FEATURE: Inside the Mood Machine: The Personal Benefits and Drawbacks of Spotify

FEATURE:

 

 

Inside the Mood Machine

PHOTO CREDIT: Liza Summer/Pexels

The Personal Benefits and Drawbacks of Spotify

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THERE was a recent…

PHOTO CREDIT: Ivan Samkov/Pexels

feature from The Guardian, where two of its writers, Laura Snapes and Alexis Petridis, discussed their experiences with Spotify. Whether they could live without it and what it was like listening to curated playlists. It ties into a book, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist. Published in March, it is a very timely book. At a moment when there is uncertainty whether most artists can survive putting their music onto Spotify, there is a real call for change. Either the business model of Spotify needs to ensure artists are paid fairly - or there needs to be an alternative:

“An unsparing investigation into Spotify's origins and influence on music, weaving unprecedented reporting with incisive cultural criticism, illuminating how streaming is reshaping music for listeners and artists alike.

Drawing on over one hundred interviews with industry insiders, former Spotify employees, and musicians, Mood Machine takes us to the inner workings of today's highly consolidated record business, showing what has changed as music has become increasingly playlisted, personalized, and autoplayed.

Building on her years of wide-ranging reporting on streaming, music journalist Liz Pelly details the consequences of the Spotify model by examining both sides of what the company calls its two-sided marketplace: the listeners who pay with their dollars and data, and the musicians who provide the material powering it all. The music business is notoriously opaque, but here Pelly lifts the veil on major stories like streaming services filling popular playlists with low-cost stock music and the rise of new payola-like practices.

For all of the inequities exacerbated by streaming, Pelly also finds hope in chronicling the artist-led fight for better models, pointing toward what must be done collectively to revalue music and create sustainable systems. A timely exploration of a company that has become synonymous with music, Mood Machine will change the way you think about and listen to music”.

It made me think about my experiences with Spotify and what it means to me. I have been using it for years and compiled over 1,300 playlists on it. I tend to get a lot of music from it and often listen to specially ‘curated’ playlists. Their Daily Mix selections and genre-specific playlists. There are drawbacks to them. Before getting to my thoughts, Liz Pelly’s book was investigated by The Guardian:

“In November and December last year, Spotify’s chief executive, Daniel Ek, sold 420,000 shares in the music streaming company, earning himself $199.7m (£160m). One wild rumour that circulated on social media suggested Ek’s eagerness to divest himself of stock in the company he founded was linked to the imminent publication of Liz Pelly’s book Mood Machine, as if Ek feared the revelations contained within it would adversely affect the share price. That was obviously a fanciful notion. Ek started cashing out Spotify shares in July 2023, and has continued doing so into 2025. At the time of his last transaction, a month after Pelly’s book was published in the US, Spotify’s share price was at an all-time high.

And yet, you can see how people who had a preview of Mood Machine’s contents might get that idea into their head. It may be the most depressing and enraging book about music published this year, a thoroughly convincing argument that Spotify’s success has had a disastrous effect on pop music. Pelly also alleges a catalogue of alarming corporate behaviour, indicative of a company that, one former employee suggests, has “completely lost its moral centre”.

The question is whether it ever had one to start with. The favoured origin story around Spotify’s founding involves Ek, a Swedish tech millionaire and “music nerd”, electing to save the industry from the scourge of online piracy by providing an alternative: an all-you-can-eat buffet of music on demand for a small monthly fee. Pelly suggests this is basically tripe. Ek’s speciality was in selling online advertising: his big idea was that some kind of streaming service would be a good way to do it. In its initial iteration, Spotify wasn’t even specifically intended as a music provider: the concept was to stream movies, until Ek and his co-founders realised that the size of the digital files involved was prohibitive. The picture that emerges is not of a munificent fan but a very different and familiar archetype: the guy who’s good with computers and neither understands, nor places any value on art.

The more beige your sound, the more likely it was to find a place on a Spotify playlist and earn some cash. 

Certainly, Spotify seems to have gone out of its way to denude musicians of earnings. Major labels were paid enormous advances to license their catalogues to the service, with no obligation to share any of the money with the people who had actually made the music. Spotify’s system of royalty payments is both byzantine and patently unfair. Artists aren’t paid simply by the number of streams their songs achieve, but by the percentage of total streams they account for in each country: not for your work, but how well your work is doing compared with that of a handful of megastars. One of Pelly’s interviewees calls it “forced consolidation”: not everyone who makes music wants to compete with Ed Sheeran, but this is a world in which you’re automatically obliged to do so. If you’re willing to forgo a further percentage of your earnings, then there’s Spotify Discovery, which adjusts the app’s much-vaunted algorithm to promote artists who accept a reduced royalty rate.

Meanwhile, in the early 2010s, the company shifted its focus from “music enthusiasts” to what it calls “lean-back consumers”, effectively the kind of people who would once have turned the radio on in the morning and left it burbling in the background all day. The purpose of the playlists it designed to target them – “chill vibes”, “mellow morning”, “mood-booster” – was, and is, to provide unobtrusive background noise or, as Pelly suggests, a latter-day equivalent to muzak: nothing striking, unusual, out-of-the-ordinary, or indeed any of the things one might reasonably want music to be. The message that quickly filtered through to artists was that the more beige your sound, the more likely it was to find a place on a Spotify playlist and earn some cash. Hence the rise of a homogeneous genre dubbed “Spotifycore”, which you’ve doubtless heard even if the term seems unfamiliar. It’s a bit ambient, a bit electronic, a bit folky, a bit indie, a nonspecific wish-wash possessed only of a vague wistfulness, the sonic equivalent of a CBD gummy: music “for any place, for anyone”, as one producer put it, that ends up being “music for no place, for no one”.

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

It is interesting how Spotify affects how we experience music. Whether it is beneficial and expands horizons or it is very much recycling what we listen to without leading us in new ways. I have a very love-hate relationship with Spotify. I want to move to another article from The Guardian and the experiences of two of its writers:

“Laura Snapes, deputy music editor I was set the task of not listening to Spotify for a week, but Alexis, your task was much worse: only listening to Spotify-created playlists, and the songs it suggested to you based on your listening history. How did that go?

Alexis Petridis, chief rock and pop critic One day in the car I just listened to nothing instead of facing it again. When it plays me songs I like, it’s not what I want to hear at that moment. That’s not to say the music it was recommending wasn’t good. One morning it played Schizophrenia by Sonic Youth. I love that song but I didn’t want to hear it then. It played me Billie Holiday’s Riffin’ the Scotch followed by My Bloody Valentine, which clearly demonstrates the great breadth of my music taste – but just because I like it all doesn’t mean I want to hear it all together. I didn’t like that it was untouched by human hands. I always think that the amazing thing about a record collection is that it doesn’t make sense to anybody other than you. And yet when it’s presented like that, I find it really jarring and difficult – it’s all over the place.

LS The algorithm is straining to find the data points that connect all those things, to close the net and make it coherent when it’s not.

AP The first one I tried had an AI DJ that kept saying “Ga-lax-ie 500”, which sounds like a laxative. I wonder how much of this is to do with my age and these things not having always been in my life, but I find it inherently creepy, both the AI voice and the narrow recommendations based on your own taste. I read enough science fiction in my teens to know that this is very much the thin edge of the wedge – one minute it’s all matey “would you like to listen to Galaxie 500?”, the next humanity’s enslaved, living underground mining uranium for a robot. There are generated playlists that are meant to be generically adjacent to the time of day you listen to it: “Wednesday Shoegaze.” Why? Then you have “70s rock hippie afternoon”, featuring a lot of music that isn’t from the 1970s. There’s I Am Waiting by the Rolling Stones, which is from 1965. Expecting to Fly by Buffalo Springfield is from 1967. Eight Miles High by the Byrds is from 1966. How do you generally use Spotify?

IN THIS PHOTO: Laura Snapes and Alexis Petridis try giving up/living with Spotify/PHOTO CREDIT: Jill Mead/The Guardian 

LS I have mp3s of anything I care about. I pay for Spotify but I try to spend as much or more on Bandcamp or whatever every month, like carbon-offsetting. To some degree, you and I need to have Spotify, like a film critic needs Netflix. But also, artists don’t earn anything from me playing their mp3s; if I stream music I already own on Spotify, they’re at least getting fractions of a penny and the listener data they need to operate in that ecosystem. And I don’t have to listen to ads. How about you?

AP Ordinarily my listening isn’t centred on Spotify. I use YouTube more for work. I listen to a lot of physical records. Did you listen to a lot of different stuff as a result of not using Spotify for a week?

LS Sort of. I subscribe to a lot of music newsletters and inevitably open 20 Bandcamp links a week and shut 15 without listening to them, because there’s only so much time. But this week I went through most of them and really loved an album by a Swedish composer called Hugo Randulv. I generally only use Spotify as a discovery tool to listen to albums I’ve never heard before that I’ve seen recommended elsewhere or to play old favourites out and about. The only time I cheated was when I ran out of fun music mid-run and put Doechii’s last mixtape on, but I bought it when I got home. I never use their playlists. I stopped checking my Discover Weekly because it often recommends things that would be logical for me to like, but I’ve already decided that I don’t. But that doesn’t compute with their algorithmic concept that one of these things is just like the other.

AP That’s the thing – however good the algorithm is, there’s something about human taste that it can’t quite replicate. Let’s look at my “made for you”. I never usually browse this. Here’s my “reggae mix” … featuring folk legends Shirley and Dolly Collins.

LS Wow. With playlists like “70s hippie afternoon”, it’s like their made-up Spotify Wrapped “genres”, where they’re named a) to mimic the language of memes, and b) as a reduction of music down to “vibes”, stripping away historical context. This might be getting a bit Adbusters, but I think the temporal playlists are also about syncing with consumer habits. Your “get ready with me” playlist, a “main character energy” walk to Starbucks. And the “coffee shop” vibe is so prevailing, it’s ended up dictating the types of music that get signed: you get more pop-ready, front-facing songwriters such as Phoebe Bridgers and Julien Baker on indie labels – they’re obviously great but they’re also products that work well in that ecosystem”.

I relying on Spotify a lot when it comes to my journalism. Whether it is embedding an entire album or compiling playlists, I use it all of the time. It is invaluable for easy access to a wide range of music. I do really like how you can go in and be treated to so much music for very little money. I do feel guilty about the low rates artists are paid! How much most will earn from streaming. However, when we think about the way people consume music now, is Spotify and other streaming platforms beneficial at all? That thing about artists sounding the same or trying to fit into a particular vibe so they are included on Spotify playlists. Homogenisation to an extent. For me, one of the biggest issues is the suggested mixes and playlists. Very samey. I find it harder and harder to push beyond that. Maybe lazily letting Spotify dictate my listening. I do appreciate some of the songs suggested but, when it comes to music, it is better if I am connected with artists and albums that I do not listen to a lot. You get caught in this cycle of listening to the same thing! Genre-specific playlists sometimes random and really pulling together songs I am familiar with. The best moments happen when I stray away from suggested playlists and mixes and connect with something unexpected. In terms of discovering new artists, it is harder and harder to make those rare finds. Bigger artists get promoted and there are very few opportunities to find artists that are new. Spotify always keen to feed back to me things I have heard. This thought that this is what I want. I want to go beyond the comfort zone and be a bit bolder! Radio discovery relies on you listening to the right station at the right station. Streaming services like Spotify aren’t really set up that way. At least it doesn’t seem like they are. How Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist talks about Spotify telling us what to hear rather it being a listener-led discovery. How smaller musician-run platforms might be the way forward. From mood playlists and genre mixes to these daily playlists that seem restricted and narrow, there does need to be a change – or a better alternative. We all have our own relationship with Spotify, though I am a bit conflicted. I recognise its issues and numerous limitations. However, I do use Spotify constantly and could not produce as much as I do without it. Liz Pelly, in her book, asks what we can do collectively to revalue music and its worth. Producing a more sustainable and better economy and model. For musicians and music lovers alike, this is a book that…

EVERYONE needs to read.

FEATURE: A Massive Noise: Kate Bush’s The Dreaming and Starting Anew

FEATURE:

 

 

A Massive Noise

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1982

Kate Bush’s The Dreaming and Starting Anew

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ONE of the greatest…

turning points and most notable points of Kate Bush’s career was when she started work on The Dreaming. I am focusing on this album again as there are aspects of it that I have not covered in detail before. I am going to be dipping back into the pages once more of Graeme Thomson’s Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. In terms of the most notable element of The Dreaming, I think I have discussed its percussion before. The sheer noise and volume of the album. If you think of Kate Bush’s first two albums, The Kick Inside and Lionheart, it was very much with the piano at the front. Perhaps informed more by her upbringing and early love of the piano, it was only natural that this would be what enforced those 1978 albums. Of course, there were a range of instruments and vocal element in the mix. However, this was very much the sound of Kate Bush passionate, tender, bold, pioneering an unlike any female artist around. If the sound palette is pinks, blues and reds – I have brought in colours to describe her sound – then, as mentioned previously, things changed for 1980’s Never for Ever. Retaining some of the more ethereal and tender moments of the first two albums, there was a range of new sounds available from the Fairlight CMI. Some darker greens and blues. Still a lighter and more accessible album, there was a dramatic shift and introduction of blacks, browns and greys for The Dreaming. That does seem like it is a downbeat and haunting album. However, that indicates an artist – and producer – who was pushing away from her earliest sound and keen to think ahead and embrace something more modern.

Because of that, many critics did not know what to make of The Dreaming. Released in 1982, volume and depth is what defines the album. More political in places, it is a denser album. New influences very much helped to enforce and mould The Dreaming. Roy Harper was one. Both were working in Abbey Road Studio 2 when Bush was making Never for Ever. Harper popped in to add backing vocals to Breathing. Bush featured on You (The Game Part II). Pink Floyd were also major influences. Peter Gabriel was the most significant factor when it comes to The Dreaming’s experimentation and percussion. They first came into professional contact when Gabriel appeared on the bill for a Bill Duffield tribute show during Kate Bush The Tour of Life. Bush appeared on a couple of Peter Gabriel songs and she very much had an affection for what he did. I think the percussion on The Dreaming was a turning point. I have mentioned this before. Hugh Padgham was pivotal.  An exceptional engineer, he was responsible for creating the ‘gated’ drum effect at Townhouse’s ‘stone room’ studio during his work with Steve Lillywhite. That effect of the “thunderous rhythm cannoning off the stone walls followed by an almost immediate, uneasy silence was the sound Bush craved”. She admired watching Peter Gabriel in the studio and the guts it took, Rather than relying on the limitations of a drum kit,  she wanted something more tribal and raw. No sizzle of the cymbal or hi-hat. In terms of kit at Townhouse, there was the Solid State Logic (SSL) 4000 B console, which “integrated a studio computer system with an in-line audio console”. There was a SSL B desk. It had so many compressors and gates. All of this was new to Kate Bush. However, when you think about the sound of The Dreaming and even the seeds of Hounds of Love (1985), you can trace it back to her witnessing what was happening at Townhouse and how the percussive sound there was utilised by Peter Gabriel.

