw by Dorothea Lange, inscribed ‘In This Proud Land’, which showed the dust-bowl conditions during the Great Depression in America. Without a climate of self-esteem it’s impossible to function”

The cover was designed by Peter Saville and Brett Wickens for Peter Saville Associates, with photography by Trevor Key.

The single first charted in the UK on 1 November 1986, peaked at 9 and stayed in the Top75 for 11 weeks. In the USA the single reached #72 on the Hot 100 on 25 April 1987 and stayed on the chart for six weeks”.

The final feature I want to bring in is this. Although Don’t Give Up is inspired by a real-life suicide and heart-breaking tragedy, its lyrics and sentiments are more universal. They apply as much to the world today and people’s loneliness as they did in 1986. For me and so many others, that perfect blend of Peter Gabriel’s lyrics and anguished vocals are perfectly embraced and complimented by Kate Bush’s sweetness, understanding and strength. The video is so powerful. Gabriel and Bush embracing and hanging on. Gabriel trying not to fall as Bush offers this rock and anchor. It is a simple concept but potent and memorable because it does not rely on multiple cuts and a busy set and storyline. The visualisation of this hug and closeness is what the song gives to so many people:

“Calling upon his friend and fellow musician Kate Bush to duet with him, the song took on a conversational tone--Gabriel singing the part of a down-trodden man who has lost his job, and is finding no reason to stay alive, and Bush singing the part of his wife/friend/someone who cares telling him it will be alright and there is still plenty to live for. The song wavers back and forth between sorrowful and uplifting with every verse as the two "converse" through song. It's such a sweet duet with so much emotion. Though Gabriel may not have been facing the struggles himself, it's clear from the way he sings the song that he could empathize with those who were, putting himself in the shoes of someone at their wit's end. Kate Bush's sweet, airy voice of reassurance is peaceful and radiates light and serenity in the midst of darkness.

The song was released with an equally sweet music video, which is essentially just six and a half minutes of an embrace between the two singers. Their body language is so genuine and sincere that some even questioned if they were secretly an item. Whether they were or weren't isn't that important, but I guarantee no other music video will make you crave closeness with a loved one more than this one.

For me, the song always takes on a bittersweet tone. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying this for anyone else who has listened to it during dark periods in their life: It can be hard to listen to. Not because it sounds bad, but when we feel depressed, we also feel numb. But the song forces us to acknowledge our sorrow and our feelings of inadequacy and hopelessness. And that's not something that's fun to do. However, once that emotional portal is open, we become more receptive to Kate Bush's sweet, and uplifting lyrics that perhaps echo things our loved ones have told us, but we took for granted:

"Don't give up

'Cause you have friends

Don't give up

You're not the only one

Don't give up

No reason to be ashamed

Don't give up

You still have us

Don't give up now

We're proud of who you are"

When in a place of self-doubt, we often ignore these phrases of comfort. But when hearing them in song, it somehow gets through to us better. And I think--no, I know--Gabriel realized that music had that power, and that's why he made the song.

Everyone has points in their personal lives when this song can be a helpful tool for them. But I think right now as we go through a global crisis that has left millions fighting to make ends meet, over-working, and overall just feeling like giving up--we need this song just as much now as we did then. And we are so lucky that we have it now”.

As I look ahead to the thirty-eighth anniversary of Don’t Give Up on 27th October, I can appreciate how it adapts through time. It had a distinct meaning and origin in 1986. Now, it can apply to an individual’s struggle or the genocide and horror we see in the world. Having to stay strong or believe that better will come. For me, it has a very personal relevance. I identify with the lyrics and do feel in a place where I am struggling and trying to find hope. It is Kate Bush’s vocal that gets to me most. Not just because it is Kate Bush and I have that bias! To me, her delivery and the emotion she puts into her lines is so moving. Trembling and warm, there is this audible and sonic hug that comes from her singing. I know that she didn’t get the vocal on the first take and had some doubts. Bush laid down her vocals in February 1986 at Peter Gabriel’s home studio in Ashcombe House. Gabriel had previously recorded his vocals, so she followed his vocal when performing her part. After this recording, Bush felt she had “messed it up” and so she returned later to sing it again. The fact Don’t Give Up has been covered been many times shows how meaningful it is. Bush made a surprise appearance at Earl’s Court, London to sing Don’t Give Up with Peter Gabriel on 28th June, 1987 (the second photo in this post sees her on stage with him).

The most affecting lines from Kate Bush are these: “Don’t give up now/We’re proud of who you are/Don’t give up/You know it’s never been easy/Don’t give up/‘Cause I believe there’s a place/There’s a place where we belong”. It is one of my favourite Kate Bush vocals. A soulfulness and tremulous quality I would love to have seen explored more. One can say you can draw a line between Don’t Give Up and Kate Bush’s vocals on The Sensual World’s title track from 1989. I am listening to this song a lot and concentrating on Bush’s vocal. As I am struggling with some things and really not feeling safe or connected to men around me in the city I live in, I need some reassurance. Feeling alone and tired, there have been some dark and stressful times recently. Bush’s delivery of Peter Gabriel’s words are giving me some comfort. Not in people but in the music and the messages through Don’t Give Up. It is this song that gives so much light and hope to so many. I love the video and keep watching it because it lifts me. Seeing them embracing sort of comes through the screen and has this very real tangibility and power. Nearly thirty-eight years after its release, Don’t Give Up is rescuing so many people from a dark place. It hits you like a sledgehammer. How many other songs…

HAVE that sort of affect?!

FEATURE: It’s My Life: The Iconic Gwen Stefani at Fifty-Five

FEATURE:

 

 

It’s My Life

The Iconic Gwen Stefani at Fifty-Five

_________

A true music great…

celebrates her fifty-fifth birthday on 3rd October. Gwen Stefani is the lead of No Doubt and a successful solo artist. Even though No Doubt have not released an album since 2012’s Push and Shove, they did recently perform together at Coachella. I do hope that they record more music together in the future. Regardless, Stefani is busy with her solo material. She releases Bouquet in November. It sounds like it going to be a more Country-influenced release. This would be a departure for her but, with many mainstream artists crossing from other genres into Country – not least Beyoncé -, it is fertile ground for exploration and reinvention. Rather than it being bandwagon-hopping, this does seem like a natural move for Stefani. Her amazing debut album, Love. Angel. Music. Baby., turns twenty in November. It is amazing to think that No Doubt’s debut single, Trapped in a Box, was released in February, 1992. I am going to mark Gwen Stefani’s fifty-fifth with a career-spanning playlist in a bit. Before that, AllMusic provide some biography about a music legend:

“Gwen Stefani has parlayed her breakout stardom as the effervescent lead singer of the SoCal ska-punk outfit No Doubt into an enduring career as a multifaceted pop star. Before going solo, Stefani reached the top of the charts many times during No Doubt's peak. "Spiderwebs," "Just a Girl," and the ballad "Don't Speak" -- all pulled from their 1995 album Tragic Kingdom -- were iconic alternative rock hits. The early-2000s smashes "Hey Baby," "Hella Good," and "Underneath It All" found the group dabbling in pop, dance, and R&B, a musical expansion that coincided with Stefani stepping outside of the band as a featured vocalist on the hits "South Side" by techno superstar Moby and "Let Me Blow Ya Mind" by the rapper Eve. All this extracurricular activity helped set up the launch of Stefani's solo career in 2004 with the album Love.Angel.Music.Baby., a platinum blockbuster that gave her a number one single with the thumping Neptunes collaboration "Hollaback Girl," plus the hits "Cool," "What You Waiting For?," and "Rich Girl," the latter a reunion with Eve. The 2006 record The Sweet Escape consolidated her pop success thanks to the Top Tens "Wind It Up" and "The Sweet Escape," but by that point, Stefani began to venture outside of music. She launched her fashion line L.A.M.B. in 2004, a pursuit she'd develop over the coming decade. She started to dabble in film, an interest that eventually led her to joining the televised singing competition The Voice in 2014 (where she met husband Blake Shelton). Music remained essential to Stefani's appeal -- she reunited with No Doubt on occasion in addition to returning to her solo career with This Is What the Truth Feels Like, an album released a decade after The Sweet Escape. Later singles, such as 2023's ska-infused "True Babe" and 2024's '80s adult-contempo influenced "Purple Irises" with Shelton, along with her position on The Voice, reinforced her crossover pop legacy as a star who shines upon every aspect of the entertainment industry.

Born and raised in Fullerton, California, Stefani had a musical epiphany at the age of 17. She had fallen in love with the Madness and Selecter records her brother Eric was constantly spinning. Seeing Fishbone, the Untouchables, and other bands involved in Los Angeles' ska revival scene only reinforced her interest, so she was more than ready when her brother asked her to join a ska band he was forming with a friend named John Spence. Gwen originally shared lead vocals with Spence, but in December of 1987 he committed suicide, leaving the band -- now called No Doubt -- with an uncertain future. According to many interviews with the bandmembers after their breakthrough, Gwen was the glue that held No Doubt together during these hard times, pushing the group to keep trying. She was also romantically involved with the band's bass player, Tony Kanal, by this time.

After playing numerous gigs and parties, No Doubt were signed to Interscope in 1991. The label considered their 1992 debut album a flop and refused to financially support a tour or further recordings, but the band refused to give up. The self-financed Beacon Street Collection appeared in 1994 and did well enough to make nice with Interscope, but the band was once again going through a traumatic period behind the scenes. Eric Stefani left to become an animator for The Simpsons and Gwen and Tony's relationship had ended. Gwen wrote a collection of songs focused on heartbreak and rebirth that would become No Doubt's third album, Tragic Kingdom, and the rest, as they say, is history.

With the smash singles "Just a Girl," "Spiderwebs," and "Don't Speak," the album reached the number one spot on the Billboard 200 and garnered two Grammy nominations. The press began to focus on Stefani's role in the band. Voted one of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People," video and photo shoots focused on her and rumors spread that the other three members of the band were unhappy with the lack of attention they received. This topic of discussion continued as the band released Return of Saturn in 2000 and the heavily reggae-influenced hit album Rock Steady a year later. During this time, Stefani's romantic relationship with Bush frontman Gavin Rossdale became a frequent topic of No Doubt's songs. The pair married on September 14, 2002. She also started doing some work outside the band, lending her vocals to the remix of Moby's "Southside" and rapper Eve's "Let Me Blow Your Mind."

After Rock Steady, No Doubt took a break. Stefani approached Kanal about producing an off-the-cuff solo project that would be influenced by her non-ska favorites. Prince, the Time, Club Nouveau, and Madonna were the names thrown around and the idea was to make the project "fast and easy." Over time, the "fast and easy" record morphed into something much bigger. Old friend, former labelmate, and hit songwriter Linda Perry became involved and the project became much more polished, slick, and dance-oriented. A pile of high-profile collaborators -- Dr. Dre, the Neptunes, Dallas Austin, Andre 3000, Nellee Hooper, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis -- became involved. In September of 2004, the infectious and hyper dance single "What You Waiting For?" appeared, with its accompanying video dominating MTV.

The album, Love.Angel.Music.Baby., hit the shelves in November with surreal artwork that introduced Stefani's four-woman "posse," the Harajuku Girls. The all-Asian Harajuku Girls were inspired by Stefani's fascination with the Harajuku girls of Japan, young club kids with a flippant and fun attitude toward fashion. Appearing with Stefani live, in videos, and in photos, the Girls quickly drew criticism from the Asian community, angry about the rumor that they had to sign a contract to never speak English even though they could, and that Stefani's Girls looked nothing like the "real" Harajuku girls. Nonetheless, the album was a hit and continued to roll out singles. Based on a dancehall cover of Fiddler on the Roof's "If I Were a Rich Man," "Rich Girl" became the next smash, reuniting Stefani with Eve. The cheerleader kiss-off anthem "Hollaback Girl" was the third success. While the singles were dominating pop and dance radio, Stefani appeared as Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese's The Aviator. With music and movies checked off, Stefani moved into the world of fashion and introduced her clothing line, L.A.M.B. Taking her influence to the world of tech, she designed the Harajuku Lovers' 4.1 MP Digital Camera for Hewlett-Packard. The camera was released in a limited edition with a Stefani-designed case and a biographical DVD.

Late in 2005, Stefani discovered she was pregnant with her first child, but her schedule remained busy in 2006: along with working on L.A.M.B., she released a line of limited-edition fashion dolls complete with outfits from her videos and tours, and worked on her second solo album with producers including Akon, Swizz Beatz, Tim Rice-Oxley of Keane, Nellee Hooper, the Neptunes, and Tony Kanal. That spring, Stefani gave birth to a boy. The Neptunes-produced, Sound of Music-sampling "Wind It Up" arrived later that fall and heralded the full-length The Sweet Escape, which was released on the same day as the live DVD Harajuku Lovers Live.

No Doubt announced a return to the studio in 2008, but progress slowed to a crawl as the band experienced a bout of writer's block and the Rossdale-Stefani family continued to grow with their second child, Zuma Nesta Rock. The band maintained their momentum by touring through 2009. No Doubt eventually released Push and Shove in 2012, featuring a mix of Rock Steady-esque dancehall bangers and new wave ballads similar to Stefani's solo material. In February 2014, Stefani and Rossdale had their third boy, Apollo Bowie Flynn. Later that year, Stefani joined the judges panel on The Voice with her friend Pharrell, opening the pair to a number of subsequent collaborations. Stefani lent her vocals to fellow Voice coach Adam Levine for Maroon 5's "My Heart Is Open." She also appeared on tracks with Calvin Harris and Snoop Dogg.

By late 2014, Stefani was in the midst of a full-scale comeback, releasing a pair of singles: the Ryan Tedder/Benny Blanco-penned "Baby Don't Lie" and another Pharrell production, "Spark the Fire." The following year, she contributed the song "Shine" to the Paddington Bear movie soundtrack and a duet with Eminem on "Kings Never Die" from Southpaw. In August 2015, Stefani and Rossdale filed for divorce. A third song -- "Used to Love You" -- was released months later. It gained moderate airplay and was the only comeback single to be included on her third project, This Is What the Truth Feels Like, which was released in March 2016 and debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. The second official single from the album, "Make Me Like You," was accompanied by a video that Stefani recorded live during the 2016 Grammy Awards. Later that year, she provided the voice for the DJ Suki character in the animated movie Trolls and, along with Justin Timberlake, appeared on several songs from the film's soundtrack.

In September 2017, she released the seasonal album You Make It Feel Like Christmas, which featured a duet with her Voice co-star -- and new romantic partner -- Blake Shelton. Stefani duetted with Shelton on his 2020 single "Nobody But You," a song featured on the compilation Fully Loaded: God's Country, and added "Here This Christmas" to a reissue of You Make It Feel Like Christmas. At the end of the year, she returned to pop music with "Let Me Reintroduce Myself," a single that built upon the effervescent sounds of No Doubt. Another single, the reggae-injected "Slow Clap," followed in in March 2021, with a Saweetie-accompanied edition arriving a month later. Stefani and Shelton married in July. The ska-inflected single "True Babe" appeared in June 2023, followed in February 2024 by a second Shelton duet, the romantic, adult contemporary-sounding "Purple Irises”.

On 3rd October, Gwen Stefani turns fifty-five. It is a moment to herald one of the greatest leads and songwriters of her generation. Few people as cool as her! I always think that Stefani could have had a successful career as an actor. I could picture her in so many films. There was this magnetism that she had. Look at videos from through the years and she was such a natural. Perhaps It’s My Life is where she truly flexes her full range. A remarkable and distinct voice, we will be hearing a lot more from this unique and hugely influential artist. Let us raise a glass…

TO the divine Gwen Stefani!

FEATURE: Take a Bow: Looking Ahead to the Thirtieth Anniversary of Madonna’s Bedtime Stories

FEATURE:

 

 

Take a Bow

Looking Ahead to the Thirtieth Anniversary of Madonna’s Bedtime Stories

_________

ONE of the…

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna at The Ritz, Paris in 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Early

most important albums in her career I think, Bedtime Stories was Madonna’s follow-up to 1992 Erotica. In 1992, Madonna put out Erotica, the coffee table book Sex, and starred in the erotic thriller, Body of Evidence. There was a lot of negativity and flack from critics and some fans. Thinking Madonna was pushing it too far, many wrote off her career. Of course, she has sustained and released tremendous albums since. It was a hard move following Erotica. It is an album that should be celebrated. Critics being prudish and needlessly sensitive. If you look at how that album inspired so many Pop artists of the 1990s and 2000s. Confident, liberated and provocative, it would not receive the same kind of criticism now. Erotica empowered and resonated with a host of women in music that we see to this day. Even so, there was a sense of compromise or apology with Bedtime Stories, Madonna was still pushing the envelope, yet it was a warmer and less sexualised album compared to Erotica. Released on 25th October, 1994, I wanted to cast ahead to the thirtieth anniversary of perhaps her most underrated album. It was a big commercial success. Hitting the top three in the U.S. and U.K., there was still this reservation from critics. Some awarded it kudos and high praise, yet many reviews were middling. Undeniable standout songs such as Take a Bow and Human Nature sat alongside some deeper cuts critics did not get on board with. There is such a fascinating blend of moods through Madonna’s sixth studio album. From mature, smooth and sensual songs such as Secret and emotional hits like Take a Bow through to the edgier Human Nature and Bedtime Story (which was co-written by Björk). Four years after Bedtime Stories, Madonna would release Ray of Light. Perhaps her greatest album, it showed that you could not write her off, put her down or predict where she would go next! I do think that the heat she got in 1992 was vastly unfair. If a male artist/band put out Erotica and Sex then they would not get the same treatment. In fact, they would probably be celebrated!

I am going to publish another feature closer to 25th October. Saluting an album that has never got huge respect and appreciation. You can never please critics! Luckily, Ray of Light silenced doubters and confirmed that Madonna is one of the most resilient and gifted artists ever. I will end with a couple of reviews for Bedtime Stories. I am going to open with a 2014 feature from Billboard where producer Babyface and Donna De Lory provided their thoughts on Bedtime Stories twenty years after its release:

“Twenty years ago this month, Madonna released her sixth studio album, Bedtime Stories, a classic that came out at a strange crossroads in her career.

While Madonna certainly didn’t lack for fame in 1994, the button-pushing Erotica album had soured many critics and fans. For the first time in a decade of superstardom, people weren’t shocked by her antics anymore — even worse, they often seemed exhausted by her.

Artistically speaking, she’d spent the last four years challenging and subverting America’s sexual puritanism. But after releasing an entire book called Sex featuring nude pictures of herself and other celebrities, there didn’t seem to be anywhere else to go in that realm.

It didn’t help that she’d detonated 14 F-bombs on a March 1994 episode of The Late Show With David Letterman, an infamous appearance that racked up FCC complaints and distanced her from Middle America. Evita was two years away and the overt sexuality of Erotica was growing stale — so when Bedtime Stories hit, Madonna’s career was at a strange point.

To that end, Bedtime Stories is lyrically and musically a much warmer album. She sacrifices some bawdy entendres (compare Erotica‘s “Where Life Begins” to Bedtime‘s “Inside of Me”) and focuses on autobiographical matter.

Instead of Erotica‘s chilly, pounding dance pop, Bedtime puts Madonna in softer sonic territory. There’s the singer-songwriter-y “Secret,” the avant pop of “Bedtime Story” (co-written by Bjork), the new jack swing jam “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” (featuring Meshell Ndegeocello rapping), the Herbie Hancock-sampling ballad “Sanctuary” and the lush, orchestral R&B of “Take a Bow.”

But softer sounds didn’t necessarily mean muted lyrics. “Human Nature” finds Madonna taking on her critics more directly than ever with a logical, defiant attack on slut-shaming. And while album opener “Survival” is a cozy R&B-pop song, it was similarly unrepentant in attitude.

The inviting R&B sound of Bedtime Stories is due in part to co-producer Dallas Austin, who longtime Madonna backup singer Donna de Lory describes as “part of her tribe at that time.” Also on board were co-producers Nellee Hooper, Dave “Jam” Hall (hot off Mary J. Blige‘s debut, What’s the 411?) and, of course, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds.