There is sophistication and real range on The Dreaming. However, it is the sense of explosion throughout. Jump scares and this tribal sound. A sense of fear and anxiety. The pulsating tribal drums of Sat in Your Lap. Something more dense and frightening on Pull Out the Pin and The Dreaming. The sheer howl and energy of Get Out of My House. The pulverising and blast of percussion during Houdini’s chorus. There Goes as Tenner, All the Love and Night of the Swallow are perhaps the lightest tracks on The Dreaming. In terms of connecting with other instruments and dynamics. Not as reliant on percussion and this heaviness. This feature about The Dreaming goes track by track. Consider that they say about Sat in Your Lap and the percussion: “Within seconds, this song grabs your attention with a quick tempoed drum beat, rumbling and reverberated”. Pull Out the Pin: “Starting off, we are introduced to more natural drums and reedy melody transporting us somewhere completely different. Kate brings us to the jungles of Vietnam, now singing as a Vietnamese soldier fighting in the war”. Leave It Open: “Within the first minute, we hear loud sampled drums, Kate’s voice through a phaser and then through heavy delay”. The Dreaming: “We are introduced to a didgeridoo and heavy engulfing drumbeat. After a sudden BANG! Kate starts to sing in a prominent Australian accent”. Get Out of My House: “One of my favourite Kate songs of all time, it is a whirlwind marriage of an emotionally driven story and totally innovative music production. It wastes no time making itself known, a haunting descending tone and drums start busting in”. There is no doubt that Hounds of Love remains Kate Bush’s most ambitious, accomplished album. I think The Dreaming is her most intense and loudest one.

IN THIS PHOTO: Björk photographed for Le Monde/PHOTO CREDIT: Vidar Logi

I am surprised others have not written about this. How there was this marked shift from 1980 to 1982. Technology had a big part to play, though it was clear Kate Bush wanted to make music with more bite and thunder. Witnessing Peter Gabriel and Hugh Padgham create something new and special opened her eyes It was a real revelation. That sense of a massive noise. It is all over The Dreaming. It is present on Hounds of Love, though the sense of explosion and tribal energy used in a different way. The percussion sound of Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God), Hounds of Love and even The Big Sky a little different. It was that move of direction towards percussion and a heavier sound on The Dreaming that impacted Bush’s scope and songwriting on Hounds of Love. The Dreaming remains unloved by some. Seen as too weird or on the fringes. A bit of a hard and heavy listen. Maybe if you were expecting her to repeat what she did on her first three albums. The biggest sonic evolution of her career, it was a necessary move. That sense of guts and bravery. Knowingly going in a less commercial direction in order to explore something fresh and more exciting. Knowing it could damage her career and lead to low sales – The Dreaming sold far fewer copies than The Kick Inside and Hounds of Love -, it was a moment that resounds to this day. Artists recording right now who very much took The Dreaming to heart. I think about Björk and many of her albums. You can hear her inspired by The Dreaming and what Kate Bush produced for that album. As I round off Kate Bush feature 999, I wanted to reflect on the role of percussion. Whilst there was some natural drums on The Dreaming, it is the way she harnessed the Fairlight CMI and also utilised acoustics and the studio space to create something more dramatic, unusual and impactful that stands out. This controlled chaos. Lunacy with heart. It is an amazing album that still sounds unlike anything else. When working with Peter Gabirel prior to her starting work on The Dreaming, maybe she did not think she could work in the same way and get the same sounds. A dream perhaps. However, this incredible pioneer and ambitious producer soon turned those dreams…

INTO reality.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Addison Rae

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Erika Kamano for CR Fashion Book

Addison Rae 

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I am…

PHOTO CREDIT: Inez and Vinoodh for Rolling Stone 

going to come to a couple of recent interviews with Addison Rae. A terrific young artist you should know about, many might know her best from TikTok. I am going to start with an interview from Vogue Business that broke down the “business of Addison Rae”: Someone who “has transformed from the realm of TikTok fame to bona fide pop stardom. We break down her It-girl impact for brands”:

“2024 was a big year for Addison Rae. She released her single ‘Diet Pepsi’ in August, almost a year after dropping her first EP. This was closely followed by ‘Aquamarine’, a poppy, sensual follow-up that solidified Rae’s new musical and aesthetic era. Both music videos were rife with high fashion references, from vintage pulls to fresh-off-the-runway pieces including SS25 Di Petsa and AW24 The Attico.

She’s come a long way since her late 2019 ascent to TikTok fame. Rae, who was studying at Louisiana State University at the time, was one of the app’s early success stories, rising to fame with quick-hit lip syncs and dances alongside influencers like Charli D’Amelio. As the pandemic hit and the world turned to TikTok, Rae reached the mainstream. In the years since, she’s shifted from all-American influencer to bona fide pop star.

It’s the right time for fashion to get on board. “Brands are now catching on because she knows the direction she is going in, as her two new singles embody the aesthetics she wants to put out to the world,” says fashion and culture writer Hunter Shires, who has written about — and spent time with — Rae. This year, Rae started working with stylist (and Interview fashion director) Dara Allen, who helped the star hone her sartorial messaging.

Brands are playing ball. Petra Collins sowed the seed in July when she tapped Rae to feature in the campaign for her Ssense-exclusive brand I’m Sorry. Rae sat on the floor in a silver bikini, smoking a cigarette she held between her toes with a tiara on her head. “She really is this collection,” Collins said of Rae at the time.

Now, luxury’s interest is piqued. In November, Saint Laurent featured Rae in the cast of its latest ‘As Time Goes By’ campaign, lensed by Nadia Lee Cohen, alongside stars including Chloë Sevigny and Charlotte Gainsbourg.

Rae’s work with the likes of Collins and Cohen harken back to the Tumblr days. Even Rae’s website looks like a “niche, obscure” Tumblr blog, says Rukiat Ashawe, editorial executive at creative agency The Digital Fairy. “Addison has established herself as a ‘cool girl’ through experimenting with fashion, especially with the indie sleaze aesthetic,” she says. It’s timely in a year when indie sleaze returned to the fore and Brat summer captured the zeitgeist (Charli XCX is a friend and collaborator of Rae). Rae’s ability to bridge this messy-chic Tumblr with more ‘normcore’ style elements (thanks, in part, to her Louisiana roots and early TikTok dance fame) enables her to click with a wide audience, experts agree.

When she guest appeared at Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s Sweat tour concert in New York’s Madison Square Garden wearing Mirror Palais and New York designer Miss Claire Sullivan, people took note. “Many people who recognised the dress she wore reached out and were just as gagged as we were,” says Mirror Palais designer Marcelo Gaia.

Sullivan — of Miss Claire Sullivan — also dressed Rae for this year’s MTV VMAs, after stylist Allen reached out via Instagram DM, to much chatter online. Sullivan recalls an editor friend running up to her at a fellow designer’s presentation after the look went live to ask if she had designed Rae’s ceremony fit. “I sort of knew in that moment that it was going to blow up way more than I had anticipated,” she says. The look generated $927,000 in media impact value (or MIV, which calculates the monetary value of posts, article mentions and social media interactions) in the first week, per Launchmetrics — Rae’s highest weekly MIV to date.

“My phone was blowing up for two days,” says Sullivan, who also saw her followers jump. “I was steadily climbing already, but she put me over the 10,000 mark for sure,” she says. “The best bit was seeing people dress up as her in the look for Halloween.”

Clearly, Rae has the star power to generate followers — and sales. (Sullivan helms a custom couture house, but will make iterations if someone is inspired to buy it, she says.) It’s not just emerging and independent designers basking in Rae’s shine. She also does numbers for the luxury labels she dons. Her Thom Browne look at October’s CFDA Awards generated $875,000 in MIV, while her vintage Alberta Ferretti gown at the 2024 Academy Museum Gala generated $276,000, according to Launchmetrics. As Rae cements her place in pop stardom, these numbers are only set to climb.

Bridging aesthetics — and audiences

What Shires calls “normal-hot” is trending, which bodes well for Rae’s ascent. Normal-hot is the essence of a crush you would have in real life, he explains. And it’s a look that’s replicable; Rae is papped as often in Lululemon zip-ups and Alo shorts as she is in vintage designer pieces. “As normal-hot becomes a new infatuation, with Abercrombie and prep looks back on the runway, she couldn’t have come at a better time,” he says. “Addison delivers fashion looks that are aspirational to the normal girl.”

Rae’s ability to toe the line between normalcy and stardom is what hits. For designers, it makes her fun to work with. “She has this relatability but she still provides a fantasy,” Sullivan says. “I love that she’s so willing to just take it all the way there. That energy is my dream client to work with honestly.”

And for audiences, this level of relatability makes them feel like they can buy into the fantasy she toggles. It’s also refreshing, amid a sea of stars who often don’t look thrilled to be where they are. “There is a sense of genuine, childlike excitement and joy when she puts on these pieces and attends these events,” Shires says. “You can see her beaming every time she hits a carpet because she is actually happy to be there.”

Industry figures recognise this, too. In his interview with Vogue (alongside Rae), Mel Ottenberg (who creative directed Rae’s ‘Diet Pepsi’ music video) pulled out a tweet that he felt encapsulated the star’s ability to make the over-the-top relatable: “One way to tell if someone has joie de vivre is if they like Addison Rae.”

This balance makes Rae appealing to a wider audience, which is a win for brands. “With this range comes the ability to tap into multiple audiences, from the everyday suburban girl all the way to coverage from high fashion enthusiasts on X,” Shires says”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Erika Kamano

As a slight diversion, I am coming to this interview from CR Fashion Book. Speaking with legendary British make-up artist, Pat McGrath, Rae delved into creativity, beauty and a fearless boundary pushing. Addison Rae is very much this modern-day icon. I think she is going to reach the heights of mainstream artists like Charli xcx and Dua Lipa. Even if her music career is relatively new, there are signs to suggest she has a very long future ahead:

“In many ways, Addison Rae is America’s Sweetheart. She’s the girl next door with a wild side, she says. And a cigarette. “My vision was to lean into a world of rawness,” Rae recalls of her shoot for CR. “We got to play so much…when you have a team that is open and eager to make something worthwhile, you find inspiration everywhere.” For Makeup Artist Pat McGrath, there was no better source of inspiration than the subject, herself: “I wanted to capture Addison’s duality—her playfulness and her power.”

These defining characteristics come to life on, say, Charli XCX’s “Von Dutch” remix. In a TikTok the musician shared, Rae is smiling, giggling, singing into the mic, when all of a sudden she lets out a high-pitched scream heard around the world. The only word that can sum it up: iconic. The moment set the tone for a very BRAT summer—the song spilling out of car stereos and New York City clubs, not to mention arenas—and signaled Rae’s second coming as a bonafide pop star.

Channeling the Old Hollywood glamour of Marilyn Monroe, as well as pop icons like Madonna, Britney Spears, and Lana Del Rey, Rae has carved out her own niche. In August 2024, she released “Diet Pepsi”, a nostalgic earworm about young love that’s steeped in Americana imagery; “Aquamarine,” and “High Fashion” followed. Each dreamy, pop hit and accompanying set of visuals is more camp, but more real than the last—making this girl next door one to watch. But we already knew that.

The world of music isn’t entirely new to Addison Rae. She rose to fame on TikTok in 2019—surpassing one million followers in the app’s early days; her viral dances allowing her to move from her home of Lafayette, Louisiana to Los Angeles, dropping out of college along the way—but Rae knew from a young age that she was meant for a bigger stage. She wanted to perform: act, sing, and dance. Over the last few years, she has stepped away from TikTok and into the studio. There’s a new Netflix film and an album on the way (her debut is set to release in 2025), but she’s doing things on her own terms—with a wink, a smile and a Cafe du Monde beignet.

Nearly three years on from their first meeting (spoiler alert: it was at the Met Gala!), Addison Rae sits down with Pat McGrath, who’s behind the singer’s “Aquamarine” beat and her CR photo shoot, to discuss their vision, the power of glam, and their guilty pleasures.

PHOTO CREDIT: Erika Kamano

CR: How do you use makeup to create a character?

AR: Glam is similar to fashion. Sometimes you put something on and it completely changes the way you feel. You can either follow it or take it where you want to.

PM: Makeup is storytelling. Every brushstroke helps bring a character to life, whether it’s the subtle flush of innocence, the bold edge of rebellion, or the ethereal glow of divinity. I always start by understanding the narrative—what the character feels, their essence—and then we use makeup to amplify that emotion. It’s about layering details, from the texture of the skin to the intensity of the eyes, to create a persona that captivates and resonates.

CR: What was your vision for the shoot you worked on together for this issue of CR?

AR: My vision was to lean into a world of rawness. We got to play with so much in this shoot. A lot of the poses we did on set were inspired by our fitting before we shot. Those photos are amazing too, because when you have a team that is open and eager to make something worthwhile, you find inspiration everywhere.

PM: For this shoot, I wanted to capture Addison’s duality—her playfulness and her power. We leaned into dramatic contrasts: Soft, luminous skin paired with bold, graphic eye looks, and lips that told their own story. The palette was inspired by modernity meeting timelessness—think Divine Skin Rose001 The Essence for a radiant base, Skin Fetish: Sublime Perfection Foundation for that flawless finish, and dramatic touches with FetishEYES Mascara. Every detail celebrated Addison’s evolving presence in beauty and fashion.

PHOTO CREDIT: Erika Kamano

CR: What would people be surprised to know about you?

AR: I love engaging with people in real life as much as humanly possible.

PM: That I’m a technology buff—I’m fascinated by the latest science and technological innovations and how they influence the future of beauty.

CR: What would you like to achieve in your life/career that you have not yet?

AR: Hmm…It would be interesting to have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame someday.

PM: Oh there is still so much for me to do. With Pat McGrath Labs, with looks, with collaborations. You haven’t seen it all from me yet!

CR: Who or what do you both look to for inspiration?

AR: Everywhere. If you’re open to it.

PM: Anyone and everything!

CR: What are your current obsessions?

AR: My new Barbie cowboy boots. Ice cream. Really dry martinis. Passion. My life.

PM: I’m such a gamer. I love Candy Crush!

CR: Do you have any vices or bad habits?

AR: Shopping. Finishing my drinks too fast.

PM: Late-night work sessions that turn into early-morning brainstorms—I can never fully switch off!

CR: What’s your guilty pleasure?

AR: Dessert.

PM: Doom scrolling for sure, I can’t help it”.

I am going to mov to a new interview with Rolling Stone. It is a long interview that I have edited, but I would advise people to read the entire thing if they can. It is a fascinating chat where provide these words: “She became a social-media superstar thanks to killer dance moves and an overflow of Southern charm. Can she reinvent herself as a pop supernova — and earn respect along the way?”:

“This weekend roughly marks her fifth anniversary in L.A. Around Thanksgiving 2019, Rae dropped out of Louisiana State University, where she was studying broadcast journalism, hoping to someday cover sports.

“I kind of thought that was my in to the entertainment industry, in a way that people wouldn’t look at me like, ‘Oh, please. You’re never going to be able to move to Hollywood,’” she explains.

The previous summer, Rae had downloaded a new app called TikTok. The short-form video platform had merged with popular lip-synch app Musical.ly in 2018, absorbing its young stars and fan base. Around that time, however, it was still a mélange of memes trying to find its footing somewhere between the irreverence of Vine and the personality-­fueled labor of YouTube.

For Rae, it was just another social media platform to try. She started making videos, often lip-synching to a song or some dialogue. One day, she posted a clip that, she says, got more than 50,000 likes: a sun-kissed Rae with long, beachy waves mouths along to a trending sound bite before a hand grabs her hair and pulls her offscreen. The gears that turn TikTok have always been opaque, but there was no question: The algorithm loved this cute girl with the cleft chin and the perpetual smile.

Rae stayed on top of every trending audio clip, but it was the viral dances that got her the most attention; TikTok was in need of its own homegrown stars, and the kids-next-door like Rae and her peers were the perfect representatives for a new generation’s ­burgeoning identity. She watched her follower count steadily climb. Soon, brands were clamoring for her to promote their products, from obscure fast-fashion sites to American Eagle and L’Oréal.

“Even though it was still at such a small scale, I think I was like, ‘This is how I’m going to be able to do what I’ve always wanted to do,’” she says.

College wasn’t really working out for Rae, anyway. Broadcast journalism wasn’t the fit she hoped it would be. (“All my prayers out to people who have to write papers on things that they don’t care about,” she says.) Plus, she had failed to make LSU’s Tiger Girls dance team, a lifelong dream for the girl who had been dancing competitively since she was six. “I had to really reassess my goals,” she says.

In October 2019, Rae broke 1 million followers on TikTok. She was starting to get recognized at football games and on campus, so with her family’s support, she left school and headed to Los Angeles with her mom. That December, Rae became a founding member of the Hype House, a now-defunct content-­creation collective. Alongside Dixie and Charli D’Amelio, Chase Hudson, and Thomas Petrou, she was part of a new Gen Z Brat Pack — everyone wanted to know who was dating or feuding or duetting who. Brands turned Rae and her peers into ambassadors of the new American dream, where anyone can become rich and famous with just their phone, good lighting, and the willingness to post as often as they can.

“I felt like I was dropped in the middle of The Truman Show,” Rae says. Her mom went back to Louisiana and left her 19-year-old to her own devices. “It was so different and weird and fun. I didn’t feel like I was curating anything. It felt very much like discovery.”

“[Meeting] Charli XCX was an obviously pivotal moment in my life,” Rae tells me. “She has been such a big sister and mentor for me.” After dropping “Obsessed,” Rae started taking more studio sessions with other writers and producers. Charli, who was recording 2022’s Crash at the time, was one of them. She remembers the “spark” she felt meeting Rae at a West Hollywood studio that day.

“She burst into the room in Ugg boots and hot pants after parking her pink Tesla in the driveway and exclaimed, ‘Boys are stupid!’ and then immediately was like, ‘Wait, we should write a song about that!’” Charli recalls. “I know that sounds simple and maybe silly to some people, but to me that was such a sign of instinct and fearlessness.”

Charli listened to some of Rae’s other songs, like “2 Die 4,” which Charli loved. Even though Rae was starting to assemble a dream team of collaborators, her debut project was eventually shelved. She focused on auditions, booking a role in Eli Roth’s slasher film Thanksgiving, and starred in a Snapchat reality show titled Addison Rae Goes Home, where she headed back to Louisiana to reconnect with her roots. In 2022, however, an act of fate occurred by way of an invasion of privacy: Rough versions of a group of songs she’d recorded leaked online.

“It felt so terrible,” she admits. She still doesn’t know how they were stolen. “I was really hurt.”

But something strange happened: Those rough demos began to go viral — and not just in an ephemeral TikTok kind of way. People began begging for Rae to release them. Charli was begging to be on them.

“Charli had texted me and was like, ‘I heard “2 Die 4” leaked. You know I love that song. Let me do a verse,’” Rae says.

Multiple critics called the songs “flawless,” while others compared her to Britney Spears. “I’m not super religious, but I am spiritual,” Rae says. “I think everything happened for a reason. Thank God the songs leaked.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Inez and Vinoodh for Rolling Stone

Even with the buzz, few record labels were clamoring to sign an influencer whose initial attempt at a music career flopped so spectacularly. “There were a lot of people that could not be less interested,” she admits.

Her saving grace was Columbia Records CEO Ron Perry, whom she knew through her boyfriend, Grammy-nominated producer Omer Fedi. They set up a meeting.

“I walked in with a binder, and I made a slideshow,” Rae says. The presentation was full of pictures and word clouds that she felt represented who she would be as a performer. “I just mood-boarded my vibes. I literally had no music to play him at that point, so it was about trust. Like, ‘Yes, I’m in the clouds, and I enjoy being there. But I’m also serious.’”

Perry was impressed and ended up signing Rae in late 2023. Around then, Charli reached out again, this time about the “Von Dutch” remix.

“‘You’re sitting in your dad’s basement while I’m chasing my dreams’ was just some silly note that I had written when I was on a plane,” Rae says, but she sent it to Charli, who encouraged her to put that in her verse.

“[Charli] respected me and my ideas,” Rae tells me. “It was the first time I really took the step on my own to be confident in the ideas I had and follow that. I owe that all to Charli.”

Rae started to do smaller sessions, usually just her and a producer, as a way of challenging herself to trust her instincts. She met songwriters Luka Kloser and Elvira Anderfjärd, who are signed to Max Martin’s publishing company, MxM Music, and had been cutting their teeth working with Ariana Grande and Taylor Swift, respectively. They’re both around the same age as Rae and had been familiar with her; Kloser “knew everything about Hype House” and “absolutely stayed on top of all the drama during Covid,” Kloser says, though neither had any idea what Rae was looking to create musically. “We were both shocked [that] her taste leaned very left and underground at times,” Kloser adds.

Her childhood was rarely steady. Addison Rae Easterling was born in Lafayette, a city on the southern end of Louisiana, to makeup artist Sheri Nicole Easterling and real-estate manager Monty Lopez. Her parents, then unmarried, broke up shortly after Rae was born, though they would end up having two more kids, two ­weddings, and two divorces over the next 20 years.

Thanks to the marital ups-and-downs as well as her dad taking on new jobs, her family jumped around, which was hard but helped her become the type of person who can adapt easily. “Moving schools a million times, I had to just keep making new friends,” she says. “If I get thrown into a scenario, I can figure it out pretty quickly.” Having grown up in a Catholic family and community, Rae attended multiple private, religious schools. A move to Houston marked the first time she attended public school, an overwhelming shift. Before she started high school, they moved again, this time to Shreveport.

Along the way, Rae began dancing less and less, but it was an early dance studio that planted the idea of pop stardom in her head. She credits both her teachers and her mom’s MTV obsession with introducing her to the music that shaped her: Madonna and Michael Jackson videos; Lady Gaga’s debut album, The Fame; and fellow Louisiana native Britney Spears, who gave Rae hope that she could make it out of the bayou, too. “I remember being like, ‘Whoa, music is everything,’” she recalls.

In 2020, when Lopez and Easterling moved with their sons, ages six and 12 at the time, to L.A., Rae’s TikTok presence was often a family affair. Lopez and Easterling danced alongside her, building their own followings on the app. “When social media opportunities were being brought to me, all I wanted to do was help people that I love and care about,” Rae says. “It made sense for me to keep my family involved. I think I was scared and I was alone. It was a lot to adjust to, and I had lived with my parents all my life, so it felt like the right thing to do at the moment.”

After a couple of years, the family dynamic began to fall apart. By 2022, Lopez and Easterling’s marriage was publicly crumbling, with tabloids and TikTok investigators piecing together clues from their posts for salacious stories, often involving other low-level influencers. Their second divorce was confirmed that November.

At the time, Rae was silent about the drama, aside from unfollowing both her mom and dad. Eventually, her parents reached a better place, but the situation left a fracture. “I feel a lot of guilt for what my family experienced, and responsibility,” she says, about having pulled them into the fold of her fame. “I think it’s just unfortunate that it was exposed like it was.”

She began seeing a therapist and says her relationship with her parents is “always a work in progress.” (While she still hasn’t refollowed her dad on Instagram, she follows her mom again.) Easterling, Lopez, and Rae’s brothers moved back to Lafayette in 2023. Easterling remarried last year and has ­massively pulled back on her own social media presence. Lopez remains active on TikTok.

“Everybody just wants to survive. Can’t blame them,” Rae adds. “I can only take responsibility for the things that I chose.”

Rae still believes in love. In fact, she loves love. “The Libra in me is a hopeless romantic,” she says. When I ask if she’s still dating Fedi, she confirms in a shy, quiet voice. Even though their three-year romance hasn’t been totally private (red-carpet appearances, social media posts, cozy pap shots), she says it’s the one topic that’s off limits.

“I’m very guarded when it comes to relationships, because my first public relationship taught me a lot about myself,” she says. In 2020, she began dating fellow creator Bryce Hall; they shared much of their courtship with their massive followings all over social media, dancing together, making vlogs.

“I think he cheated on me,” Rae says matter-of-factly. “He says he didn’t.”

When the relationship ended, Rae didn’t talk much about it; Hall, however, did. He repeatedly denied the cheating accusations. “That was a shit show,” she says. “He was very vocal about everything, and it was a mess.”

She’s less angry now. “I believe there’s good in everyone, so I like to think there’s a good part of him,” she says. Hall has since become a celebrity boxer and one of the leading Gen Z MAGA bros. “We were really young,” Rae says.

PHOTO CREDIT: Inez and Vinoodh for Rolling Stone

Rae doesn’t like to dwell on these memories; she’s not big on sadness, especially in her work. “I really struggle with being like, ‘All right, time to be sad and have just a guitar on the song,’” she says. “I applaud people that can do that. Sitting with your emotions in stillness is difficult.… I would actually be surprised if one day I write a really sad song, because I just can’t even imagine.”

Rae has maintained several close relationships with some very famous friends. She pulls out a deck of cards Aubrey Plaza gave her while they were shooting the upcoming comedy Animal Friends last spring. Plaza and Dan Levy were the only cast members on location in Bulgaria before Rae joined them. While Plaza was pretty unfamiliar with Rae’s career, Levy knew her from an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians Rae appeared in back in 2021, when she was close with Kourtney Kardashian. (On the status of their friendship, Rae says, “She got married and has a baby now.… I’ve lived a few lives.”)

Levy and Plaza immediately hit it off with Rae. “The amazing thing about Addison is that where most people’s ego is, she just has creativity and curiosity,” Levy says. “That is such a rare quality in a person, especially somebody with her social media standing.”

The trio would play poker on set, eventually graduating to Bulgarian casinos. “Was she good? She got better,” Levy jokes. But her allure got her far. “She happened to sit by a professional poker player who was charmed by her and said, ‘Let’s put our money together, and I’ll make you a fortune.’” Rae walked out with over $1,000. Levy left empty-handed.

Rae played her demos for her new friends on set too, and they watched together as the accolades for “Diet Pepsi” rolled in. “I was like, ‘There’s my baby girl blowing up,’” Plaza says. “You could just tell she has a star quality.”

Charli XCX has called Rae “a fucking genius,” and Rosalía echoes similar sentiments: “She’s the absolute project manager of her work and has a very clear vision of what she’s creating. Her choreographies seem so beautiful to me. I love how she brings the 2000s American pop star back to these days.”

No matter how much one adores fame, it can still be prickly. As Rae navigates her way into her new, post-social media era, she’s fascinated by how people cling to whatever idea they have of her, like she’s incapable of being edgy or cool or even weird or progressive. The replies on almost every post of hers still claim she’s racist and MAGA, largely from undeveloped political views she held as a preteen raised in a conservative environment, as well as a maybe-too-polite interaction with President Donald Trump a few years ago. (Her first and only political endorsement came in 2024, for Kamala Harris.) Rae is still growing and learning about herself and the world around her, even if people can’t see it that way.

“People have decided who I am,” she says. She’s savored every curveball she’s been able to throw, though. She loves watching the surprise on people’s faces when they hear her music or see her daring red-carpet looks. But she still doesn’t mind leaning into the all-American side of herself. “I’ll be your girl next door,” Rae says, “but maybe there’s a wild side to the girl next door.”

Rae may seem unbothered, but she’s still logged on. She knows everything she does starts a conversation, for better or worse. She sees the rumors and the questions and the misunderstandings. At the very least, she no longer worries that her career can persist in spite of it. She knows it can.

In the following weeks, news will spread that TikTok could be banned in the U.S. President Biden had signed legislation that would block the distribution of the app if parent company ByteDance doesn’t sell it by Jan. 19. (The app would eventually shut down for 14 hours before President-elect Trump vowed to give the company an extension to find a buyer; its future remains unclear.)

As we talk, it seems that just as a new chapter begins, Rae’s most pivotal one may be closing for good. “That’s that full moon for me,” she says. “TikTok definitely gave me a lot of things, so it would be really sad to [see it] go, but hopefully the things that I create and put out surpass that platform.”

But there’s no need to dwell on the past. Her plans for the future are only as big as she can imagine: more movies, more songs, not to mention maybe playing her first headlining shows. All she can hope is that everything she does next will make people feel free and get them to dance  — and that she’ll continue to change minds along the way.

“But I won’t beg for it,” she says. “I’ll work for it”.

It is going to be very an interesting rest of 2025 for Addison Rae. Her new single, Headphones On, is one of her best. I would advise people to follow Rae, as she is an artist who has an accessible Pop sound yet one that she very much makes her own. Northern Transmissions went inside Rae’s Headphones On:

“With her string of artsy, showstopping singles, it’s hard to believe Addison Rae was ever just a TikTok star. Her music taste has always been deeper than it appears (perhaps something more esoteric was going on behind her many “I love music” tweets), and her debut run has involved or referenced Madonna, Arca, and now with the trippy, calm “Headphones On”, Björk.

Though her lyricism remains on the simpler side, “Headphones On” is probably her clearest viewpoint; manifestation and affirmations as a lifestyle. “I know the lows are what make the highs higher,” she sings, like something out of a reframing workbook, “Life’s no fun through clear waters.” It’s surprisingly striking (and real) for someone previously relegated to backseat fun.

“Headphones On” shares quite a lot of DNA with Björk, first sharing a name with 1995’s “Headphones”, also about burrowing into music. But its sweeping strings and music video locale — Iceland — are pure “Jóga”, Björk’s volcanic tribute to difficult friendship. But unlike the emotional heaviness of “Jóga”, Rae takes adversity in stride. “Guess I gotta accept the pain,” she sings as an affecting bell toll begins each chorus, about something as turbulent as her parents’ relationship or as (seemingly) frivolous as a new it girl. “You just have to surrender to the moment,” she reasons, which is quite a mature viewpoint to have.

If anything, “Headphones On” and “Aquamarine” are on the transparent side, imitating their inspirations too acutely. Mixed in with the futurepop of “Diet Pepsi” and “High Fashion”, it seems like she’s straddling two worlds. Emulating 90s artsy trip hop or vocal trance is certainly welcome, just a little out of focus; the references serve more to say what Rae likes rather than who she is. And though her production team (Luka Kloser and ELVIRA) do most of the heavy lifting, Rae feels more at home with each new release, padding her discography with an abundance of references. They’re creating a world for her; it’s up to us to put the headphones on”.

I am fairly new to Addison Rae’s music but I a compelled to follow her. There are so many sides to her. A truly fascinating talent who I hope plays in the U.K. a lot, her adoring fansbase is rising. Make sure you follow this incredible artist. With a string of brilliant singles under her belt, I am sure that we will see a debut album come…

VERY soon.

_____________

Folow Addison Rae

Official:

https://www.addisonrae.com/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/addisonraee/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/4gvjmrtzydbMpyJaXUtwvP?si=PBbLgG2PTB64LuOr0UECnQ

YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsjVdwXJydmlSLVT2zDuwpQ

FEATURE: You Do Something to Me: Paul Weller’s Stanley Road at Thirty

FEATURE:

 

 

You Do Something to Me

Paul Weller’s Stanley Road at Thirty

__________

RELEASED on…

PHOTO CREDIT: Lawrence Watson

15th May, 1995, Stanley Road is considered to be one of Paul Weller’s best albums. I wanted to look ahead to its thirtieth anniversary. A number one album in the U.K., it spawned huge singles such as You Do Something to Me, Out of the Sinking and The Changingman. I will come to some reviews and assessments of this classic album. One that arrived in the U.K. when Britpop was taking shape and heating up. This sort of stood outside of that. To start, in 2005, Paul Weller spoke with Independent ten years after Stanley Road was released. An album that, in his view, made him hip and cool again. It coincided with an aexpanded re-release of the album:

“Initially I wanted to call the album Shit or Bust, because that's how I felt about it. I put everything into it, emotionally and physically. It was the culmination of my solo career to date. I knew it was special. We had a playback and I could sense the excitement among the people listening to it.