While Edmonds had recently worked with TLC and Toni Braxton, he tells Billboard it was one of his own hits that brought him to Madonna’s attention.

“Madonna was a fan of a song I did, ‘When Can I See You.’ Because of that, she was interested in working with me,” Edmonds recalls. “She came to me for lush ballads, so that’s where we went.”

Babyface would collaborate with Madonna on three songs — two of which, “Forbidden Love” and “Take a Bow,” ended up on the album. Although the latter became Madonna’s long-running No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, Edmonds says he wasn’t gunning for chart-toppers when they met.

“I wasn’t so much thinking about the charts,” Edmonds recalls. “I think I was more in awe of the fact that I was working with Madonna. It was initially surreal, but then you get to know the person a little bit, and you calm down and then it’s just work. And work is fun.”

When Edmonds played Madonna the bare bones of a song that would become “Take a Bow,” she immediately took to it. “It was just a beat and the chords. From there we collaborated and built it up,” he says. “I was living in Beverly Hills and I created a little studio in my house, so she came over there to write.”

As for “Forbidden Love,” Edmonds recalls that track came together with similar speed. “She heard the basic track and it all started coming out, melodies and everything… It was a much easier process than I thought it would be.”

Donna De Lory, however, wasn’t surprised at how easily Bedtime Stories came together when she and fellow backup vocalist Niki Haris were called in to provide harmonies on “Survival,” co-written by Austin. At that point, she’d been performing with Madonna for seven years.

“The minute you walked in [the studio], she was giving you the lyric sheet,” De Lory tells Billboard. “That was the atmosphere — we’re not here to just hang out. It’s fun, but we’re here to work and get this done.”

And what Madonna sets out to do, Madonna invariably succeeds at. De Lory recalls the sessions for “Survival” took just a “couple of hours” and there were no retakes.

Similar to Babyface, De Lory describes working with Madonna as a creative partnership, even if she was the one setting the tone. “Once she got her ideas out, she was open to your ideas. You didn’t want to go in with her and right off the bat say, ‘Well, I hear this,’ because she was so specific and articulate. She already had the sound in her head. But after she’d spoken, we’d put our two cents in. We always had ideas, like, ‘Can we answer this line with an extra “survival” [in the background]?'”.

I am going to move to a feature from Albumism. They marked twenty-five years of Bedtime Stories. Though they maintain the album was met with positive reviews, I think it is hard to see that from the reviews available. There was a note of disappointment with many of them. Regardless, Bedtime Stories got more love than Erotica. Rather than it being a compromise to critics and this U-turn from her previous position and sound, it was a natural evolution for Madonna:

“But, it was Erotica—and its companion book Sex—that nearly leveled Madonna. A loose concept LP concerned with taboo sexual mores and emotional masochism collapsed under its own misshapen weight; worse, the songs simply weren’t there on the whole. By placing “the event” ahead of a proper commitment to the thematic task of the album itself, Madonna made herself an easy target to be dismissed as a shrewd media manipulator versus the adept singer and songwriter she is. Insulated by the pop culture hysteria she’d generated for a decade, the critical blowback from Erotica/Sex unceremoniously burst that bubble—it was likely a sobering experience.

Yet, there was a silver lining to the difficulties she endured with Erotica in that they helped her gain perspective and grow to realize that she wanted the public to recognize her as an artist. This outlook gave Madonna a newfound focus going into Bedtime Stories. Sessions for her sixth studio set began with Shep Pettibone, Madonna’s principal producer and compeer for Erotica. One of the initial compositions Madonna and Pettibone started work on was its eventual first single, “Secret,” but they ultimately and amicably parted ways, as she wanted to take the urban-pop vibe of that anterior album in a new direction. Madonna returned to finish “Secret” with Dallas Austin, an up-and-coming voice in the contemporary soul genre who had produced sides for Monica, Grace Jones and Joi, among others.

Austin’s work with Joi on her debut The Pendulum Vibe (issued in June 1994) had been of note to Madonna and led to her fast recruitment of Austin for one of two collaborative cliques on Bedtime Stories. That first clique included (but wasn’t limited to) an astonishing array of talent: Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Dave “Jam” Hall and bassist/vocalist/Maverick signee Meshell Ndegeocello. Repurposing the coarser R&B-pop sonics she had laid out on Erotica, Madonna fashions them to be seductively intimate and groove-oriented for Bedtime Stories. From the bluesy, acoustic funk of “Secret,” to the breezy jam “Don’t Stop” and around to the silky shuffle of “Inside of Me,” these songs and most of the LP are sculpted from a mix of expert live instrumentation and impressive studio production.

Almost all of the aggressive beat and groove combinations that defined Erotica are absent with the exceptions of “I’d Rather Be Your Lover”—a side that deliciously weds Ndegeocello’s bass playing (and rap) to Madonna’s smoky mezzo-soprano—and “Human Nature.” The latter track, a stinging rebuke toward Madonna’s Erotica/Sex naysayers, would have been better served up as a B-side as its petulant script threatened to fracture the more demure, introspective air Madonna embodied on Bedtime Stories. Thankfully, the surrounding song stock buffers and neutralizes its antagonistic energy. Musically though, “Human Nature” is an interesting piece with it being erected around the Main Source hip-hop banger “What You Need”—Main Source themselves had loaned a portion of their cut from the jazz musician Walter Maynard Ferguson’s selection “Spinning Wheel.” “Human Nature” represents one of Bedtime Stories’ multiple arrangements that contain clever sample traces or interpolations, along with “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” (Lou Donaldson),  “Inside of Me” (Aaliyah, The Gap Band, Gutter Snypes), “Forbidden Love” (Grant Green), and “Sanctuary” (Herbie Hancock).

Lyrically, Bedtime Stories showcases Madonna’s keen pen that captures the elusive emotional space between strength and vulnerability through love songs or semi-autobiographical entries. “Survival,” “Love Tried to Welcome Me” and “Sanctuary” are undeniable canonical highlights.

Spotlighting “Sanctuary,” Madonna and Austin were the primary assemblers for the downbeat ambient track that slips beautifully into the palatial electronica of “Bedtime Story.” It is here that the second clique Madonna partnered with on Bedtime Stories announces itself. Written by Marius de Vries, Björk and Nellee Hooper, the latter Massive Attack associate and Madonna co-produce this mesmeric slice of existentialist electro-pop that prognosticates what was to come with her next long player (1998’s Ray Of Light) in four years’ time. That Madonna manages to keep “Bedtime Story” in line with the ruling R&B arc of the record is an impressive feat and evidence of her skill toward applying a consistent tone for an album despite any supposedly dueling sounds”

Erotica was attacked because of its sexual nature. Madonna always judged because of her sexuality and provocative nature. It was misogyny and sexism that she faced throughout her career! She still has to answer to critics to this day! I want to drop in almost the entirety of this VICE feature from 2014, as it argues brilliantly how Bedtime Stories is Madonna’s most important album:

“That’s why her album Bedtime Stories, even as it celebrates its 20th anniversary, is still her most important work. For months leading up to its release, it was marketed as an apology for her sexual behavior, and critics hoped it would be her return to innocence. Instead, she offered a lyrical #sorrynotsorry and a response to the problem of female musicians being scrutinized for their sexuality rather than their music. As a result of the public’s moral concerns, it has become Madonna’s most quietly important album, setting the tone for how artists deal with critiques of their sex life.

In 1992, Madonna released Erotica, a techno concept album and ode to bondage, alongside the coffee table book Sex, a softcore pornographic photo catalog of her and her pals. The concurrent releases created enormous and long-running backlash, resulting in multiple countries banning the album from radio airplay and the Vatican banning Madonna from entering. Madonna was already well established as an icon, but her frank lyrics on S&M and published photographs of analingus incited the harshest public outrage in her career. Bedtime Stories was slated to be her one last chance at redemption, and Warner Brothers agreed to produce it under the auspices of a less provocative image.

Both the label and her publicist Liz Rosenberg did everything they could to reverse the damage from Madonna’s last projects. They had her release the soundtrack single “I’ll Remember” to bring her a family-friendly hit and further increase speculation that Bedtime Stories would convey her apology. The album’s promo video promises that there will be “no sexual references on the album” and even panders with Madonna saying “it’s a whole new me! I’m going to be a good girl, I swear.”

Madonna-shaming was a two-part construct: First she was scorned for her sexuality, and then she was eclipsed by it. Since it cited her sex appeal as her sole commodity, the promo video had everyone wondering what she was going to sing about if the topic wasn’t sex. Speculation leading up to Bedtime Stories focused on her exit plan for becoming irrelevant, whether she planned on future facelifts, and what she would offer as a middle-aged version of herself.

“When you’re a celebrity, you’re allowed to have one personality trait. Which is ridiculous,” Madonna told the Detroit News in 1993. When Bedtime Stories was finally released on October 25, she addressed both aspects of the shaming process. Despite the promises in her promo, she continued to acknowledge her sexual desires, although she also experimented with the sound and subject matter. Beginning with “Survival,” a song she co-wrote with Dallas Austin, Madonna doesn’t hesitate to address the backlash and sings “I’ll never be an angel / I’ll never be a saint it’s true / I’m too busy surviving.” The lyrics continue to convey a loosely drawn narrative of the punishment she endured from the media and her feelings leading up to the release, and the songs are carried mostly by R&B melodies produced by Austin, Nellee Hooper, and Babyface.

The definitive single on the album is an explicit rebuke of the backlash. In “Human Nature,” she confirms that wasn’t sorry and that she’s not anyone’s bitch, and she paired the song perfectly with a video that toys with bondage like an Erotica throwback. Right when she is about to drop the mic she whispers, “would it sound better if I were a man?”

Madonna asserted her lack of apology on the grounds that she had not said or did anything unusual; it was simply unusual for a woman to say it. In an interview with the LA Times, she defended Bedtime Stories by saying “I’m being punished for being a single female, for having power and being rich and saying the things I say, being a sexual creature—actually, not being any different from anyone else, but just talking about it. If I were a man, I wouldn’t have had any of these problems. Nobody talks about Prince’s sex life.”