Initially I wanted to call the album Shit or Bust, because that's how I felt about it. I put everything into it, emotionally and physically. It was the culmination of my solo career to date. I knew it was special. We had a playback and I could sense the excitement among the people listening to it.

We settled on the title Stanley Road because it seemed to suit the mood of the album best. I was looking back on my life, on my roots, where I'd come from, where I'd got to on the journey, and Stanley Road is the place where I grew up as a child. The house isn't standing any more but the tiny zebra crossing nearby is, and I did debate recreating The Beatles' Abbey Road sleeve artwork for the cover but the idea got vetoed.

It was a funny time for me. My second solo album, 1993's Wild Wood, had gained commercial and critical success, the first time since The Style Council's Our Favourite Shop. I was back in the press's good books. Blur and Oasis were citing me as an influence, which was great. Their younger fans were discovering my work, backtracking and hearing The Jam for the first time. I have a great friendship with Noel [Gallagher], and it was the first time that I felt an affinity with my contemporaries, something I hadn't with my so-called peers in the Eighties. I was aware, however, that I was a good 10 or 12 years older than most of them, so I was conscious of not being one of the old fellas trying to muck in with the kids.

At the same time I was going through a lot of different feelings and trials. I had split with my wife Dee [C Lee] a year before. I was feeling tremendous guilt about splitting the family up, and worried about my relationship with my kids. I was doing a lot of drugs, staying out all night. So on the one hand I was having a whale of a time and a second youth, and on the other I was coming back in the morning and asking, "where's my life heading?". Stanley Road was a way for me to vent a lot of those things, turn them into something positive. On a personal level it was a fucking nightmare, but artistically it was a very exciting time.

We were very buoyant when we entered the studio. A lot of the material had been written up front. There had been a good year-and-a-half of playing on the road in between Wild Wood and the making of Stanley Road so I'd written at home, on the tour bus, in hotel rooms, wherever I could snatch the time, and we had a chance to play a lot of the songs in on the road.

We returned to The Manor, in Shipton-on-Cherwell, near Oxford, where we had recorded Wild Wood. It's a magical place, one of the last of the old-school residential studios where you could make it your own and go a bit barmy and be indulgent, just get on with the music. It also helped because we recorded everything live; that way you know immediately what you've got when you play it back, and this is the album where we got everything right.

On Stanley Road, I threw everything into "Porcelain Gods", everything I felt at the time. I was questioning my life, questioning fame. I remember playing that song to a friend and she said she found it hard to listen to because of its foreboding menace. I was trying to write an English blues song in a sense and give it that swamp, voodoo, dark edge.

I loved Dr John's Gris-Gris LP and thought his "Walk On Gilded Splinters" followed on thematically with its own sense of paranoia. I'd first heard the song when I was a kid in 1973, a version by Humble Pie. Noel plays acoustic guitar on my take. He came down to the studio to hear what we'd been working on and while he was there he just grabbed his guitar and joined in. He says he first met me when he was the roadie with the Inspiral Carpets at an airport in Tokyo. He said I was off my nut which is probably why I can't remember. I returned the favour, playing guitar on "Champagne Supernova" on Oasis's (What's The Story) Morning Glory and we guested on The White Room TV programme. It was strange, I'd been in the wilderness, had the press ignoring me, and all of a sudden I was being touted as hip and trendy again. I found it quite amusing.

Stevie Winwood played keyboards on "Woodcutters Son" and piano on "Pink on White Walls". We called his manager and asked if he'd like to do it. I had read somewhere that Jim Capaldi (Steve Winwood's partner in Traffic) had liked Wild Wood and phoned Steve, telling him to check the album out because he'd like it. That gave us a way in. He was great; very humble, modest, quiet, and an immense talent. I was a real trainspotter fan, asking him about all his Traffic recordings. I'd ask who played bass on this track and he was like, "I did", so I'd say well who played lead guitar here, and it would be him again. He seemed to do most of it.

It was also the first of my albums to feature guitarist Steve Cradock on most of the tracks. He joined the live band at that point and is still in my band today, although he did go off with Ocean Colour Scene for a while. When Steve was 16 he came down to our studio at the time. He was a massive Jam fan and was in a dodgy mod band and he gave me his tape to hear. He was like a stalker. We had to chase him off in the end because he was a pain in the arse. I didn't see him again until Ocean Colour Scene came down to record their debut LP in our studio and I thought, I recognise you from somewhere.

"Wings Of Speed" is an amazing song. I said at the time that Carleen Anderson's voice on it is the nearest I'll get to hearing angels sing. It's heavenly. She sang one verse free-form and we put it down. Then she did another take, then another, and she wouldn't play them back so we put them all together, weaved them in and out of each other. The song is about how I feel when I look at John Waterhouse's painting, The Lady of Shalott. The lines "With Jesus at the helm" and "one candle left to light the way" refer directly to the painting. I love Waterhouse's paintings, the drama in them, and I was trying to capture that in music.

After the Abbey Road sleeve idea was scrapped we got in Peter Blake to design the cover. I was overawed at first and it took a while for us to communicate properly and for me to get across exactly what I wanted. I didn't like his first draft so I did a sketch of how I thought it should look. I gave it to him nervously. He was really nice and we finally got it right. He asked me to bring along objects and photos that meant a lot to me. We settled on using my Small Faces' Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane figurines and pictures of Aretha Franklin, John Lennon and George Best - I was into football when I was a kid.

I still play songs from Stanley Road in my live set. You can never get bored playing tunes like "You Do Something To Me" or "The Changingman" because as soon as you strike them up you get lifted by the energy of the crowd, there's a real surge.

Stanley Road was one of those perfect moments when everything slotted into place naturally. It was a dream. I don't think of the album as being 10 years old. I guess if an album is good enough, it doesn't age. It remains fresh. That's Stanley Road”.

Before getting to some reviews of Stanley Road, MOJO ranked Paul Weller’s studio albums. They placed Stanley Road in fourth position. An album that I think has aged very well and still sounds amazing to this day:

“Stanley Road’s million-selling success was no doubt bolstered by the prevailing Britpop landscape in which bands who had grown up with pictures of The Jam stuck to their bedroom walls were now shaping the cultural zeitgeist, but stripped of its context, the album still remains one of the strongest collection of songs Paul Weller has ever put out. From the ELO-cribbing The Changingman, Porcelain Gods’ mystic ruminations and his take on Dr John’s voodoo spell I Walk On Guilded Splinters to You Do Something To Me, Out Of The Sinking and Broken Stones, these are songs that defined him as a solo artist and saw him conclusively stepping out of the long shadow of his past. Ironically, Stanley Road's triumph in turn became an act he would struggle to follow”.

Retrospective reviews of Stanley Road have been a lot more positive than some of the contemporary reviews. Maybe those expecting something similar to his work with The Jam. Feeling Stanley Road was a weak effort or betrayed his roots. In 1995, with Britpop and other genres taking hold, many saw Paul Weller as out of step. This is what NME wrote in 1995:

“Here he is, then, the modern Paul Weller. A man no longer hung up on dictating what is hip and new, a man content to just boogie-woogie if needs be. A man whose agonisingly narrow-minded musical tastes are given current credibility because they tally with the likes of Noel Gallagher, the epitome of Weller's old "we're brilliant and everything else is shit" attitude, and Bobby Gilliespie, both of whom sit so loyally and with such reverence at Weller's table. Weller, by virtue of his nominated living legend status, no longer needs to feign an interest in what's modern. He can simply do what he feels most comfortable with: dopey introspection and no frills, wicker-chair rock.

So no-one should be surprised that 'Stanley Road' is a doggedly retro and straight ahead record. He signalled his easy-noodling, pastoral rockin' intentions with last year's 'Wildwood', and 'Stanley Road' takes those ideas to conclusions that are divided almost equally by the faintly exhilarating and the harmlessly soporific. He's made an old fart rockin' blues record with just enough edge to keep you tuned, but that's more to do with the man than the music. Recently, he's been tagged as a British Neil Young, but 'Stanley Road' strays too far into MOR too often for the comparison to still stick and, in terms of songwriting, he's still far off 'Harvest' or 'After The Goldrush' - the period he no doubt associates most strongly with. 'Time Passes', for example, is obviously influenced in both mood and style by Young's 'Helpless', but by its close has slipped into a smoothie Clapton guitar solo - although it doesn't don its white flares as noticeably or as uncomfortably as on the ringer for 'Wonderful Tonight' that is 'You Do Something To Me'. Nurse, please change Mr Weller's prescription!

But to balance these embarrassing indulgences (and you can only assume it's through unhappy accident and not choice that he's apeing 'God') are a handful of songs with the verve, energy and anxiety of classic Weller.

The album's title track boasts both the album's most arresting lyric and tune, like 'Moondance' but with Van Morrison's optimism twisted into something brimming with bittersweet nostalgia for youthful innocence, while 'Whirlpools's End' is the only time the Neil Young likeness is appreciatively apparent - but mainly because Weller's band do such a faithful impersonation of Crazy Horse.

Would Young, however, let lines like "On the streets where lovers once walked/Side by side in idle talk/Bullets fall like unholy rain"? Perhaps not, but Weller always had a way with crass, sweeping political statements and elsewhere he appears to be developing an understated, affecting lyrical style that's in direct contrast to this and much of his earlier work. He seems more honest and at ease with the words he chooses nowadays.

Elsewhere on the balance sheet we get the positive deposits of a soul ballad ('60s soul, natch) called 'Broken Stones' - a distant and healthy cousin of The Jam's 'Ghosts' - as well as his last two well-crafted singles: the churning, darkly introspective 'The Changingman' and the bright, vaguely optimistic 'Out Of The Sinking'. Unfortunately, his thinking does not remain as sharp throughout...

Particularly muddled is the decision to cover Dr John's brilliant, genre-busting 'Walk On Gilded Splinters'. The original is an unholy cauldron of voodoo, cajun b

6/10”.

Before finishing with a positive review, Our Sound Music looked at two albums that were released on 15th May, 1995. It was Paul Weller’s Stanley Road and Salad’s Drink Me. Even though some pitted this as a Britpop battle – at a time when Oasis and Blur were battling it out -, the fact is that Stanley Road is not a Britpop album. Maybe that was a big reason why it did not get the love it deserved when it came out:

“The fifteenth of May 1995 provides a wonderful case study for this theory.

It’s a big Britpop anniversary day…”Yes” by McAlmont & Butler which is the second best single of  the era (number one is, obviously, “Disappointed” by the Flamingoes), the dizzy thrills of  Supergrass and their debut album “I Should Coco”, were both celebrate their birthdays on this  day for starters.

But the real “battle of Britpop” (not the one that made it onto the news) also took place on this  day.

In the blue corner was Paul Weller’s “Stanley Road”, and in the red corner “Drink Me” by Salad.

“Stanley Road” is a masterclass in classic songwriting. It may be the best work of Weller’s solo  career…although my preference is always for “Wild Wood”. The artwork from the legendary Peter  Blake is iconic, with nods to Weller’s childhood, Mod iconography, and pop art. There are guest  appearances from the likes of Steve Winwood and Noel Gallagher. The production from Brendan  Lynch, and Weller himself, is warm and clean. It is difficult not to doff your cap to what Weller  achieved here… but it is difficult to argue with Ted Kessler (NME) who said at the time of the album's release, that it was an “old fart rockin’ blues record”.

Weller’s disciples can dismiss that as sour grapes, or of the NME being “out to get” Weller if they  like…but it is true that this was an album that could easily have been released by several other  rockers including the likes of Noel Gallagher or, as Kessler suggested, Eric Clapton.

It’s a classic rock album from a classic rock musician.

The angry young man of The Jam, the Modernist of The Style Council, the folk singer of “Wild  Wood”, was dead and in his place was a new, mature, songwriter.

I like “Stanley Road”…and compared to what would follow it, it is a masterpiece…but it isn’t a  Britpop record”.

I am going to finish with a review from Penny Black Music. Even though Stanley Road has been praised since its release and it sort of balanced out some of the mixed reviews in 1995, I hope the thirtieth anniversary on 15th May sees new writing about a wonderful album. It is a remarkable work from Paul Weller:

“It’s always difficult when a local boy makes good. When someone you used to see playing the local working mens' club is suddenly all over the music weeklies and being hailed as the latest music wonder kid it takes some getting used to. Growing up in Woking myself it’s been difficult at times to grasp just how well known Paul Weller is now. Not only does his music turn up on home-grown soaps like 'Eastenders' it can also be heard in teenage American series. Weller is, for the most part, still highly regarded in the music press and few are the articles on mod/soul/punk where he isn’t asked his opinion like he is some kind of authority on the subject. The Small Faces, The Who, obscure soul acts, ask Weller, he’ll have something worth saying seems to be the consensus. I spent most of 1977 in Denmark and it was something of a surprise when picking up the latest but week old copy of 'Melody Maker' I saw Weller’s familiar face peering out from the pages. Even more of a surprise was to read that his band's debut single 'In The City' had made the U.K. charts. Sadly the only way then to listen to the Radio One chart was to drive down to a beach where reception was fine on the car radio. Sitting there and hearing that rush of Who inspired guitar before hearing the passion and venom in Weller’s vocals for the first time is something that has stayed with me throughout the years. Hanging about with or even confessing to knowing someone who is three or four years younger than yourself is simply not cool from the time you start your teens until the time you finish them but there were few teenagers in Woking who had not heard of Weller or knew who he was even in a school as large as (or so it seemed at the time) Sheerwater County Secondary. So it was a shock that this kid whose mother quizzed us about scooters in the local newsagent's was suddenly a mod and had actually made a record. And one that almost blew everything else out of the water that spring to boot. So, it was into Copenhagen I went , feeling not just a little patriotic to hand over my kroners for a 7” picture sleeve copy of 'In The City', but also hoping that there was a lot more of the same to come.

Unfortunately, if I had listened to the following three singles and first two albums before I had bought them I would have to admit that I wouldn’t have parted with my cash. There were good songs that still stand up; ‘Away From The Numbers’ is a case in point but I was beginning to think that the Woking wonder was going to have to get a proper job like the rest of us anyway. To be honest if it wasn’t for the geographical connection I wouldn’t have bothered to listen to his next album. What a mistake that would have been for as we all know now, The Jam then went on to produce not just a run of classic singles from 'Down In The Tube Station At Midnight' right through to 'Beat Surrender' but their third album 'All Mod Cons' was the beginning of a clutch of excellent albums too. And by not putting 'Strange Town', 'When You’re Young', 'Going Underground 'and the rest on albums Weller truly seemed to a pop star who actually cared about his record buying public. There were no rip offs.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lawrence Watson

The albums and singles were always packaged with care and thought. Who else would give us 7” double packs like 'Going Underground' and 'Beat Surrender' ? Then all of a sudden it was over. Weller split The Jam. In hindsight of course he did the right thing although at the time it seemed like the craziest thing he could have done. The Jam never got to be embarassing, never got diminishing record sales. He quit while on top; a brave, not a stupid move. Weller’s next band The Style Council again made some great singles and arguably at least one classic album in 'Our Favourite Shop' but it seemed Weller was never again going to reach the creative heights of The Jam. Had it not been for the faithful following The Jam had so rightly built up would The Style Council have been so successful in the beginning? I doubt it. But still we stayed with him. Even those of us who really couldn’t take all the ‘Modfather’ hype seriously. The first signs that Weller hadn’t totally lost it were in the ‘Into Tomorrow’ single, a slow burner for sure but the signs were there and his first self-titled solo album which showed a more mature but no less passionate Weller. Looking back on this first solo album now it’s obvious that the seeds of Weller’s finest solo album 'Stanley Road' were scattered throughout those songs. In hindsight it’s no surprise that the best of those songs were also inspired by Weller’s childhood spent in Woking.

'Uh-Huh-Oh Yeh!' and 'Amongst Butterflies' obviously find Weller searching for answers back in the place he grew up. When the pastoral ‘Wildwood’ was released the following year not only had Weller found another new direction, it actually sounded like a natural progression from his first solo album. It was obvious that his solo debut was no fluke. Weller had found his muse again and had started writing good old-fashioned tunes once more. After all, have you ever sung along to anything from The Style Council's ‘Cost Of Loving’ or ‘Confessions Of A Pop Group’? It’s now a staggering 10 years since Weller’s third solo album, ‘Stanley Road’ which has now been given the anniversary treatment and been expanded over two CDs and a DVD. Of all Weller’s solo albums this is the one that deserves that special attention being as it is, even in Weller’s mind, the best album he has made (apart of course from the one he is working on as usual). Returning to Woking for inspiration and revisiting his old childhood haunts in the local woods like the Indian cemetery and the canal running through Woking spurred Weller on to make the highlight of his solo career. Given an unfairly harsh review in NME (a rating of 6/10) Weller proved them all wrong when the album was warmly received by those that matter; the record buying public who hoisted the album up the charts.

PHOTO CREDIT: Lawrence Watson

Finally it didn’t matter what haircut Weller was wearing that week nor what he was dressed in. He was writing bloody good songs again and where ‘Paul Weller’ and ‘Wildwood’ had more than their fair share of excellent songs, ‘Stanley Road’ had 12 of them. Not only was the Weller of old back again on ‘The Changing Man’ with all that energy and passion recalling his Jam days, his lyrics were once again outstanding. Letting us all in on how it felt at times to be Weller the rock star that song and ‘Porcelain Gods’ rank among the best Weller has ever written, the former showing just how far his writing had matured. More subdued maybe but all the better and more effecting for that. The one cover song on the album, Dr. John’s ‘Walk On Gilded Splinters’. was also unfairly slated in that NME review. Weller rightly took a different approach to the song and to these ears it’s probably Weller’s best cover version and not "wimpy" like the NME reckoned. So the voodoo and Cajun blues elements were played down from the original, but maybe Ted Kessler who wrote the review thought Woking on a Friday night was like New Orleans. What would be the point of Weller trying to just make a straight forward cover of the song ? His version sounds like a Weller original and is a vital part of the album as a whole. It doesn’t sound out of place and that’s just how it should be. In a way Weller came of age with ‘Stanley Road’. The ballads/ love songs on the album show a maturity Weller had only touched on before. ‘

PHOTO CREDIT: Lawrence Watson

Time Passes’ a heartbreaking song of lost love ranks among Weller’s best, his vocals finally revealing the more soulful sound he’d been surely searching for since his Jam days (probably due more to an intake of nicotine and too many late nights than any training but still resulting in the desired effect) and his guitar playing once more confirming Weller to be one of the best of his generation. Up there with ‘Time Passes’ is the closing track, ‘Wings Of Speed’. Again turning in one of the best vocals of his career and with Carleen Anderson’s vocals adding a gospel feel, Weller ends the album with a song as strong as the first one. ‘Stanley Road’ was a creative peak for Weller. Forget the extras on the new CD package. The DVD is, of course, worth seeing for any fan of the man’s work but the original 12 tracks really don’t need any extras added to them. The album is a joy to listen to from start to finish and still stands up 10 years down the line. Dust it off and give it a listen ! Only a fool would write Weller off just yet ! He may not again turn out an album where all 12 songs stand up a decade later but as long as he can continue to write songs of the calibre of say ‘Peacock Suit’ Weller proves that out of all those that first made their mark in 1977 he’s more or less alone in still delivering the goods and holding onto his integrity and beliefs”.

On 15th May, Stanley Road turns thirty. Maybe not considered a classic in 1995, it definitely is now. An influential album that sits with the very best of Paul Weller, go and play it now if you have not heard it in a while. This gem from The Modfather stands alongside…

THE best of the 1990s.

FEATURE: Trans Women ARE Women: The Reaction from the Music Industry Regarding U.K. Supreme Court Ruling

FEATURE:

 

 

Trans Women ARE Women

PHOTO CREDIT: Body Movements Festival

The Reaction from the Music Industry Regarding U.K. Supreme Court Ruling

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WHEN it comes to…

IN THIS PHOTO: Prime Minister Keir Starmer at a Pride event in Soho, London in 2022/PHOTO CREDIT: AFP

the transgender community around the world, things are never equal or easy. In terms of the constant discrimination and abuse they face, they also have to face accusation and judgement. That they are not ‘real’ women and men. Always maligned and attacked, one hopes we can live to see the day the transgender community are afforded the respect, rights and love they deserve (and is long overdue). One of the problems – among quite a few – that I with our (the U.K.) Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, is his position on transgender women. As this article from the repellent Telegraph documents, his position on transgender women and whether he sees them as women or not has been a, ‘journey’. In reality, and what has been suspected all along, is that he does not support the trans community and their rights. His views towards them, and especially trans women, exposes a transphobia and lack of respect that you would expect from the gutter press and the most hairy-knuckled keyboard warriors and those who seem to voice an opinion on transgender people despite the fact it is none of their business; they are not affected by anything relating to it. People whose lives are not negatively impacted by the trans community. It is this toxic popular topic that so many people feel they have a right to give their opinions on. It is clear that the highest court in the land is transphobic. Call it making legal definitions clear or protecting women but, when it comes down to it, the new ruling exposes this country as transphobic. One that does not really have the best interests of transgender women at heart. That does not apply to so many citizens of the country but it does apply to those in power. Those with real sway and influence.

PHOTO CREDIT: Katie Rainbow 🏳️‍🌈/Pexels

If you are not aware of a momentous and, frankly, horrifying ruling has been made in the U.K., then the Independent provide more details. It is a decision and law that will impact transgender women throughout the country. If some see it as protecting women and making the law clear, it cannot hide the fact that it (and us) seems to see transgender women not as women at all. As a danger and people who do not deserve rights and respect. Few can argue against how problematic and isolating it will be for a community who daily face discrimination and abuse:

“Campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS) brought a series of challenges – including to the UK’s highest court – over the definition of “woman” in Scottish legislation mandating 50 per cent female representation on public boards.

On Wednesday, five judges from the UK Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the Equality Act refer to a biological woman and biological sex, in a decision that could have wide-ranging ramifications for trans women’s rights to use services and spaces reserved for women.

It means that transgender women with a gender recognition certificate (GRC) can be excluded from single-sex spaces if “proportionate”.

Gender critical rights campaigners have hailed the ruling as a victory for biological women that will protect single-sex spaces, with FWS saying they were “absolutely jubilant” about the result.

But trans rights groups have reacted with dismay, warning that it will “exclude trans people wholesale from participating in UK society”.

jane fae, director of trans campaign group TransActual, argued society will “divide more sharply into queer-friendly and queer-hostile spaces” as a result of the ruling, adding that it will “be the poorer for it”.

“The entire trans community is devastated,” the campaigner told The Independent. “Irrespective of the small print on this ruling, the intent seems clear: to exclude trans people wholesale from participating in UK society.

“This morning, we are feeling very alone. That, though, is today. We have come through worse before and trans people are not going away. Whatever the non-trans world throws at us, we will be back, each time, stronger than before”.

IN THIS PHOTO: SOPHIE

In addition, it has been declared that male police officers will search transgender women in custody. This violates the rights of transgender women. I know that the Supreme Court ruling does not reflect the views of the majority in the U.K. Especially throughout culture and the music industry, there is support and love for the transgender community. Incredible transgender women like SOPHIE, Kim Petras, Ethel Cain and Shea Diamond are hugely inspiring figures in the industry and have influenced so many people. Given strength to so many. If the industry does have some way to go until it is fully inclusive regarding transgender artists and there is more representation out there, it is going to be a struggle. When it comes to L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ artists, there is more visibility in the mainstream and throughout the industry. However, when we think about transgender women, one does wonder whether they have to fight harder and louder than others.  When I heard the ruling come through and was reading reaction online, a couple of thoughts occurred. The high-profile and repulsive TERFs and transphobic crowd like Sharon Davies, Martina Navratilova, Graham Linehan and JK Rowling must be elated. Vibrator batteries exploring to the point of overuse and Linehan probably to the point of similar rapture. It will give them more fuel and incentive to carry on their disgusting hatred and warped agenda. These influential figures will have an even more open platform now that, sadly, they are backed by the law. I also thought about transgender women throughout the music industry. Those coming through too. Even if the music industry does not shut out transgender women, now it seems harder than ever for trans women, especially those in the U.K., to find a footing and be heard. It is heartening that the late SOPHIE has a scholarship fund set up in her name that represents and supports transgender and non-binary people and women.

IN THIS PHOTO: Billy Bragg

I am going to end with a mixtape of songs from transgender women in music and those who are allies. In reaction to the Supreme Court ruling, musicians like Jake Shears (Scissor Sisters) and Shirley Manson (Garbage) showed their solidarity and support of transgender women. This NME article provides more details:

“On Wednesday (April 16), judges unanimously ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Though Judge Lord Hodge stressed the ruling was not a “triumph of one or more groups in our society at the expense of another”, the decision will undoubtedly impact transgender communities across the country.

Now, various figures in the entertainment world have reacted to the news and lent their support to the trans community. Scissor Sisters called the decision “deeply upsetting”, adding:”We recognise the pain and fear it causes”.

Meanwhile, Perfume Genius wrote that he was “so sorry and heartbroken and cannot imagine how scary and overwhelming things have been. I love you”. Garbage shared a photo with the words “Queer Trans Resistance” on their Instagram, writing in the caption: “We love you. You exist. You always have. You win.”

Rachel Chinouriri, Lambrini Girls, Billy Bragg, JADE, and more have also also weighed in on the matter”.

The U.K.’s Dance community has also voiced their anger and sadnessover the Supreme Court ruling. I will wrap up in a minute but I suspect, in the coming weeks and months, there will be this new unity from those in the industry. New support for the transgender community. Especially transgender women:

“The ruling, which was unanimously passed in Britain's highest court yesterday (16th April), states that “the terms 'women' and 'sex' in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex". The decision definitively excludes trans women who possess a gender recognition certificate (GRC) from numerous services, spaces and protections against discrimination afforded to cis women under the Equality Act 2010.

Despite the Supreme Court’s insistence that trans people do still have protection from discrimination and harassment through the Equality Act, the decision, which has been broadly welcomed by UK politicians, has been slammed by the LGBTQIA+ community and allies. Venues, collectives and other nightlife spokespeople are among those speaking out against the verdict, outlining the risks of increased harassment, prejudice and exclusion faced by an already-vulnerable marginalised group.

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London's FOLD, PXSSY PALACE, HE.SHE.THEY, Dalston Superstore, Queer House Party and Body Movements, Manchester's Homoelecric and Gloss, Bristol’s Raise the NRG and Rat Party in Leeds are among those to have issued statements of support for the trans community in the wake of the ruling.

"This decision has been welcomed by the current Labour government, emphasising just how far backwards this once self-proclaimed 'progressive' government has fallen, as it chooses instead to align itself with bigoted, billionaire authors and far-right populists," FOLD wrote. "We wish to send so much love to every trans person today."

"We know that moments like this can be exhausting and painful, but please remember: you are not alone, you are seen, you are valid, and you are loved," a post on the Gloss Instagram page read. "Now more than ever, we must show up for one another. Reach out. Check in. Offer support, and take care of yourselves and each other."

"Our dance floors are built on queer liberation — spaces where all trans and non-binary people are celebrated, protected, and free," said London festival Body Movements in response to the decision. "We will always fight: for trans rights. For trans joy. For trans futures."

Queer House Party referred to the ruling as "a direct attack on trans people" that "gives legal cover to discrimination". "We won't accept a future where the law is used to punish people for who they are,” they wrote. “And we will not stand by while the state tries to divide our communities."

HE.SHE.THEY wrote: "You're still OUR family and no one can erase who you know you are."

The Equality and Human Rights Commission has confirmed the verdict will now trigger an update to its code of conduct for public services including NHS healthcare providers and the prison system.

Access to spaces such as changing rooms, hospital wards and domestic refuges will no longer take into consideration GRCs. As such, trans people — who make up just 0.5% of the UK population according to advocacy group Stonewall — will be forced to use facilities designated to their birth gender. Stonewall has called the verdict "incredibly worrying for the trans community”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Transgender entertainer, Dua Saleh/PHOTO CREDIT: Rhianna Hajduch

I am not hopeful this government will do anything to further the cause for equality regarding transgender women. A government who I suspect are pleased for a number of reasons after the ruling this week, I can’t see any laws and legislation being brought in that represents transgender women in a positive way. I worry how this will impact the music industry too. From pioneering transgender women in Dance to  some other incredible transgender women who are blazing a trail, we need to realise how important they are. There are crucial organisations ands bodies set up that represent transgender people. This article gives links to where you can support transgender charities. I will bring in an article published recently, where Saskhia Menedez discusses the “key aims of introducing a transgender charter to the industry and outlines the ways in which it will offer support to transgender and non-binary communities, as well as dismantle systemic issues at play across the business”:

“Reflecting on my journey in the music industry, it has been one filled with passion and creativity, yet fraught with challenges. The absence of financial support and representation for transgender individuals has provided significant obstacles, both professionally and personally. A transgender charter will help to provide the necessary visibility, support and fair opportunities, making it easier to navigate the industry. It will set standards for inclusivity and protection, as well as fostering a safe and welcoming environment from the start.

Such a charter will offer essential resources, including mentorship programmes, training, legal advice and signposting to mental health support services, tailored to transgender individuals' needs. By advocating for equal opportunities and addressing systemic discrimination, the charter will level the playing field, recognising talent and hard work, regardless of gender identity. Creating a safe and inclusive environment is paramount. The charter will set standards to address harassment, discrimination and exclusion, ensuring that transgender individuals feel safe and valued. It will establish clear industry standards which will drive meaningful change, fostering a more equitable and respectful industry culture.

Looking back on the past year, it’s encouraging to see some progress towards proportional representation for underrepresented and disadvantaged communities across the music industry. There has been a noticeable increase in awareness and advocacy around issues of diversity and inclusion, and more industry stakeholders are recognising the importance of proportional representation and are vocal about their support for these initiatives. Several organisations and record labels have launched diversity and inclusion programmes aimed at supporting underrepresented artists and professionals, with initiatives including mentorship programmes, grants and platforms designed to elevate diverse voices. There has been a gradual increase in the representation of diverse artists at major music festivals, award shows and in media coverage, which is crucial for normalising diversity and showcasing the talents of underrepresented groups. Some companies and organisations within the industry have made public commitments to improving diversity and inclusion, with pledges to specific goals for hiring practices, artist signings and executive leadership.

While there are positive signs, however, the industry still struggles with making sustained and systemic changes. Many initiatives are in their early stages, and it will take time to see if they result in long-term impact. There is a need for better data collection and transparency around diversity metrics. Without clear data, it’s challenging to measure progress and hold organisations accountable for their diversity goals. Efforts to improve diversity must consider intersectionality, ensuring that initiatives address the multiple dimensions of identity that individuals may experience. This includes recognising the unique challenges faced by those who belong to multiple underrepresented groups. True representation goes beyond tokenism. The industry must ensure that underrepresented individuals have meaningful opportunities for advancement and are not just present for the sake of appearance.