Beyond offering Madonna’s final word on the scandal of her sexuality, the album pivots to address the misconception that her sexual persona limited her versatility as an artist. The narrative in Bedtime Stories immediately turns introspective, relating “I know how to laugh / but I don’t know happiness.” While the album borrows mostly from R&B and new jack swing, it becomes more experimental with the Bjork-penned title track, accompanied with a video that could not have explored the collective unconscious better if Carl Jung directed it. The video for “Bedtime Story” is the first instance of what would become Madonna’s long history of culture-plucking spiritual inquiry, and to this day is stored in a collection at the Museum of Modern Art. As a pair, “Human Nature” and “Bedtime Story” prove that Madonna owned her sexuality and would not be eclipsed by it. While the former fully embraces the decisions she made with previous albums, the latter dismantles the “slut” narrative that her overt sexuality discredits her depth as a performer. Surely people would see this as a feminist masterpiece, no?

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in New York, September 1994/PHOTO CREDIT: Bettina Rheims

Still, critics didn’t get it. The New York Times’ Jon Pareles waxed nostalgic for when “Madonna thrived in the 1980s on being sensational and suggestive against a tame mainstream backdrop,” calling her more recent work “vulgar instead of shocking.” Critical reception continued to focus on the scandal of her attitude rather than the actual record. “Madonna’s career has never really been about music; it’s been about titillation, about image, about publicity,” began one TIME review, which wasn’t unique in its premise. Any mention of the album’s experimental sound or numerous collaborations were overshadowed by her promiscuous image and once again left cheapened. Bedtime Stories as an album was not the clear apology the public demanded, and its emotional depth was largely ignored. At best, it was thought of as Madonna’s return to a safer expression of sexuality.

The record found commercial success with the release of “Secret,” and “Take a Bow,” but the two most important songs never broke into the Top 40, a problem Madonna hadn’t faced in nearly ten years. Today, Bedtime Stories is not the first album that comes to mind in Madonna’s legacy. It is, however, the most relevant to many of the cultural conversations that are still happening. Had she acquiesced to the public’s call for apology, it could have set a dangerous standard for how the public can decree an artist’s silence, and it would have allowed the categories for female singers to remain in place. Critical anticipation of the album predicted either a penitent pop star or a one-dimensional sexpot. She defeated both categories, and left the critics to ponder if sexuality and solidity are as mutually exclusive as they had hope”.

I am going to end with two reviews. I will finish with a December 1994 review from Rolling Stone.  To show some of the negativity and misunderstanding around Bedtime Stories, below is a review from Pitchfork. Published in 2017, there is this feeling that Bedtime Stories is inessential. I disagree with that. This is one of her most consistent and fascinating albums:

“Bedtime Stories, the confused, the misunderstood. The early ’90s found Madonna at peak levels of media saturation. Inescapable! Seven years of hits compiled on The Immaculate Collection, Madonna featured on virtually every award show, Dick Tracy paraphernalia in the McDonald’s Happy Meal. I saw her name on a religious pamphlet: “We Christians must reject the mainstream acceptance of the ethics and morals of Marx and Madonna.” I saw her in The Far Side, her Gaultier-ensconced breasts puncturing an inflatable life raft in a cheap sexist gag. She was less a musician and more a holy ghost. Bedtime Stories was the first Madonna album that felt like a non-event, an asterisk to her omnipresence, another hot day in a heat wave.

And as such, this album has been difficult to assess as an art object. Madonna was, in 1992-1994, an artist under siege. Sex, her soft-core porn coffee table book, had been called obscene; it has been subsequently been reassessed as a smart and entertaining post-feminist grand jeté. Her previous album Erotica, with its diversity and effective New Jack Swing tourism, was received generally well and is now considered among many of her acolytes to be her masterpiece. But Bedtime Stories is, if we must go full Pepsi Challenge with Erotica, a blurry non-event of an album.

Closing track and hit single “Take a Bow” is a kind song, lush in production and sentiment, and deservedly hung around the charts longer than any other of her singles. Babyface’s appearance here, at the height of his own artistry, is frankly lovely. It is for many fans, myself included, Madonna at her most sensitive and brave.

Bedtime Stories’ final single, “Human Nature,” in contrast, did poorly on the charts, and yet is one of her most effective grooves, with her anti-slut-shaming slogan, “I’m not your bitch, don’t hang your shit on me” thwocking its way through Jean-Baptiste Mondino’s amazing video. It is handily one of Madonna’s best songs.

Conversely, the album’s most successful worldwide single, “Secret,” beloved by many, just meanders—even upon its release I recall my young ears being distracted by the single edit’s monotony when it appeared on radio playlists. On the album proper, the track drags interminably over five-plus minutes. Listening again now, it sounds like a lesser version of subsequent album Ray of Light’s “Frozen,” the dry crumbs of “Secret”’s acoustic guitar tracks waiting to be muted and replaced with William Orbit’s thrilling, tensile production.

Most infamously, we have “Bedtime Story.” Like many other former teenagers falling head over heels for Björk’s first solo album, I recall staring incredulously at the B. Guðmundsdóttir credit when it appeared in Madonna’s liner notes. The song itself is unimaginably disappointing—sterile and static, a less-daring second cousin to “Violently Happy.” Björk’s detached science-textbook approach toward a love-song, which works so well when paired with her own mystic Icelandic aesthetic, doesn’t sit well alongside Madonna’s enthusiastic consumerism. Perhaps the song has some appeal, decades later, now that we’re familiar and tolerant of the sound of Björk-on-autopilot. Perhaps we view it affectionately as a blueprint for her subsequent masterpieces on Ray of Light. Ultimately it remains, to my ears, Madonna’s first truly embarrassing flop.

And most of the rest of the album never really achieves any level of indispensability. Several attempts at New Jack balladry have lovely moody productions married to unremarkable songs or performances. Opening track “Survival,” as carefully constructed as it is, sounds, well, much tidier than Madonna’s contemporaries. The “Inside of Me” sample of Aaliyah’s “Back & Forth”—out the same year—just reminds me as a listener about how 1994 was the year of Toni Braxton, Salt-N-Pepa, and Janet Jackson; far more exciting music than this.

IN THIS PHOTO: Madonna in 1994

The deep cuts on the B-side of Bedtime Stories have their fans. Babyface is here, Massive Attack’s string arranging collaborator Craig Armstrong is here also, with an expensive sounding moment, and there’s a cute Herbie Hancock sample on “Sanctuary.” But these songs, for me, are undone by all having nearly identical melodies and moods to “Secret.” What attempts to be sultry and smooth comes off as beige and un-fascinating; my mind wanders and my time is wasted. When Madonna plays tourist with gay culture, with Broadway, with Hollywood, with UK jungle, she is able to keep things (usually) deferential and still interesting, and often, achieve transcendence. But here, she sounds woefully out-of-her-depth as a songwriter and singer when slinging these square attempts at R&B balladry.

It is a compliment to the artist that only here, over a decade into her career, on her sixth studio album, does she, for the first time, let this listener down. Take “Human Nature” and put in on a golden record, play “Take a Bow” at my funeral, and let the rest of this sleepy album be forgotten; it is, to my ears and memory, Madonna’s first truly inessential moment”.

Let’s finish with a review from Rolling Stone. This was published in 1994. It is a more positive approach compared to what some critics afforded. I hope that Bedtime Stories gets more love and some fresh investigation on its thirtieth anniversary on 25th October. It is a wonderful album from the Queen of Pop. One that I remember coming out in 1994. It has lost none of its brilliance:

“Still, in so doing, Madonna has come up with some awfully compelling sounds. In her retreat from sex to romance, she has enlisted four top R&B producers: Atlanta whiz kid Dallas Austin, Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, Dave “Jam” Hall and Britisher Nellee Hooper (Soul II Soul), who add lush soul and creamy balladry. With this awesome collection of talent, the record verily shimmers. Bass-heavy grooves push it along when more conventional sentiments threaten to bog it down. Both aspects put it on chart-smart terrain.

A number of songs — “Survival,” “Secret,” “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” (to which Me’Shell NdegéOcello brings a bumping bass line and a jazzy rap) — are infectiously funky. And Madonna does a drive-by on her critics, complete with a keening synth line straight outta Dre, on “Human Nature”: “Did I say something wrong?/Oops, I didn’t know I couldn’t talk about sex (I musta been crazy).”

But you don’t need her to tell you that she’s “drawn to sadness” or that “loneliness has never been a stranger,” as she sings on the sorrowful “Love Tried to Welcome Me.” The downbeat restraint in her vocals says it, from the tremulously tender “Inside of Me” to the sob in “Happiness lies in your own hand/It took me much too long to understand” from “Secret.”

The record ultimately moves from grief to oblivion with the seductive techno pull of “Sanctuary.” The pulsating drone of the title track (co-written by Björk and Hooper), with its murmured refrain of “Let’s get unconscious, honey,” renounces language for numbness.

Twirled in a gauze of (unrequited) love songs, Bedtime Stories says, “Fuck off, I’m not done yet.” You have to listen hard to hear that, though. Madonna’s message is still “Express yourself, don’t repress yourself.” This time, however, it comes not with a bang but a whisper”.

The Standard ranked Madonna’s Bedtime Stories as her ninth-best (“Certain detractors have always tried hard to depict Madonna as ‘too much’ of something – and by the early Nineties, she was constantly under fire for her provocative pop. A few years earlier, Pepsi famously pulled out of sponsoring her Blonde Ambition tour after Like A Prayer and its sexy take on Catholic iconography attracted the ire of the Vatican. Then came Erotica: a daring and plain sexy album which came accompanied by the explicit photobook SEX. Another predictable bout of pearl-clutching followed. Even Madonna grew weary of the outrage cycle, and decided her next album would head in another direction. “Sex is such a taboo subject and it’s such a distraction that I’d rather not even offer it up,” she told Los Angeles Times”). In 2015, Billboard ranked it sixth (“Express yourself/Don’t repress yourself,” Madonna coos at the top of “Human Nature,” a quick reminder that her Bedtime Stories album — while not as hardcore as 1992’s Erotica — certainly wasn’t a mea culpa for her polarizing previous project. Instead, the 1994 album captured Madonna in transition, swiveling away from explicit sexuality and relying on R&B and balladry before she dove headfirst into dance music four years later. Songs like “Human Nature,” “Secret” and “I’d Rather Be Your Lover” proved more compelling than most of the New Jack music being released in the mid-90s, and “Take A Bow” added a classic slow jam to Madge’s canon”).