Organisations within the industry should adopt clear and comprehensive diversity and inclusion policies that address the needs of LGBTQIA+ individuals, and these policies should be enforced and regularly reviewed to ensure they remain effective and relevant. Establishing safe spaces within the workplace and at industry events where LGBTQIA+ individuals feel welcome and supported is also crucial – this can include gender-neutral restrooms, LGBTQIA+ affinity groups and clear anti-discrimination policies. Regular training and education programmes should be conducted to raise awareness about LGBTQIA+ issues, combat prejudice, and promote understanding and acceptance. These programmes should be mandatory for all employees, from entry-level positions to top executives.

Developing mentorship programmes that connect LGBTQIA+ individuals with industry veterans who can offer guidance and support is essential, and creating networking events and opportunities designed to foster connections within the LGBTQIA+ community will also help. Ensuring fair representation of trans and non-binary artists and industry professionals in media, marketing and industry events is necessary, and actively seeking out and promoting the work of LGBTQIA+ artists and professionals can make a significant difference. Allocating funding and resources to support LGBTQIA+ initiatives, including grants, scholarships and development programmes for emerging artists and professionals, will provide much-needed support. Supporting organisations and charities that work with LGBTQIA+ communities is also vital.

PHOTO CREDIT: cottonbro studio/Pexels

Adopting inclusive recruitment practices that actively seek to hire LGBTQIA+ individuals across all levels of the industry is important, and providing equal opportunities for career advancement and development will ensure a more inclusive environment. Creating platforms and opportunities for LGBTQIA+ artists to share their work and tell their stories, and collaborating with LGBTQIA+ communities to ensure their voices are authentically represented and heard, are necessary steps towards inclusivity.

Music has the ability to raise awareness about social issues and bring attention to the experiences and struggles of marginalised communities. It can challenge societal norms and stereotypes, offering perspectives and pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable or mainstream. LGBTQIA+ artists, in particular, can use their platform to challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality. Music often brings people together, creating a shared cultural experience that can transcend differences and unite people from diverse backgrounds – festivals, concerts, and other musical events can serve as spaces where diverse communities come together to support each other.

Music can influence public opinion and, in turn, affect policy and social change. Songs that address political and social issues can inspire activism and mobilise people to push for change. It provides a platform for marginalised voices to be heard, and empowering those voices can lead to greater visibility and recognition for underrepresented communities. Music can serve as a historical record, documenting the struggles and achievements of marginalised communities over time and can capture the zeitgeist of a movement and preserve the cultural heritage of a community.

Since the Misogyny In Music Inquiry to the Houses Of Parliament in 2022, there have been several notable developments in the music business, however the government chose not to adopt any of the recommendations made – which was sad to see. Following the inquiry, there has been a change in government and I am hoping that there will be an increase in government initiatives aimed at addressing discrimination and promoting equality for transgender individuals. Some policies specifically target the music and entertainment industries, encouraging inclusive practices and providing funding for diversity initiatives. There have been steps toward enhancing legal protections for transgender individuals, and some regions have seen the introduction or strengthening of anti-discrimination laws and hate crime legislation that includes gender identity and expression. High-profile government officials have also made public statements supporting the rights of transgender individuals”.

In terms of the rights of transgender women in music and their safety. There are going to be implications regarding their dignity and rights. How they are promoted and are viewed in the industry. I am going to end there. There has been a notable silence from the mainstream music websites when it comes to the ruling regarding transgender women. Something that will impact the music industry and artists here already – and those coming through. The music L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ community is growing and strong. Allies at the forefront with a huge voice and bigger platform. However, the reaction from so many artists has been inspiring. This strength and affection from them. Even if the legal system and our government does not feel a transgender woman is a woman, those with hearts, souls and respect know that…

TRANS women ARE women.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: The Best Modern Girl Group Cuts

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

IN THIS PHOTO: Destiny’s Child

The Best Modern Girl Group Cuts

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WHEN I say ‘modern’…

IN THIS PHOTO: All Saints in 2000/PHOTO CREDIT: Ellen Von Unwerth

I mean songs from the 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. A more contemporary wave of girl groups. From Spice Girls, TLC, En Vogue, All Saints, FLO, Fifth Harmony and so many others, this is an assortment of classic tracks. Even if there are not many girl groups around at the moment, there is hope that the genre will be reignited. In the U.K., we have the likes of FLO and Say Now. Taking from the past and adding their own spin. I am a big fan of girl groups and always love the harmonies and the real connection between the members. Songs with memorable choruses and those that have edge, sweetness, kick and passion. Such amazing songs that I always go back to. For this mixtape, I have combined the best girl group cuts from the 1990s to today. I know there will be a new generation of girl groups coming through. Music and a sound that we really need. To honour the '90s icons and modern-day greats, below is a selection of stunning songs from…

IN THIS PHOTO: Say Now

THE absolute best girl groups.

FEATURE: One for the Record Collection! Essential May Releases

FEATURE:

 

 

One for the Record Collection!

IN THIS PHOTO: Little Simz

Essential May Releases

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MAY is a busy one…

IN THIS PHOTO: Skunk Anansie

for new albums, so there are quite a few that I want to get through. I am going to start out with the best coming out on 2nd May. There are five albums out this week that I want to highlight. Let’s start with Blondshell’s If You Asked for a Picture. You can find a more comprehensive list of May-due albums here. You can pre-order Blondshell’s upcoming album here. Following her acclaimed and hugely successful eponymous debut of 2023, this is another terrific work that you will want to check out. There is not a lot of information available about it. However, here is a little taster of what to expect:

“If You Asked For A Picture, the 2nd album from Sabrina Teitelbaum, aka Blondshell, is a no-skips, triumphant record that captures the unresolved process of figuring out who you are, too wise to suggest that it has a definitive answer.

The album brims with an urgency, ambition, and devastating potency hinted at on 2023’s self-titled debut–the specificity, self-examination, and nonchalant humor of which turned her into one of the most lauded new artists in recent memory”.

An interesting concept album from Car Seat Headrest, The Scholars, arrives on 2nd May. Even though I really do not like the album cover, the music on it is first-rate. This is a band I am familiar with but have not explored in too much depth. You can pre-order their new album here:

“Set at the fictional college campus Parnassus University, the songs on The Scholars are populated with students and staff whose travails illuminate a loose narrative of life, death, and rebirth. Inspired by an apocryphal poem by "Archbishop Guillermo Guadalupe del Toledo," and featuring character designs from Toledo’s friend, the cartoonist Cate Wurtz, the first half of the album focuses on the deep yearning and spiritual crisis of the titular Scholars. They range from the tortured and doubt-filled young playwright Beolco to Devereaux, a person born to religious conservatives who finds themselves desperate for higher guidance. The second part features a series of epics detailing the clash between the defenders of the classic texts “and the young person who doesn't care about the canon, who is going to tear all of that up, basically,” Toledo says. “And so within this one campus, there becomes a war.” From Shakespeare to Mozart to classical opera, Toledo pulled from the classics when devising the lyrics and story arc of The Scholars, while the music draws, carefully, from classic rock story song cycles such as The Who’s Tommy and David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust.  “One thing that can be a struggle with rock operas is that the individual songs kind of get sacrificed for the flow of the plot,” Toledo notes. “I didn't want to sacrifice that to make a very fluid narrative. And so this is sort of a middle ground where each song can be a character and it's like each one is coming out on center stage and they have their song and dance.” Self-produced by Toledo and recorded, for a change, mostly in analog, The Scholars is “definitely the most bottom up of any project that we've done,” says Ives, who was urged by Toledo to take ownership of the guitar work and sound design for the album. “I've started nerding out a lot more in the last couple of years about designing sounds more deliberately, rather than just using your lucky gear and hoping for the best. It was really rewarding, being able to sculpt things a lot more specifically, and being able to layer things in more of a dense way and have more of an active design role in how things come across more than any previous album.”

While The Scholars has some of the most expansive Car Seat Headrest songs to date, including the nearly 19-minute long ‘Planet Desperation’, and opener ‘CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)’, they know how to make each part of the journey compelling, filling the runtimes with unexpected turns and enervating hooks. And moments like the jaunty ‘The Catastrophe (Good Luck With That Man)’ show they haven’t lost their ability to write a short-and-sweet single that chimes like classic ‘60s folk pop, updated for the present. Having gone through their trials, Car Seat Headrest are now ready for the next chapter in their career. It will astonish both longtime supporters and new fans”.

Another terrific album that comes out on 2nd May is Jenny Hvals’s Iris Silver Mist. With a pretty decent album cover, I am excited to hear what she produces on this album. One I would encourage people to pre-order and add to their collection. If you need some more information about Hval and her upcoming album, then this should definitely provoke some intrigue and interest:

“Norwegian musician, artist and novelist Jenny Hval releases her new album, Iris Silver Mist. Iris Silver Mist is named after a fragrance made by the nose Maurice Roucel for the French perfume house Serge Lutens. It’s described as smelling more like steel than silver. It is cold and prickly, soft and shimmering, like stepping outside on an early, misty morning, your body still warm from sleep. A perfume, with its heart notes and scented accords, shares its language with music. Both travel through air, simultaneously invisible and distinct.

Rather than begin with music, Iris Silver Mist began with the absence of it. As the pandemic led to no live music, the smell of cigarettes, soap, and the sweat from warm stage lights and shared bathrooms was replaced by unphysical, algorithmic listening at home. Suddenly, and for the first time since she was a teenager, Hval found herself growing interested in perfumes. Smelling, reading, collecting, writing—she immersed herself with scent while her music was put on hold. It took her a year to understand what was happening, until she did: she was seeking another way of sensing physical intimacy. Where music had turned into a void, she filled it with fragrance”.

One album I am particularly interested in is Model/Actriz’s Pirouette. This is a band that have been on my radar for a while and they have an incredible sound. I am looking forward to their album and what we can expect. It is shaping up to be their year. You can pre-order the album here:

“Following the release of their critically acclaimed debut, Dogsbody, (Pitchfork Best New Music, Rolling Stone Future 25, NME The Cover), Brooklyn-based quartet Model/Actriz’s sophomore album Pirouette lands sexually commanding and righteously diva-esque. Pirouette takes inspiration everywhere from Lady Gaga and Grace Jones to classical ballet and dissonant dance music. Like a well-oiled machine, Model/Actriz’s punk aggression surrenders to queer pop, arriving at stunning new ways to be free.

Model/Actriz’s sophomore album Pirouette, which was co-produced and mixed by Seth Manchester and mastered by Matt Colton, their collaborators on Dogsbody, swerves out of the maze and directly into the spotlight. Pirouette is both a natural progression and a calculated reset, a move toward reasserting their command as artists by peeling away the smoke and mirrors to become brighter, heavier, and more direct. The pop thread running throughout the album allows the crowd to witness thumping club music in the spirit of cabaret and manifest the catharsis that comes with hitting the dancefloor”.

Before moving to a few albums from 9th May you need to order, I want to recommend Samantha Crain’s Gumshoe. This is an artist I have heard a bit from but am definitely invested in. I think this new album is going to be one that deserves a lot of attention. You can pre-order a copy of Gumshoe here:

“When multiple car wrecks rendered Samantha Crain injured and bed-ridden for a year and a half -- an experience that was explored within her last full- length album A Small Death in 2020 -- followed by the pandemic immediately afterward, the Oklahoman singer-songwriter finally slowed down.

Having lived within something of a nomadic, solitary existence for as long as she can remember, she's sprinted from city to city on tour while leaving love, consequences and tough conversations behind for the past two decades. Coming off the road has given her more time to reflect, more time to connect with the people in her life, and more time to let her curiosity blossom -- as revealing and challenging as it has been.

The experience has been a crash course in humanism, as she continues to question what it means to be a friend, a partner, a piece of a community. It's explored throughout the entirety of Gumshoe -- her forthcoming seventh studio album and first in half a decade, with an apt title that evokes the sense of mystery-solving she's welcomed these last several years of staying put in Oklahoma.

As a loner for almost her entire life, Samantha's recently come face-to-face with major life events, social interactions, and consequences that she was never exposed to before. The questions of being human that offer clarity, as much as they do a fog of uncertainty with what comes next. How will things play out? Who am I when I'm not onstage? How will I pay my bills? What am I willing to do for my family?”.

Three from 9th May that I want to highlight. Including one that I think will be ranked alongside the best albums of this year. Again, with very little information about this album, it is hard to give it too much of a sell. Other than to say that this is an amazing artist whose music is among the best out there. I would urge people to pre-order Kali Uchis’s Sincerely:

“Kali’s artistry has always felt otherworldly, ethereal, and elusive. Sincerely, represents her most vulnerable and intimate work to date, offering an existential glimpse into the way she romanticizes life and her inner world. The album is a sanctuary, an escape from the chaos, a search for peace, and an act of catharsis. Sincerely, is a collection of letters to the world, allowing her fans to witness her at her most exposed as she invites them into her emotional journey”.

Another album I am looking forward to is Maren Morris’s D R E A M S I C L E. With an interesting and memorable album cover, it already has me interested. However, this is an artist I have been following for a while and know how good she. You can pre-order D R E A M S I C L E here:

“D R E A M S I C L E marks the highly anticipated 4th studio album from Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Maren Morris, via Columbia Records.

Featuring songs written by Morris with Julia Michaels and Tobias Jesso Jr, plus production by Jack Antonoff and Greg Kurstin, this album is a deeply personal exploration of transformation, resilience, and self-discovery. As Morris describes it, “D R E A M S I C L E takes place in the aftermath of loosening my grip on my personal and professional life. Sweeping through the pits of grief, but never staying too long, and finding the joy in knowing that at my core, I’m still who I am – and that’s pretty f-ing great. D R E A M S I C L E became less about the hard lessons and more about enjoying the bumpy ride and finding people who genuinely want to be on it with you because they love you. It’s about appreciating and respecting the beauty and nuances of life while it’s happening, not after it’s too late”.

One of our most acclaimed and finest artists, there are going to be a lot of eyes and ears on Little Simz’s Lotus. Make sure you pre-order your copy. Relying on very little information from Rough Trade on this one again, I would just say to let the music do the talking and buy this album regardless. Another masterpiece from one of the most compelling voices in modern British Rap. She is someone who is going to go down as one of the all-time greats - many consider her to be that right now:

“Little Simz is a boundary-breaking musician and cultural curator, recognised as one of the UK’s most captivating and visionary artists. A multi-award winner - collecting Brit Awards, Mobos, and an Ivor Novello - across mixtapes, EPs, and five critically acclaimed albums, Simz’s music documents her story, her journey, her becoming - and in turn, her generation.

Little Simz returns with her 6th Lotus.. The record marks an exciting new chapter in her artistic journey, drawing from an expansive palette of musical influences including punk, jazz, afrobeat and more. True to form, Simz continues to push boundaries and defy genre constraints, creating a sound that's both innovative and distinctly her own”.

About eight or so albums to go before I finish up. I am moving to 16th May. Billy Nomates’s Metalhorse is an album that you should get. Go and pre-order a copy now. An artist I have massive respect for, I am really pumped to see what comes out of her new album. Such a distinct musical voice, make sure you do not let this album pass you by:

“Metalhorse is Billy Nomates’ third studio release, following 2023’s critically acclaimed CACTI and her self-titled 2020 debut. A concept album revolving around the image of a dilapidated funfair, representing the tumultuousness of life—risk and pleasure, danger and exhilaration.

The 11 new songs here explore blues, folk, and piano-driven arrangements that take Billy Nomates’ stark punk sound in a more pastoral direction. Metalhorse is the first Billy Nomates album to be made in a studio and with a full band, the lineup including bass player Mandy Clarke (KT Tunstall, The Go! Team) and drummer Liam Chapman (Rozi Plain, BMX Bandits), plus a special feature from The Stranglers frontman Hugh Cornwell on "Dark Horse Friend".

Metalhorse is a balancing of extremes. Reckoning with loss, material insecurity, and trying to stay true to yourself against an increasingly unpredictable backdrop of global chaos, the scales could easily have tipped towards darkness. But the more Maries has had to weather, the more precious those smaller moments of happiness have become.

Metalhorse begs the listener to find their own funfair; there will always be things that feel perilous. At the same time, you have to marvel at the lights while they’re still on. Dancing with those feelings of uncertainty and joy, Metalhorse is awash with both pain and perseverance”.

I am moving onto Ezra Furman and her upcoming album, Goodbye Small Head. This is one that I can thoroughly recommend people pre-order. I am going to grab a bit of the statement/press release she put out regarding this album and what we can expect. It sounds like Goodbye Small Head is going to be a very revealing and powerful album. Such a remarkable artist that always leaves a big impression. Go and check out this amazing work:

“Hi my name is Ezra Furman this is the press release for my new record.

I don’t trust nobody and that’s why I had to write this myself.

Goodbye Small Head is the name of this record. Twelve songs, twelve variations on the experience of completely losing control, whether by weakness, illness, mysticism, BDSM, drugs, heartbreak or just living in a sick society with one’s eyes open. These songs are vivid with overwhelm. They’re not about someone going off the rails, they are inside that person’s heart. The songwriting here is a revision to William Wordsworth’s famous proclamation that “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” I can agree with that, except for the tranquility part. This poetry, my poetry, arrived in the midst of the storm. It was written as I teetered toward the edge. (I did the edits once I was safe again.)

The band and I had had a run of records that were very communal, very first person plural. We, us, ours. I was trying to exist in and create a shared space with my audience, make anthems for taking care of one another in dark times. But there does come a time when a woman is left alone in a room to unravel. And you need anthems for those times too.

GSH also reflects a band reaching a new peak of our powers. If I were a music journalist, I would call this an orchestral emo prog-rock record sprinkled with samples. Thank goodness I’m not a music journalist! I think of this music as cinematic and intense. A friend of mine said it sounded like “the coolest movie soundtrack of 1997,” and I’m quite pleased with that description. We’ve incorporated a small string section into eight of the twelve tracks, and are using samples for the first time—nothing you’d recognize, just some uncredited singing that Sam found online, chopped into beautifully evocative bits. Other than that, this record features something that’s become nearly an anachronism: a band that’s been playing real instruments together for over a decade, intuitively in touch with each other as musicians. Four players in a room together who know exactly how to respond to one another.

We recorded in Chicago with Brian Deck producing; a return to both my city of origin and my producer of origin, since Deck produced my first rock’n’roll records many years ago (Banging Down the Doors (2007) and Inside the Human Body (2008) by Ezra Furman & the Harpoons). In some way I think I was trying to return to some much younger mindset, when all the intensity and fear and emotion of life was less mediated by adult coping mechanisms. When it was all brand new with no filter.

Though I wrote parts of it earlier, I think the making of this album really began on the morning of April 11th 2023, when I woke suddenly ill, limped into the bathroom and lost consciousness. At the hospital they gave me all the tests and told me that actually, I wasn’t sick, and I could go home now. (Thanks, fellas!) I stayed in bed for months, exhausted and in pain, no doctor offering any convincing explanation or cure”.

Prior to moving onto albums coming out on 23rd May, there is another from 16th May that definitely should get hype and focus. Rico Nasty’s LETHAL is going to be a supreme work from one of the best names in Hip-Hop and Rap. A U.S. modern queen who I would point people in the direction of, make sure you pre-order ETHAL:

“Rico Nasty returns with a new studio album, Lethal on Fueled by Ramen (Atlantic Music Group). Rico Nasty is known for her own particular brand of rage-rap and for her outrageous on-stage, online, volume-up persona. But as she grew up, she started to feel trapped by the character she created.

Lethal is a reckoning of who Rico is at 27 with the trap-pop teen persona she created more than a decade ago. Executive produced by Grammy nominated producer Imad Royal, the album still features all the hallmarks of a Rico Nasty record - female rage, heavy guitars, humor - but there are also notes of femininity, introspection and a more complex framing of all the angles of Rico - the performer, the mother, & adult”.

I was going to mention Lana Del Rey’s The Right Person Will Stay. That is scheduled for release on 21st May but, at the time of writing this (18th April), there is no pre-order link anywhere - so you might have to wait until closer to the release date. That is a shame. The first album from 23rd May you need to check out Skunk Anansie’s The Painful Truth A mighty band led by the iconic Skin, the tracks already released from this are superb. I am expecting big things from their next album. One you can pore-order here:

“Skunk Anansie is a British rock band whose members include Skin (vocals), Cass (bass guitar), Ace (guitar), and Mark Richardson (drums). Over their career, the band has sold over five million records worldwide, a testament to their lasting impact and widespread appeal. Today, their influence remains strong, as they continue to sell out arenas and headline festivals across Europe and beyond.

Celebrated for their fearless approach to addressing political and social issues, Skunk Anansie has broken significant racial and gender barriers in rock, using their platform to advocate for identity, equality, and activism. Their influence extends beyond music, making them icons of both sound and social change.

Now, the legendary British rock band returns with their seventh studio album, The Painful Truth. Recorded in LA with renowned producer Dave Sitek (known for his work with Foals, Weezer, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs), this latest release sees the four-piece once again pushing creative boundaries and solidifying their place as modern pioneers in the music world”.

Prior to moving to albums due out on 30th May, there is one more from 23rd May that you need to consider. Sparks’ MAD! Is going to be another classic from the Mael brothers, Ron and Russell. There is not a lot of information about this one (again), but here is what is available:

“Sparks, brothers Ron and Russell Mael, are back with their 28th album MAD!, their first release with Transgressive Records

Most acts, by their seventh decade in the biz, would have slowed to a crawl, creakily playing their past hits on the heritage circuit and releasing nothing more than the occasional Greatest Hits collection. This is not the case for Sparks, who have triumphantly returned yet again, proving their resilience and relevance in a modern world with a fresh record and summer world tour to accompany it”.

I will finish with a few more albums. Into 30th May, we have a treat in the form of Garbage’s Let All That We Imagine Be the Light. I would urge everyone to pre-order this album. The legendary band, led by Shirley Manson, always delivery astonishing music. Their latest album sounds like it is up there with their very best:

“Let All That We Imagine Be The Light is the eighth studio record from Garbage and was recorded at Red Razor Sounds in Los Angeles, Butch Vig’s studio Grunge Is Dead, and Shirley Manson’s bedroom. The record was produced by the band and longtime engineer Billy Bush. The album is unmistakably Garbage. All the hallmarks and signatures for which they are known are present here. Big angular guitars, precise, propulsive beats and cinematic soundscapes all lurk beneath Shirley Manson’s expressive voice, her lyrics bristling with attitude. It is the sound of a group at the peak of their creative powers – characteristically harnessing sonic juxtapositions and moods to create an album that thrums equally with both light and shade”.

Out on 30th May, Miley Cyrus’s Something Beautiful is out. Go and pre-order it. Again, there is not a lot of new information about this album, so I am sourcing from this article from last year. A true pop icon, this is an album that I am definitely going to check out when it is released. I think that everyone needs to check this album out as it is among the most important of this year:

“At long last, fans will soon get to hear new music from Miley Cyrus, following the huge success of 2023's Endless Summer Vacation.

In a departure from her previous work, the Grammy-winning Disney alum has confirmed Something Beautiful is set to be a visual album.

“The visual component of this is driving the sound,” Cyrus teases in an interview for Harper’s Bazaar’s December 2024/January 2025 cover story. “It was important for me that every song has these healing sound properties.”

It will release in 2025

While an official release date has yet to be specified, Something Beautiful is slated for release some time next year.

Her boyfriend collaborated with her on the record

Cyrus’s longtime boyfriend, Maxx Morando, and the drummer for rock band Liily apparently played a role in the making of Something Beautiful. Cyrus reveals in her Bazaar. US cover story that Morando helped produce multiple tracks, and even helped her write the album’s title track.

Of mixing business with pleasure, she explained, “I worked with my dad forever. That’s how me and my ex-husband met each other. I’ve always worked with the people that I love. And Maxx just inspires me so much.”

It’s a visual album

“The visual component of this is driving the sound,” Cyrus teases in her Bazaar cover story. “It was important for me that every song has these healing sound properties. The songs, whether they’re about destruction or heartbreak or death, they’re presented in a way that is beautiful, because the nastiest times of our life do have a point of beauty. They are the shadow, they are the charcoal, they are the shading. You can’t have a painting without highlights and contrast.”

In terms of visuals, Cyrus has taken inspiration in everything from fashion to cinema. Key references include Thierry Mugler’s 1995 couture show, a seminal collection that includes the famous robot suit that Zendaya wore on the Dune: Part Two red carpet.

“She’ll want it to feel like this specific runway show or something,” music producer Shawn Everett tells Bazaar. “I love when she talks like that. For me, it opens up a whole world.”

Cyrus adds, “I can show [Everett] a painting or a dress, and I’ll tell him to convey those colours or that fabric with sound.”

Another key reference is 1982 surrealist musical drama, Pink Floyd: The Wall. Cyrus recalls watching the film as a teenager with her brother and a friend, during which the group rented a limo and got dressed up in ’70s-style fur coats. “We really leaned in. And so I have this heart-first attachment to it,” Cyrus says. “My idea was making The Wall, but with a better wardrobe and more glamorous and filled with pop culture.”

Something Beautiful is “more experimental” than any of her other albums.

In Cyrus’s Bazaar cover story, Everett teases, “[The album is] more experimental than anything she’s ever done, but in a pop way that I love.”

Cyrus herself describes the forthcoming record as “hypnotising and glamorous.” She continues: “It’s a concept album that’s an attempt to medicate somewhat of a sick culture through music”.

The final album I am highlighting is Shura’s I Got Too Sad for My Friends. An artist I have been following for years now, it is exciting that she has a new album coming out. A great way to end a busy May! Make sure that you pre-order an important work from a tremendous artist:

“Five years after her critically acclaimed album forevher, Shura is back with her highly anticipated third studio album I Got Too Sad For My Friends. A pastoral blend of chamber pop, sixties folk and campfire Americana, it builds Shura’s introspective songwriting out into a vast landscape – more tranquil than the soulful bounce of forevher, and more rustic than the brooding synth-pop of her 2016 debut Nothing’s Real.

That landscape is both sonically comforting and representative of her headspace during the writing process, which was one of sadness and isolation. The itinerant emotional state is mirrored in the artwork, which sees Shura perched on a Welsh mountainside in a baggy jumper, ripped jeans, Converse, and cobbled-together armour that covers everything except her vital organs – part Kurt Cobain, part Leonardo DiCaprio in Romeo and Juliet. The image references the French novella The Little Prince, which follows a young boy who sets out to explore other planets to cure his loneliness.

Though it’s an album exploring themes of depression and loneliness, I Got Too Sad For My Friends is far from dejected it retains Shura’s usual crystalline sound and precision while introducing a different kind of warmth and earthiness.

Approached like an “old school record” that captures a performance rather than a production, much of the album was recorded live, with the keys, bass, guitar, and drums all tracked as a single performance. The vocals were done separately – with the exception of soft funk track Ringpull.

The decision to explore a wider breadth of instruments for the first time came from a sense of urgency that was, in part, prompted by the pandemic. “It made me think: this could be over at any minute. I could never get to make a record again. I could never tour again. So my approach to this record was like, if I never get to do this again, what do I want to make sure I've done? I want to record live. I want to work with textures I've never worked with before. I want to dress up as a gnome bard knight and climb a mountain in Wales, regret it, and have no one else to blame except for myself because I'm freezing,” she laughs. “So even though it’s not necessarily a maximalist record in terms of how it sounds, the approach was maximal joy for me making it… which is hilarious, because it's about being miserable!”.

There are plenty of other great albums due next month. It is packed with quality work from some amazing artist. From Skunk Anansie to Miley Cyrus to Little Simz and Rico Nasty, there is going to be something in there for everyone! I hope that my suggestions above have give you some inspiration. You have plenty of choice when it comes to…

TREMENDOUS albums.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Revisited: FLO

FEATURE:

 

 

Spotlight: Revisited

PHOTO CREDIT: Melanie Lehmann via NOTION

FLO

__________

I initially…

PHOTO CREDIT: Andy Ford for NME

spotlighted FLO in 2022. They were just coming through then so, for this Spotlight: Revisited, there is a lot of ground to cover. A lot has changed. I will get to some interviews with this incredible group. They consist of Jorja Douglas, Stella Quaresma and Renée Downer. I am not sure whether they would label themselves as a traditional girl group in the mould of TLC, Destiny’s Child, Sugababes or Eternal, say. One can definitely sense a connection with groups like that. Maybe an R&B group. However, as girl groups are a rarity now and it is not a huge scene like it was back in the 1990s and 2000s, I feel like they are keeping a light on. Ensuring that they are still a thing. Their acclaimed 2024 debut album, Access All Areas, I think should have been nominated for a Mercury Prize. It is a stunning album that I hope they follow up soon. Maybe not as gritty or edgy as some of the older U.S. girl group contemporaries, they did put out a distinct sound. One that they will build on. There is very much this feeling that British R&B isn’t a thing or isn’t big. There are artists like FLO reviving it and putting it in the spotlight. There are a couple of 2024 interviews from NME that I want to get to. The first was when FLO played at Reading and Leeds. Getting their reaction to that experience and also talking about their debut album, Access All Areas:

“Hi FLO! What was it like performing for the first time at Reading and Leeds Festival?

Stella Quaresma: “The crowd was incredible.”

Renée Downer: “For our first performance, we would have hoped that everything would have come together in terms of production. But, the crowd gave us life, and they kept us going, which is the most important thing.”

You did a mash-up of your song ‘Summertime’ with Aaliyah‘s ‘Try Again’ – why did you want to pay homage to the late icon?

Quaresma: “I feel like she was the first – maybe not the first, but she was such an it-girl. She did so many things for people like us who love R&B, so thank you, Aaliyah.”

Jorja Douglas: “Also, Timbaland [was] on the production, and that’s so influential as well –especially to our sound – so it makes sense to incorporate it into our set.”

You guys have been lauded by the likes of Victoria Monét, JoJo, SZA and more – how is it like getting the respect of your fellow R&B it-girls?

Downer: “It’s the best type of compliment. The respect is just so lovely to receive that from people we actually look up to.”

One of the biggest co-signs you got was from Kelly Rowland – what was that like?

Douglas: “We’ve actually met her in real life a couple [of] times, and every time, she’s just always so kind and just wants to help [us]. [She] wants to know how it’s going and wants to share some advice, so she’s so genuine and down-to-earth. It’s been really nice meeting her.”

How do you feel about people comparing you to Destiny’s Child?

Douglas: “I think our work ethic is comparable. If anything, their work ethic is a lot more extreme than ours. But on that level, the work ethic and the attention to detail – that is what we take from Destiny’s Child.”

You’re releasing your debut album, ‘Access All Areas’, later this year – why now?

Downer: “It’s finally ready. We wanted to be really open, dig deep, and write music that actually had meaning for us. So the title explains itself, really.”