It came in fourth in this recent feature (“Criminally underrated! Before going through her discography, I did not know any singles in the album. When it was time to listen to it, I was impressed. Just like the masterpieces that follow in this ranking, Bedtime Stories carries an impecable cohesiveness. It shows an improvement over Hard Candy on Madonna’s ability to blend into R&B. Human Nature is a perfect, catchy “f — you” to the criticism she faced on her Sex book era. Bedtime Story is a beautiful effort that experiments on different sounds and references Mexican surreal painters in the music video. And Take A Bow is a soothing, calm ballad. It may not be as iconic as the rest of the albums in this ranking, but it surely is one of the best”). Gay Times placed it fifth in their feature (“Out of every Madonna album, Bedtime Stories remains the most criminally underrated, and arguably her most important. Human Nature (both the song and the video) is one of her finest singles of all time, giving a solid middle finger to her critics and those who attempt to suppress female sexuality in the aftermath of her controversial Erotica era, while its more experimental moments including Sanctuary and the Björk-penned Bedtime Story are pure bliss to the ears. Placing it above fan favourites like Erotica and Like A Prayer may raise a few eyebrows, but listened to in the current musical landscape, the album’s R&B/Pop sound sounds remarkably current – more so than any other early-to-mid Madonna release. Take A Bow, beautifully backed by a full orchestra, remains a staple in Madonna’s greatest hits, and helped tone down her image for an offended public”). Definitely underrated and overlooked by some, Madonna’s sort-of-apology for her maligned 1992 album, Erotica – though in years since it is seen as one of the most influential albums ever -, Bedtime Stories did tone down her image a bit but offered plenty of new layers. More depth and passion. The same edgy that we are used to. It was not her completely retreating and sanitising herself thankfully! On 25th October, we mark thirty years of Bedtime Stories. It is an album that I think…

IS one of Madonna’s very best.

FEATURE: Looking Like a Happy Man: Kate Bush’s King of the Mountain at Nineteen

FEATURE:

 

 

Looking Like a Happy Man

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 2005/PHOTO CREDIT: Trevor Leighton

Kate Bush’s King of the Mountain at Nineteen

_________

EVEN if…

I celebrate the anniversary of the song fairly regularly, it is important to talk about it. Sorry if I am not saying anything new but, on 24th October, 2005, we got the first Kate Bush single in over a decade. After 1993’s The Red Shoes, there was doubt that Bush would release another album. She had reached a point in her career when she needed to step away and think about herself. After having a son in 1998 and moving house, she was settling down and enjoying time away from the limelight. It was not a complete shock that King of the Mountain arrived. In 2001, there was an interview where Bush talked about her family and a new album. We knew that it would come along but were not sure exactly when. How would it sound and what would be the first single from it? When it came to Aerial, Bush only officially released one single. King of the Mountain opens the album and is the most single-worthy. There are other songs on the album that could have been singles – Mrs. Bartolozzi for one -, yet there was this feeling she did not want to give too much away. It would have meant additional promotion. Bush not overly happy being in videos. King of the Mountain was her final music video where she was featured. It was a turning point. Perhaps self-conscious about the way she looked after so long away from music, she did look fantastic in the King of the Mountain video!

I think King of the Mountain was already about a decade before the rest of Aerial. Whether you she intended to release it as a single in the 1990s or this was the first step on a new album I am not too sure. I have said before how it seemed to mirror her own experiences. Being seen as this recluse, Bush was sort of hiding away. King of the Mountain mentions Elvis Presley and whether he is still alive “Looking like a happy man”. Maybe over-reading the lyrics, Bush using that artist to represent herself. How the media were wondering whether she was and assuming she had disappeared. Instead, she was living happily in private. I can hear a lot of herself in the song. Bush adopting an Elvis accent and drawl through the song. With Kate Bush producing and Del Palmer engineering, this is a hugely solid and brilliant single. Her young son Bertie designed the single cover art for King of the Mountain. It is very much this family affair (Del Palmer and Kate Bush were in a relationship for about fifteen years). It is no surprise that the single did well in the chart. It reached number four in the U.K. There was so much excitement around Kate Bush coming back. One of her more popular singles, she did not do any live performances at the time. She did bring the song to the stage in 2014. There are some fantastic interviews to promote Aerial where she spoke about King of the Mountain. The single was first played on 21st September, 2005 on BBC Radio 2. With its video directed by  Jimmy Murakami and Bush’s writing, production and vocals at their peak, I think more sure be written about King of the Mountain. How important this song is.

The lyrics are incredibly evocative. Distinctly from the pen and mind of Kate Bush, I wonder where she was when she wrote them and what inspired the song’s direction and themes. My favourite lines are these: “Elvis are you out there somewhere/Looking like a happy man?/In the snow with Rosebud/And king of the mountain/Another Hollywood waitress/Is telling us she’s having your baby/And there’s a rumour that you’re on ice/And you will rise again someday/And that there’s a photograph/Where you’re dancing on your grave”. In their feature ranking Kate Bush’s fifty best songs, MOJO placed King of the Mountain in thirty-sixth. This is what they observed: “The first song written (and partially recorded) for Aerial, in 1997, and the song that announced its completion eight years later, is an atmospheric meditation on the possibility that Elvis lives on in some iconic hinterland, sledging on Kane’s Rosebud. The slinky marimba groove, tough drums and skanky guitars (by Bush’s husband Dan McIntosh), provided an early clue this album would be unlike anything she’d done before, albeit reassuringly compelling and eccentric”. In 2018, The Guardian ranked Bush’s singles. King of the Mountain came in eleventh: “Comeback album Aerial wasn’t exactly overburdened with obvious singles. Perhaps the beautiful, sunlit Somewhere in Between might have worked out of context of the Sea of Honey song-suite, but instead Bush plumped for a song that involved her impersonating Elvis and knowingly ruminating on the benefits of withdrawing from the public eye”. Earlier this year, Classic Pop placed King of the Mountain fourteenth when deciding on Kate Bush’s forty best songs: “Written a good decade before its eventual release as part of Aerial, King Of The Mountain – her first single in 12 years – wonders if Elvis is still out there, somewhere living normally, having been subjected to such intense fame during his career. It also referenced parallels between Presley and Citizen Kane, hence ‘Rosebud’. Her biggest hit in over 20 years, it went to No. 4 in the autumn of 2005”.

I am going to end with some round-up and reviews for King of the Mountain. Even those who were not huge Kate Bush fans could have resisted the excitement and anticipation that surrounded her first single in many years. What it would deliver. This is what Drowned in Sound noted in their 7/10 review for the mighty King of the Mountain:

“There’s my idea of taking a break and there’s your idea of taking a break. And then there’s Kate Bush’s idea of taking a break. The wandering enigma of British pop has been gone for twelve years. Which means the last time we saw Kate Bush was in the nineties – and let’s be honest, who can remember them?! (I can actually remember them very well, but that last bit scans rather nicely dontchathink?)

So what on Emily Bronte’s misty earth has she been up to for the last twelve years? Well, I imagine she’s been raising a family and proba…yadda, yadda, yadda – who gives an arse? She’s got a new album coming out. She’s called it ‘Aerial’. And ‘King Of The Mountain’ is the first indication that it might be as ace as we hoped it would be.

For a while, I always thought that Kate Bush was taking the piss when she sang. Either that or she was celebrating her release from the mental asylum by screaming at passers-by, then softly informing them that she has a house on top of the hill that they simply must visit because the garden path is made of swords and the kitchen is run by the trees. Of course, that was then. Now, having actually listened beyond ‘Wuthering Heights’, I’d stick her up their with the very best. So apart from the remarkable voice, why do folk dig The Bush? Thankfully, some answers can be found in ‘King Of The Mountain’. Sort of. A slow-burning reggae groove, peculiar lyrics, electronic phasing, tribal pulsing and a shuddering, vintage vocal are all in there. She also talks of “the wind whistling” – which in a Kate Bush track, can only be a good thing. Thing is, the track doesn’t really go anywhere and if the lady herself wasn’t singing it could be considered terribly dull. Still, the pastoral princess returneth – Yeth!”.

Dropping this single in a 2005 music scene when there was nothing like King of the Mountain, there were some impassioned reviews for one of the most anticipated returns in music history. How much Kate Bush had been missed! You can read further reviews for the single here. It was clearly a beloved single release from an artist who proved, no matter how long she had been away, she had lost none of her magic and ability to stand out from the crowd:

“The NME has reviewed the single in style: “Ok, so it was hardly worth waiting a decade and a bit for but then what is? Nothing that we can think of. What it is, mind, is an apt reminder of just how little everyone else is trying right now and just how Ms Bush has been missed. It’s five minutes of druggy acenes, has a mental breakdown in the middle, and sounds like Sade washing down lyrical razorblades with plummets of fizzy white wine nabbed from Massive Attacks rider. But with more heart than a Canadian AOR radio station or a passionate snog with a Care Bear. If we were excited about the album before we heard this (and we were, very), now we’re EXCITED IN BIG CAPITAL LETTERS.” Eye Weekly in Toronto writes: “The famously melodramatic (some would say screechy) chanteuse’s influence on such singers as Björk and PJ Harvey has come full circle on “King of the Mountain,” currently available only as a download. The rumbling bass and propulsive drumming recalls Harvey’s “A Perfect Day, Elise,” while Bush takes her creepy torch-song vibe down a notch, mostly reining in her upper register to devastatingly intense effect. Learning how to smoulder is the final frontier for great singers, and Bush does it without giving up the vulnerability that made every teenage wallflower in the ’80s stare longingly at her LP jackets.”

…here’s an article on Peter Bochan’s Alternative Music Blog which reveals that King Of The Mountain is the 231st song about Elvis! “At least one of his white jump suits is in the video with Kate, along with a storyline that seems to be a throwback to the “Is Elvis Still Alive” period in tabloid journalism, mixed with some Citizen Kane “Rosebud” imagery and some dodgy shots of Kate that seem to hide her from any full-figure viewing–maybe she’s going through her own “later elvis” type period. Whatever the reason, this first sample from the upcoming “Aerial” is very encouraging, “King Of The Mountain” is vintage sounding and full of the usual “moments of pleasure” that Kate has been delivering since 1977’s “Wuthering Heights”. Read more here…BBC Radio 1 may be largely ignoring the single from it’s playlists (no, we can’t figure it out either) but one DJ, Rob Da Bank continues to rave about the single: “She makes us wait 12 years and then bam! She’s back and jeepers creepers the lady’s been busy if this, the first single from her new album Aerial is anything to go by. Wooshy wind noises – check! Mystical lyrics – check! Genius reggae guitar and bountiful production – check! Best pop song of the year so far and proud to be a Blue Room tune. Welcome back!” See it at the BBC Radio 1 website here…finally, need wheels to get to the record shop next week to buy the single? The “big black car” from the Cloudbusting video is up for sale – see here!”.

It is hard to believe that it has been almost nineteen years since King of the Mountain was released. On 24th October, we mark that anniversary. With its B-side of Sexual Healing – an unusual choice of cover but one Bush adds her own stamp to -, it was a huge treat getting this new Kate Bush music! Aerial would arrive on 7th November. Bush performed this song as part of her set for the 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. A chance for her to bring this amazing song to life on the stage. Her most successful single since the 1986 duet with Peter Gabriel, Don’t Give Up, King of the Mountain is a truly magnificent single from…

ONE of her best albums.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Exploring an Under-Read Interview from 1984

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

PHOTO CREDIT: Denis O’Regan

Exploring an Under-Read Interview from 1984

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I want to briefly…

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

return and dust off The Kate Bush Interview Archive. This Kate Bush: The Tour of Life takes us back to 1984. I know I have recently focused a great deal on Hounds of Love and that era. I will dip back in briefly because of a very special 1984 interview I don’t think many people know about. It captures a particular (and important) moment in Kate Bush’s career. There are quite a few interviews available from 1985. When Hounds of Love was released. There are not really many from 1983 or 1984. Louder Sound recently shared a feature looking back to 2011 where they featured an interview conducted by Mick Wall. He is one of the world's leading Rock and Metal writers. The same age as Kate Bush (sixty-six), he recalled reaching out for an interview in 1984 but not expecting to hear back. A rare chance for insight into the writing of Bush’s 1985 masterpiece. Bush must have known about Mick Wall and his music tastes. Finding kinship and things in common, it would have been thrilling to be invited to her home to be around someone putting together songs that would appear on one of the greatest albums ever. It seems like they instantly hit it off:

“It all seems like a dream now… but back in 1984, during what was then viewed as a period of unprecedented reclusiveness for a major rock star, I put in a request to interview Kate Bush. Expecting nothing back – she had more or less disappeared since her 1982 album The Dreaming had received such a bashing in the press – I was astonished when the record company got back and said, “She’d love to speak to you.”

It seemed the opportunity to be interviewed by a bona fide rock writer intrigued her. “She likes Def Leppard,” they added, hopefully. Strange to relate by today’s manicured PR standards, but I was given her address and told to pitch up sometime that week. A few days later I was at door of the south London house Kate used as her home-from-home workplace; a space to play piano, dance and listen to records.

She answered the door herself with a big smile and ushered me in. Dressed in an understated way – no make-up, hair brushed but not sculpted, just jeans and top to keep her warm – Kate was 25 at the time, and very beautiful.

She skipped off to make tea and I knelt by the record player, flipping through her albums. I recall seeing Bryan Ferry’s These Foolish Things, some Pink Floyd, some Bowie, plus some other things I didn’t easily recognise. Classical, maybe? Dance?

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured in the studio during the recording of Hounds of Love in 1984/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

She returned with tea and biscuits and we sat cross-legged on the floor together. With no new album to promote, I didn’t really know what I should talk about. I hadn’t actually expected to be given an interview. Somehow we got onto the subject of smoking dope, and she giggled and talked of “pinning” – pretending to inhale from a lump of burning hash held up by the unbent pin of a badge.

Kate said she was “very influenced in my writing by old traditional folk songs, handed down by new generations of musicians but with the original atmosphere and emotion still maintained. The sort of music my mother would have listened to and danced to, and used to play for me when I was very little. It’s probably my biggest musical influence.”

…It was her ability to dance so extravagantly that made her live show, which I’d recently caught at London’s Palladium, so enervating and different. “I got so incredibly nervous before I’d go on,” she confessed. “All I’d ever really done in the way of live performance before the tour were TV shows and videos. And the sort of props and ideas for the show we were carrying around with us seemed a bit ambitious, a bit awesome, at first. But I loved those shows. Once I was onstage I had so much fun. I would like to do more of it...”

In another life, could she have made a career out of dancing? “I had people approaching me at the dance class, asking if I wanted to go to Germany and dance in clubs and things, and for a time I really got into the dance thing... But I don’t think I was good enough. I didn’t stand out enough.”

Did she write all the time? “No. I have to be forced to write for an album.” She wasn’t very prolific then? “I used to be. I used to write every day, and if it wasn’t very good keep a little bit and maybe use it in something else. As soon as Wuthering Heights became a hit, though, my whole routine was just blown apart. It was extraordinary how suddenly everything changed.”

Were her dancer mum and musician had worried when she signed to EMI at 16? Sex and drugs etc? “No, not at all,” she smiled. “They had seen it coming for a long time. The original idea was to see if we could sell my songs to a publisher, not that I should be a singer or a performer or anything. We had quite modest, curious aims. So it was gradual and they were always supportive.”

Kate told me she was currently writing songs for a new album – which was to be Hounds Of Love. She explained how she hennaed her hair, crimped it occasionally, and that she had make-up artists and hair beauticians available, as well as costume designers equipped to run off fantasy threads like the still-legendary Babooshka number”.

I am fascinated by this interview because I did not know about it. I can imagine that it would have been hard for Kate Bush to take on too many interviews. As she was making a new album, there would have been this need for secrecy. Now, if there was a new album, she would interview the year it came out. In 1984, she was at a point when Hounds of Love was coming along but not complete. Her home studio was built and it was a really exciting time. Although there would have been stress and some hard days, the production process for Hounds of Love was one where Bush established herself as one of the best. Being invited into her world and getting to soak up the atmosphere around her. I assumed that the Mick Wall interview was at either East Wickham Farm – where she recorded most of Hounds of Love – or the 17th-century farmhouse in the Kent countryside near Sevenoaks she moved into with Del Palmer (her boyfriend and engineer/musician) in 1983. The mention of the South London “home-from-home” seems to nod to East Wickham Farm (in Welling), though it could be a flat that she had in South London. That hospitality and warmth Bush has always exuded. She seemed really relaxed and at a place where she was a lot more at ease. You can see interviews from 1982 where she seems tired or strained. The result of working on The Dreaming. In 1984, Bush was busy in the studio and there was this coming together of some of her most ambitious and remarkable work. This Mick Wall interview gives us a rare glimpse into the psyche of Kate Bush in 1984. 1985 would see her very busy with promotion. I would love to see more photos from Bush recording Hounds of Love and creating this masterpiece album. Maybe we will see that one day. I was keen to make people aware of an interview that really provokes images and warmth. A 1984 chat that finds Bush in a good place. Some assumed Bush had disappeared or was retired because she had not released a new album. It was clear that this was so far from the truth! In 1984, she was busy writing and recording. Little did the world know what she would gift the world…

THE following year.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Songs from Incredible Albums Turning Thirty Next Year

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

Songs from Incredible Albums Turning Thirty Next Year

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IN December…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andrea Piacquadio/Pexels

I am going to run a series of The Digital Mixtapes collating songs from albums celebrating big anniversaries next year. Taking in classics from 1965, 1970, 1975, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. It is something I enjoy. However, I might repeat myself because I want to focus on 1995 now. Because Supergrass recently announced that they will be back on the road next year touring to mark thirty years since the release of their debut, I Should Coco, I was thinking about other albums released that year. 1995 is one of the biggest and most astonishing years in music history. 1994, 1995 and 1997 being tremendous. Because Supergrass (Gaz Coombes, Danny Goffey and Mick Quinn) start a ten-leg tour from May next year to mark thirty years of their amazing debut, I have been thinking about contemporaries’ albums that made a commercial or critical impact in 1995. As you can from the playlist, there were loads of epic and timeless albums released! I hope that I have not missed any! Whether you were alive in 1995 or are looking back as a younger listener, the assortment of songs gives you a flavour of what was popular nearly thirty years ago now. I will mark the best of 1995 in December but, because of Supergrass taking back to the road, this Digital Mixtape celebrated…

THE best of 1995.

FEATURE: Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five: Inside the Amazing Singles, and Three Songs That Could Have Been Singles

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush’s The Sensual World at Thirty-Five

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

Inside the Amazing Singles, and Three Songs That Could Have Been Singles

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AS Kate Bush’s…

The Sensual World turns thirty-five on 16th October, I wanted to put out a couple of features. In this second one, I am going to look at the amazing singles released from Bush’s sixth studio album. Compared to 1985’s Hounds of Love and the singles released from this album, The Sensual World offered something different. Reaching number two in the U.K., this is among Kate Bush’s most successful albums. An artist who always charts high with her albums, The Sensual World was a success around the world. Although the reviews were not as universally positive as they were for Hounds of Love, there was a lot of love for her 1989 underrated and understated masterpiece. Perhaps not as acclaimed as its predecessor,  I do think that The Sensual World has a richness and depth that is not explored and dissected as much as it should. Hounds of Love’s singles all went to the top forty in the U.K. The Big Sky was the lowest placing at thirty-seven. Hounds of Love had four singles. The Sensual World three. I am going to spotlight those three singles and suggest three songs that should have been considered as singles. I think the album could have benefited from at least one further single. The first single, The Sensual World, was released on 18th September, 1989 and reached number twelve in the U.K. It was quite a high chart position. One of Bush’s most beloved songs, this charged and sensual track has this beauty, lust and heat that gets into the blood. One of Kate Bush’s most stirring and accomplished set of lyrics. Let’s start out here, The Kate Bush Encyclopedia gives more information about the first single from The Sensual World:

“The Sensual World’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released as a single by EMI Records on 18 September 1989. Also released on her sixth album The Sensual World.

Bush was inspired to write the song after hearing Irish actress Siobhan McKenna read the closing soliloquy from James Joyce’s Ulysses, in which the character Molly Bloom recalls her earliest sexual experience with husband-to-be Leopold Bloom. The book was published in 1922.

Kate, believing the text had fallen to public domain, simply lifted parts from it and sang them on the backing track she’d created. She approached director Jimmy Murakami to make a video for the song, and he expressed doubts because he suspected James Joyce’s grandson Stephen James Joyce had the rights to the book. Kate then contacted him numerous times, but the Joyce estate refused to release the words. She spent over a year trying to gain permission before accepting defeat.

In the end, she kept the backing track but “re-approached the words”, writing a lyric that sounded a lot like the original text but also added the dimension of ‘stepping out of the page / into the sensual world‘, in effect Molly Bloom stepping out of the book and walking into real life.

Musically, one of the main hooks in the chorus of The Sensual World was inspired by a traditional Macedonian piece of music called ‘Nevestinsko Oro’ (‘Bride’s Dance’). A recording of this piece of music was sent to Kate by Jan Libbenga. As in the traditional version, the melody is played on uilleann pipes, in this case by Irish musician Davy Spillane.

There’s a few songs that have been difficult to write. I think the most frustrating and difficult to write was the song, ‘The Sensual World’. Uh, you’ve probably heard some of the story, that originally it was written to the lyrics at the end of ‘Ulysses’, and uh, I just couldn’t believe how the whole thing came together, it was so… It was just like it was meant to be. We had this sort of instrumental piece, and uh, I had this idea for like a rhythmic melody, and I just thought of the book, and went and got it, and the words fitted – they justfitted, the whole thing fitted, it was ridiculous. You know the song was saying, ‘Yes! Yes!’. And when I asked for permission, you know, they said, ‘No! No!’ That was one of the hardest things for me to swallow. I can’t tell you how annoyed I was that, um, I wasn’t allowed to have access to this great piece of work that I thought was public. And in fact I really didn’t think you had to get permission but that you would just pay a royalty. So I was really, really frustrated about it. And, um… kind of rewrote the words, trying to keep the same – same rhythm and sounds. And, um, eventually, through rewriting the words we also changed the piece of music that now happens in the choruses, so if they hadn’t obstructed the song, it would have been a very different song. So, to look at it positively, although it was very difficult, in the end, I think it was, it was probably worth all the trouble. Thank you very much.

Kate Bush Con, 1990

A lot of people have said it’s sexy. That’s nice. The original piece was sexy, too; it had an incredible sensuality which I’d like to think this track has as well. I suppose it is walking the thin line a bit, but it’s about the sensuality of the world and how it is so incredibly pleasurable to our senses if we open up to it. You know, just simple things, like sitting in the sun, just contact with nature. It’s like, for most people, their holidays are the only time they get a real burst of the planet!

Will Johnson, ‘A Slowly Blooming English Rose’. Pulse (UK), December 1989”.

Kate Bush’s production is amazing throughout The Sensual World. I think that her songwriting is as good as on any album. A remarkable collection of ten songs. Even though three singles were released, there are three others that could have worked. And had some remarkable versions and high chart positions. However, the second single from The Sensual World is a masterpiece. Considered one of her best songs, This Woman’s Work has been featured on adverts and in films. The song has been released several times as a single. On 20th November, 1989, the public were able to purchase a single that appeared the year before in a successful film. This Woman’s World reached twenty-five in the U.K. Not a high chart position, I do think that it deserved a lot better. The closing track of The Sensual World – Walk Straight Down the Middle was a bonus track on C.D. and cassette versions -, it is a gorgeous and truly moving song. Again, the Kate Bush Encyclopedia offers insight and background to this stunning song:

“This Woman’s Work’ is a song written by Kate Bush. It was originally released on the soundtrack of the movie She’s Having A Baby in 1988. A year later, the song was included in Kate’s sixth studio album The Sensual World.

The lyric is about being forced to confront an unexpected and frightening crisis during the normal event of childbirth. Written for the movie She’s Having a Baby, director John Hughes used the song during the film’s dramatic climax, when Jake (Kevin Bacon) learns that the lives of his wife (Elizabeth McGovern) and their unborn child are in danger. As the song plays, we see a montage sequence of flashbacks showing the couple in happier times, intercut with shots of him waiting for news of Elizabeth and their baby’s condition. Bush wrote the song specifically for the sequence, writing from a man’s (Jake’s) viewpoint and matching the words to the visuals which had already been filmed.

The song was used in the 21st episode of the third season of Party Of Five, an episode of the TV series Felicity, an episode of the soap opera Another World, the second episode of the series Alias and in the first episode of the second season of The Handmaid’s Tale. The song was also used in the film A Man Called Otto.

Critical response

A luscious, spiritually elevating showstopper ballad. How does anyone get that much cool into a voice? Ecstatic with wintry tragedy, undeniably beauteous.

Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 25 November 1989

Is it possible through pop to truly represent the emotions of a young man stranded in the waiting room while his lover’s life is threatened by the birth of their baby? I think not. Unless you’re Kate Bush…

Len Brown, NME, 25 November 1989

There’s a film called ‘She’s Having A Baby’. And John Hughes, the director, rung up and said that he had a sequence in the film that he really wanted a song written to be with. And I’d only worked the once before on the ‘Castaway’ film – where I’d really enjoyed that – so I was extremely tempted by the offer. And when he sent the piece of film that the song was going to be part of, I just thought it was wonderful, it was so moving, a very moving piece of film. And in a way, there was a sense that the whole film built up to this moment. And it was a very easy song to write. It was very quick. And just kind of came, like a lot of songs do. Even if you struggle for months, in the end, they just kind of go – BLAH! – You know. [Laughs]. So that was the first song that I wrote for ‘The Sensual World’ album. In fact at the time we weren’t even sure whether to put it on the album or not. And I must say that Del was very instrumental in saying that I should put it on the album, and I’m very glad I did. Because I had the most fantastic response – in some ways, maybe the greatest response – to this song. And I was really – I was absolutely thrilled, that you felt that way about it.

Kate Bush Con, 1990”.

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

The third and final single from The Sensual World was her first single of the 1990s. It is also the lowest-charting releases from the album. Released on 26th January, 1990, Love and Anger reached thirty-eight. One of the most interesting aspects of Love and Anger is its B-sides. Ken, The Confrontation and One Last Look Around the House Before We Go are fantastically varied songs. Ken is probably the standout. I love the B-sides from The Sensual World. This Woman’s Work had Be Kind to My Mistakes and I'm Still Waiting. The Sensual World boasted Walk Straight Down the Middle and The Sensual World (Instrumental). It is also worth mentioning how Love and Anger reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1989. It was Bush's only chart-topper on any U.S. chart until 2022. Love and Anger features David Gilmour on guitar. One of the most difficult songs Bush ever wrote, I am glad that there was some positive critical acclaim for the single. The first taste of Bush as a singles artist in the 1990s. Again, a huge thanks to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia for information about Love and Anger:

“Critical response

Unfortunately the ‘serious’ music press in the UK was not too positive about this single. Only the magazine Kerrang! offered praise.

Is it too late to take back all those gushing hymns of praise we wrote in homage to Kate’s recent LP? [This is] pretty dispensable, fairly orthodox pop-rock listening.

Paul Lester, Melody Maker, 3 March 1990

Kate seems to have lost the plot… all middle without a beginning or an end… lost in an unfocused mire…

Tim Nicholson, Record Mirror, 3 March 1990

Dynamic understanding and depth that is quite untouchable. Bloody fantastic.

Phil Wilding, Kerrang!, 3 March 1990

Remarkably, US reviews were much more positive:

Bush recalls her ‘Big Sky’ in this lively introspective number from the hit album… already a no. 1 smash with modern rock programmers.

Bill coleman, Billboard (USA), 9 december 1989

This bristles with vigour electricity and life… fuelled by cascades of crashing guitars and a huge chanting chorus of background vocals… captures the power and sweetness of Kate Bush’s voice and music.

College Music Journal (USA), November 1989

It’s one of the most difficult songs I think I’ve ever written. It was so elusive, and even today I don’t like to talk about it, because I never really felt it let me know what it’s about. It’s just kind of a song that pulled itself together, and with a tremendous amount of encouragement from people around me. There were so many times I thought it would never get on the album. But I’m really pleased it did now.

Interview, WFNX Boston (USA), 1989

I couldn’t get the lyrics. They were one of the last things to do. I just couldn’t find out what the song was about, though the tune was there. The first verse was always there, and that was the problem, because I’d already set some form of direction, but I couldn’t follow through. I didn’t know what I wanted to say at all. I guess I was just tying to make a song that was comforting, up tempo, and about how when things get really bad, it’s alright really – “Don’t worry old bean. Someone will come and help you out.”
The song started with a piano, and Del put a straight rhythm down. Then we got the drummer, and it stayed like that for at least a year and a half. Then I thought maybe it could be okay, so we got Dave Gilmour in. This is actually one of the more difficult songs – everyone I asked to try and play something on this track had problems. It was one of those awful tracks where either everything would sound ordinary, really MOR, or people just couldn’t come to terms with it. They’d ask me what it was about, but I didn’t know because I hadn’t written the lyrics. Dave was great – I think he gave me a bit of a foothold there, really. At least there was a guitar that made some sense. And John [Giblin] putting the bass on – that was very important. He was one of the few people brave enough to say that he actually liked the song.

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

 IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush captured during the photoshoot for The Sensual World’s single cover/PHOTO CREDIT: John Carder Bush

I am going to match the three singles with three songs that could have been singles. 1993’s The Red Shoes offered up five singles. Not all of them were U.K. releases. I think that The Sensual World could have offered more. As it approaches its thirty-fifth anniversary, I have selected three songs that could have been successful singles. The first is The Fog. The third song on The Sensual World, I often think that it is a track that could have been on Hounds of Love. Appearing on the second side, The Ninth Wave. It is a phenomenal moment that is my favourite from Bush’s 1989 album. Apart from The Fog being an epic song, it also features the voice of Kate Bush’s father, Robert. I love song of the lyrics and exchanges: “Just put your feet down child/The water is only waist high/I’ll let go of you gently/Then you can swim to me/Is this love big enough to watch over me?/Big enough to let go of me/Without hurting me/Like the day I learned to swim?”. I think that The Fog could have had a brilliant video and would have charted high. Apologies if I have covered this topic and song before. When thinking about singles that could have followed Love and Anger, I feel The Fog would have been a natural success. I will donate to the Kate Bush Encyclopedia because, when it comes to information and details of Bush’s music, they are on top:

“Again, it’s quite a complex song, where it’s very watery. It’s meant to be the idea of a big expanse of water, and being in a relationship now and flashing back to being a child being taught how to swim, and using these two situations as the idea of learning to let go. When I was a child, my father used to take me out into the water, and he’d hold me by my hands and then let go and say “OK, now come on, you swim to me.” As he’d say this, he’d be walking backwards so the gap would be getting bigger and bigger, and then I’d go [Splutters]. I thought that was such an interesting situation where you’re scared because you think you’re going to drown, but you know you won’t because your father won’t let you drown, and the same for him, he’s kind of letting go, he’s letting the child be alone in this situation. Everyone’s learning and hopefully growing and the idea that the relationship is to be in this again, back there swimming and being taught to swim, but not by your father but by your partner, and the idea that it’s OK because you are grown up now so you don’t have to be frightened, because all you have to do is put your feet down and the bottom’s there, the water isn’t so deep that you’ll drown. You put your feet down, you can stand up and it’s only waist height. Look! What’s the problem, what are you worried about?

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

That started at the Fairlight. We got these big chords of strings, and put this line over the top, and then I got this idea of these words – slipping into the fog. I thought wouldn’t it be interesting to sort of really visualize that in a piece of music, with all these strings coming in that would actually be the fog. So I wrote a bit of music that went on the front of what I’d done, and extended it backwards with this bit on the front that was very simple and straightforward, but then went into the big orchestral bit, to get the sense of fog coming in.
Then we put a drummer on, and Nigel Kennedy, the violinist, came in and replaced the Fairlight violin, which changed the nature of it. He’s great to work with – such a great musician. The times we work together we sort of write together. I’ll say something like, “what about doing something a bit like Vaughan Williams?”, and he’ll know the whole repertoire, and he’ll pick something, and maybe I’ll change something. By doing that we came up with this different musical section that hadn’t been on the Fairlight.
So when I got all this down it seemed to make sense story-wise. This new section became like a flashback area. And then I got the lyrics together about slipping into the fog, and relationships, trying to let go of people.
It sounded great with the Fairlight holding it together, but it just didn’t have the sense of dimension I wanted. So we got hold of Michael Kamen, who orchestrated some of the last album, and we said we wanted this bit here with waves and flashbacks. He’s really into this because he’s always writing music for films, and he loves the idea of visual imagery. So we put his orchestra in on top of the Fairlight.
Again a very complicated process, and he was actually the last thing to go on. I don’t know how anything comes out as one song, because sometimes it’s such a bizarre process. It does seem to work together somehow.

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

A song that was released as a single in 2011, Deeper Understanding is one of the most obvious overlooked songs on The Sensual World. It is such a natural single. Director’s Cut was Bush reworking songs from The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. Even though the new version of Deeper Understanding is great, it does not have the same impact as the original. It was prescient and scarily accurate Bush discussing the impact and control computers had in 1989. It all came true! It was less futuristic and impactful in 2011. That is why I think the 1989 version should have been a single. On the version from The Sensual World, Charlie Morgan plays drums. John Giblin played bass – he would also appear on the 2011 version -, whilst Paddy Bush handles tupan. The highlight is the Trio Bulgarka (soloist: Yanka Rupkhina) on vocals. A penultimate visit to the Kate Bush Encyclopeida, I feel Deeper Understanding would have been a top-twenty single in 1990. It could have followed Love and Anger or been the fifth and final single – if we had The Fog as the fourth:

“Kate about ‘Deeper Understanding’

This is about people… well, about the modern situation, where more and more people are having less contact with human beings. We spend all day with machines; all night with machines. You know, all day, you’re on the phone, all night you’re watching telly. Press a button, this happens. You can get your shopping from the Ceefax! It’s like this long chain of machines that actually stop you going out into the world. It’s like more and more humans are becoming isolated and contained in their homes. And this is the idea of someone who spends all their time with their computer and, like a lot of people, they spend an obsessive amount of time with their computer. People really build up heavy relationships with their computers! And this person sees an ad in a magazine for a new program: a special program that’s for lonely people, lost people. So this buff sends off for it, gets it, puts it in their computer and then like , it turns into this big voice that’s saying to them, “Look, I know that you’re not very happy, and I can offer you love: I’m her to love you. I love you!”

And it’s the idea of a divine energy coming through the least expected thing. For me, when I think of computers, it’s such a cold contact and yet, at the same time, I really believe that computers could be a tremendous way for us to look at ourselves in a very spiritual way because I think computers could teach us more about ourselves than we’ve been able to look at, so far. I think there’s a large part of us that is like a computer. I think in some ways, there’s a lot of natural processes that are like programs… do you know what I mean? And I think that, more and more, the more we get into computers and science like that, the more we’re going to open up our spirituality. And it was the idea of this that this… the last place you would expect to find love, you know, real love, is from a computer and, you know, this is almost like the voice of angels speaking to this person, saying they’ve come to save them: “Look, we’re here, we love you, we’re here to love you!” And it’s just too much, really, because this is just a mere human being and they’re being sucked into the machine and they have to be rescued from it. And all they want is that, because this is “real” contact.

Roger Scott, BBC Radio 1 interview, 14 October 1989

I suppose it’s looking at society where more and more people are being shut away in their homes with televisions and computers, and in a way being encouraged not to come out. You know, there’s so many people who live in London in high-rise flats – they don’t know their neighbors, they don’t know anyone else in the building. People are getting very isolated. It was the idea of this person who had less and less human contact, and more and more contact with their computer, where they were working on it all day and all night. They see an advert in a magazine for a program for people who are lonely and lost, so they write off for it. When they get it back in the mail and put it into the computer, it’s the idea – a bit like an old sci-fi film, really – where it would just come to life and suddenly there’s this kind of incredible being there, like a great spiritual visitation. This computer is offering this person love, and the idea that they’ve had such little human warmth, they’re getting this tremendous affection and deep love from their computer. But it’s so intense it’s too much for them to take, and they actually have to be rescued from just being killed with love, I suppose.

WFNX Boston radio, Fall 1989”.

There were four other songs on The Sensual World I have not covered. One or two not suitable as single. There is one song that I think could have been a stronger chart entry than The Fog. Never Be Mine was re-recorded for 2011’s Director’s Cut and also featured during the 2014 residency, Before the Dawn. It is a track that Bush clearly has affection for. I do feel it could have been a successful single. A wonderful album with so many strong songs, it is interesting reading what Kate Bush said about the track:

“Kate about ‘Never Be Mine’

It’s that whole thing of how, in some situations, it’s the dream you want, not the real thing. It was pursuing a conscious realisation that a person is really enjoying the fantasy and aware it won’t become reality. So often you think it’s the end you want, but this is actually looking at the process that will never get you there. Bit of a heart-game you play with yourself.

Len Brown, ‘In The Realm Of The Senses’. NME (UK), 7 October 1989

I wanted a sort of eastern sounding rhythm. I wrote it first on the piano, though the words were completely different, except for the choruses. I did it on the piano to a Fairlight rhythm that Del programmed – I think that maybe because of the quality of the sounds, it was harder for Del to come up with the patterns. And I was more strict – he found it much harder. I think the pattern in ‘Heads We’re Dancing’ is really good – really unusual, the best he came up with. But ‘Never Be Mine’ was kind of tabla based. We got Eberhard (Weber) over to play bass and he played on the whole song. When we were trying to piece it together later we kept saying it just doesn’t feel right, so we just took the bass out and had it in these two sections. You hardly notice it going out at all. I think the song has a very light feel about it, which helps the whole imagery. The Uilean pipes have a very light feel, and the piano is light… I think it’s a nice contrast when the bass suddenly come in.
The piano on this is an upright Bernstein that has a really nice sound – I think it has to do with proportions for us. We did have a big piano and it’s a small room, and it didn’t record well. The small piano sounds much bigger.

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

On 16th October, The Sensual World turns thirty-five. It is one of Kate Bush’s best albums. As I mentioned in the first anniversary feature, critics now place it high in the album rankings. Normally third or fourth. It is an amazingly compelling album released at a time when Bush was in her thirties and was writing in a different way. More concerned with her femininity and embracing her womanhood, it was different to her previous work. I do really love the three singles that came from the album. It was natural that The Sensual World and This Woman’s Work would be singles. The two most celebrated songs from that album. Even if Love and Anger is less obvious, it is still a wonderful song. I feel there was capacity to have one or two other tracks released as singles. As I suggested, there was plenty of choice. Just think what videos she would have made for The Fog or Deeper Understanding! It is tantalising. In any case, what we did get was three strong singles from an amazing album. Released in a year where Hip-Hop was ruling and Pop was evolving, perhaps The Sensual World did not really fit in. Some critics took against it and felt the album is not her strongest work. Contemporary critics regard it very highly. What we do get from The Sensual World are ten songs with their own skin and sound. They fit together wonderfully. Bush did rework four of The Sensual World’s tracks in 2011 for Director’s Cut. Interestingly, two were originally released as singles: The Sensual World (renamed Flower of the Mountain); This Woman’s Work was also re-recorded. The other two are songs I have suggested as lost singles: Deeper Understanding and Never Be Mine. Maybe Bush was not happy with those tracks and felt they benefited from being taken apart and given more room and space to breathe. What The Sensual World highlighted brightly is that there are…

NO artist quite like Kate Bush.