What themes do you explore on the album?

Douglas: “Self-love, love…”

Quaresma: “Relationships with a whole spectrum of different people; work, friends, boyfriends, partners…”

Douglas: “You can interpret the songs [however you like]. We may be referring to a boy or a man or whatever. It could be about your boss, it could be about your colleague, it could be about your mum, it could be about your dog. It could be about anything, whatever feels right for you, but you’re gonna vibe [to it].”

Who was an inspiration on the record?

Downer: “Brandy. We love her, and one song on the album particularly just has that essence of R&B. We wouldn’t know her this well.”

Quaresma: “We want her on it so much.”

What statement do you wanna make with ‘Access All Areas’?

Douglas: “There’s just so much to know.”

Quaresma: “Multifaceted. That you can go to the album to feel a whole range of things, you know. Feel like a baddie, feel hard, feel like other people are going through the same things, feel like you’re strong. There’s a lot going on.”

When you look back on your career a few years from now – what do you hope you’ve done?

Downer: “Just the revival of R&B girl groups because they’ve been gone for a long time.

Douglas: “We want to be known for, you know, [having the] R&B album of the year…”

Quaresma: “[Being] trailblazers…”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Tallulah Ballard

I want to move to an interview with Gay Times from last year. As huge fans of Access All Areas, it is a really interesting interview. I do think that other groups like FLO will follow. A British R&B girl group scene that has potential and future promise. At the moment, there is a bit of a small showing. However, FLO are leading lights that will open the door for others:

“FLO might need to add another ‘A’ to the title of their debut album because, as the tenacious trio tells GAY TIMES, “we’re allies, babe!”. With their future top five-peaking album Access All Areas (deserves number-one), Stella Quaresma, Jorja Douglas and Reneé Downer made sure to honour their LGBTQIA+ fans with a little assistance from Wicked star Cynthia Erivo, who invites “ladies, gentlemen and those who don’t subscribe to either” to enjoy their much-needed brand of “bad bitch replenishment”. “It was very important,” Stella says of the inclusive, intergalactic intro. “We welcome everyone. It’s like a family and we love and support everyone.” (Allies? Check!)

Executive produced by pop genius MNEK, Access All Areas has been released to widespread critical acclaim for the trio’s insane harmonies and chemistry, as well as their modern spin on girl groups while simultaneously paying homage to legendary acts like Destiny’s Child, TLC and SWV. If that wasn’t enough, FLO continued to gag the rainbow people when they released an extended version, sub-titled Unlocked, with remixes from R&B divas (and gay favourites) Bree Runway, Kehlani and Chloe x Halle.

Read ahead for our full interview with FLO, where they discuss their love for the LGBTQIA+ community, the absolute slayage of their GloRilla-assisted single ‘In My Bag’ and which beloved album track they have major “plans” for. Bonus: Stella, Jorja and Renée also name their favourite girl group smashers of all time.

GAY TIMES: Girls, this album is insane. It’s called Access All Areas, so, who’s allowed in? Who’s getting express entry? And who’s not allowed in? Who are you telling to bog off?

Stella: It’s funny because, even the people you think shouldn’t be allowed in, are allowed in because they need to listen and know what’s up.

Jorja: Yeah, there’s no list! That’s the purpose of the album. We have to let everyone in. They have to see all the sides of FLO; the good, the bad and the ugly.

GT: Let’s talk about how you landed Cynthia motherf**king Erivo for that stunning, intergalactic intro?!

Jorja: It was quite simple, which made this experience even more magical. We’ve had experience asking people for features and essentially not getting them, or being told we’re going to and not getting them. So, to have us ask and for her to deliver was… wow. It felt like the missing puzzle piece. It sets the whole album off on the perfect foot. Not only was her narration so beautiful, but her talent and who she is as an artist is equally as special.

Stella: Honestly, it was perfect timing.

Renée: The stars were aligning for us.

Jorja: She’s being pulled in every direction possible and she gave us the time of day. And we’ve only met the girl twice. She’s such a kind person and we really appreciate her.

GT: In that intro, I – and a lot of LGBTQIA+ people – were so happy to hear the inclusive line about “ladies, gentlemen and those who don’t subscribe to either”. Why was that important for you to include?

Renée: We’re allies, babe!

Stella: Yeah, we had to. It’s very important. [Access All Areas] is for everybody. We welcome everyone. It’s like a family and we love and support everyone.

Jorja: We don’t give a hoot what you are, who you are, as long as you’re tuning in and appreciate the music. That’s all we ask for.

GT: Historically, a huge portion of a girl group’s fanbase are of the rainbow variety. Have you noticed that support over the years?

Stella: Absolutely. Honestly, it’s the best.

Renée: It’s unwavering. It’s such a lovely dynamic between us and our fans, they just get it.

Jorja: They love the drama, they love the laugh. I think, as people who can sometimes struggle with their identity, being able to find themselves [in girl groups] makes them feel secure. Also, our music is super empowering. We want people to feel good and provide comfort within themselves. I just think we’re all on the same page.

GT: On Access All Areas, you honour iconic girl groups from history, from Destiny’s Child to TLC. While their presence is felt throughout, this album is quintessentially FLO. So, how do you think FLO is taking girl groups into the future?

Renée: I think we’re just aware of our current generation. We try and be in the clue with what’s going on right now and what sounds people like. We wanted to take what we know and are inspired by, and make it slightly edgier, fresher and more appealing.

GT: Let’s talk about the new single, ‘In My Bag’, featuring GloRilla. Erm, that video? That dance sequence?!

Renée: Right!? Can we talk about it?

Jorja: Iconic!

Stella: You need to learn it Sam, please.

GT: I’m not sure if I’ve got any moves, but I shall try.

Renée: You can do it.

Stella: You just have to vibe.

Jorja: You can also freestyle.

Renée: Working with Sean [Bankhead] has been a dream of ours and to have finally done it on the perfect song… We felt like everything just aligned, and it was very insightful working with him because he’s incredible.

GT: Why was ‘In My Bag’ the right song to release at the same time as the album?

Stella: We always get a feeling. When we heard this song we were all like, ‘This is a single. This is such a big song.’ The feeling we got was unmatched. It’s the feeling we had with ‘Cardboard Box’. We were so sure of the song, and having Glo on it just elevated it. It felt global and so catchy.

GT: It feels right that it’s accompanied by your best video to date. Also, stealing from the rich is so important.

Jorja: For real. That’s definitely a hidden message.

GT: Which Access All Areas track will get the biggest response from the LGBT’s, dya reckon?

Stella: I think they’re going to love ‘Soft’.

Renée: ‘Soft’ is that girl! And anyone has that energy, which obviously the LGBTQIA+ community do possess. They possess that energy and I think they’re going to love and relate to it.

Jorja: I just think she’s universal. That’s the thing I love because, obviously a lot of our songs are coming from our perspective as women, but ‘Soft’ is like… If you’re getting it as in you’re getting it, then you are getting it.

GT: Is the world ready for a video to ‘Soft’?

Stella: Well, we have the remix with Chloe x Halle for ‘Soft’, so we’d have to do that video with them. I mean… It would be amazing. It would be wow.

GT: I’m glad you brought up the remixes because you landed Chloe x Halle, Bree Runway and Kehlani? All icons.

Renée: We love all of them. We’re fans of all their music, so it made a lot of sense. We pretty much DM’d them and asked if they would do it and they all agreed. It was a really short turnout time and they were on it. It was such a nice feeling to know that they really wanted to be part of the songs. Chloe said it’s been stuck in her head all day, which is the biggest compliment ever.

GT: Kehlani’s featured on ‘IWH2BMX’. Do you have any exes that are currently shaking in their boots?

Renée: No [ex] knows it’s coming! But when they hear it… That’s the purpose of the song. When we were writing that it was like, ‘When our exes hear this song… sucks to be them!’

GT: I think a lot of fans will be surprised over ‘I’m Just a Girl’, which has a more rock-influenced and ferocious sound. What inspired the direction for this song and why was it the right one to close the album?

Jorja: When we started writing this song and deciding the hook, it was very much like, ‘We need to give Hayley Williams’; just belting, just power. It’s the last song because it encapsulates everything that we’ve been through as a group, and everything we stand for as a group. It’s a statement, it’s strong and leaves you thinking, ‘What the fuck? What the fuck did I just listen to?’ It just ties the whole thing up in…

Stella: A black bow.

Jorja: A black bow!

GT: I think I speak for all fans when I say: I need this immediately. Lately, there’s somewhat been a drought when it comes to girl groups. How much are we in need of – in Cynthia’s words – “bad bitch replenishment”?

Stella: There are plenty of bad bitches around, but when three bad bitches come together, it’s undeniable. I think everybody needs a girl group. It’s so necessary for every generation, and it’s an honour to be at the forefront.

GT: As we end this interview, I need – need! – each of you to name your favourite song by a girl band…

Jorja: Oh my god, I’m opening Spotify right now.

Stella: That’s so hard… Just one?

GT: Just one!

Renée: I’m going to say ‘Buttons’ by The Pussycat Dolls because the type of confidence, the type of things I imagined to that song… It was just pivotal to me as a child like, ‘This is what I want to be like.’ It’s so empowering and incredible.

Stella: I’m going to say ‘Survivor’ [by Destiny’s Child] because, being in a girl group, you have to be a survivor. Women, in general, being any minority, you have to be. To have that anthem to say ‘I am something’, is really important.

Jorja: I’m going to say ‘Too Lost in You’ [by the Sugababes]. Oh my god, that song right there is, not just the soundtrack to my life, but my made-up fantasy”.

There are two more interviews I will come to. I will end with another NME chat. Heading back to last August, British Vogue published their interview with FLO. There is a real connection and love between the members. Their friendship is all that matters. They talked about their bond, their vulnerable debut album, and fame. If you have not followed FLO then make sure that you do:

“Tell me about Access All Areas.

Stella: We approached this album wanting to be our unapologetic selves. I think people forget that being a bad bitch doesn’t mean you always have to have a wall up. It’s important to know the value of being vulnerable. We wanted to lay it all out… this album is a labour of love. We of course love the songs we wrote before, but we wanted to dig a bit deeper here. I’m excited for people to see the more emotional side, the more sensitive side, too.

Jorja: I just love the album title so much. It was inspired by a song we wrote in LA in a very memorable session where the liquor was flowing. It was just strong out of the gate.

Renée: To us it represents our growth and dedication to our craft. There’s nothing wrong with showing all sides of yourself, accessing all areas, but you just need to do it with confidence.

What are your favourite songs on the album? And which ones are you most excited to perform live?

Jorja: We are so excited to perform all of them live. We are sick and tired of singing songs off The Lead. Oh my God, give it a rest! It completely sucks the fun out of performing live because we know what we’re sitting on music-wise. We can’t wait to have an entirely new set, and when we do our tour for the album, it’s really going to be everything that we wanted to do for the past three years. In terms of favourite songs? It’s so hard to pick one. We have favourites for different reasons. Each mood requires a certain song but we all love “Access All Areas”. Another personal favourite is “Soft”: it’s very fresh, very current R’n’B, soft and sexy and simple. It doesn’t need to do too much.

Renée: My favourite is “I’m Just a Girl”. It’s going to be so full of energy when we perform it live, a real crowd jumper.

Stella: My favourite track changes a lot, but I think I would say “Bending My Rules” because it’s such a vocal moment and it shows off what we can all do. But I love “Access All Areas” as it’s the title track, and we had so much fun writing it. It’s timeless.

PHOTO CREDIT: Adama Jalloh

I know you’ve been together since 2019, but “Cardboard Box” was clearly a break-out moment for Flo. Do you feel any pressure to live up to its viral success moving forward?

Jorja: There’s not really pressure. Because I think what we realised very early on is that anything can go viral. So it’s not really a pressure you can put on yourself because you’re almost fighting a losing battle. You could put the most money or littlest money behind a project and that doesn’t dictate whether it will start trending. So the pressure we put on ourselves is just to create amazing music. There’s no point putting pressure on yourself because you’ll just get depressed! [laughs]

Do you have any mentors? I remember you saying before that you had a group chat with Brandy…

Stella: I think she might have gotten a new number. I hope she got a new number, and that’s fine. We don’t really have mentors, to be honest. Though we have people we love working with in the industry.

Jorja: Our vocal coach, Joshua Alamu, is always there looking out for our wellbeing, to listen to our problems and keep us grounded. He manages artists too so he gives us a lot of advice. Also MNEK has been instrumental in our creative process and pushing our vocals. He’s really helped us. But on the other side of the industry? Absolutely no one.

Stella: When we meet someone [in the industry], they’ll often give us a few words of wisdom. “Stick together, always communicate,” that kind of thing. But yeah, we’re working it out ourselves.

How would you describe your friendship? And what has being in Flo together taught you?

Stella: Awww. [All three hug.] All we’ve got is each other in this life, in this silly industry.

Jorja: Oh my god.

Renée: We’ve just been our own champions. Obviously we’ve got family and people around us supporting us, but it’s really our own constant communication with each other about the way we navigate the industry. We just talk to each other about it and figure out what’s going on here, and what went wrong here, and what/who to watch out for”.

It has been great seeing the rise of FLO. When I first wrote about them a few years ago, they were a promising group but I was not sure how things would pan out. I have written about them since but, as they are worthy of new spotlight, it is great to be assessing them when they have achieved so much and have a lot to look forward to. I am going to end with an NME interview where FLO discussed executed their “high quality” vision. Very much in their own lane as a British R&B group, I think all signs point to FLO dominating the scene soon:

“When FLO spoke to NME for the first time in April 2022, a month after ‘Cardboard Box’ dropped, Downer said: “We’re not going to be pushed over or go with someone else’s decision without believing in it ourselves.” Two-and-a-half years later, are they fully steering the ship?

“It’s a constant battle, Nick,” Downer says with mock theatricality. “Every day we’re faced with a new obstacle, but how we’ve adapted as individuals and as a group has made the obstacles much easier to overcome. We know what to expect now and how to get the best out of a situation.”

Douglas says this battle is rooted in the fact that “the UK doesn’t really understand R&B music or how to push it”. Early on, FLO were “absolutely” encouraged to switch towards other, supposedly more commercial genres, something they didn’t mind the odd “dip into”.

“[But] I think the main thing,” Douglas continues, “is R&B isn’t necessarily associated with, like, the highest marketing and the highest quality assets. There has to be a certain quality to [our] artwork and shoots and merch, which I think is a quality that [the industry thinks] more lends itself to pop music and mainstream music.”

The trio appear to address this on the album’s hard-hitting closing track ‘I’m Just A Girl’. “How many Black girls do you see on centre stage now? Yet you wonder why thеy’re going to the States now,” Quaresma sings on the second verse. In 2019, the year that FLO formed, British R&B singer Ella Mai spoke about a “ceiling” for artists working in this genre in the UK and said: “I don’t know the last time an R&B artist was recognised at the Brits.”

FLO have since helped to chip away at this ceiling by winning the Brit Award for Rising Star in 2023. “We’re getting more respected in the UK, and we definitely want our album to do that a bit more,” Quaresma says. “But Black music, I guess, aside from rap really does flourish better in the US. That’s just a fact.”

Since then, their progress has been steady rather than spectacular. In March 2023, they dropped ‘Fly Girl’, a sleek reimagining of Missy Elliott‘s 2002 banger ‘Work It’ that featured a verse from Misdemeanor herself. It stormed into the UK Top 40 and became their second most streamed single to date behind ‘Cardboard Box’.

No subsequent FLO single has matched its success, though album standouts ‘On & On’ and ‘Woulda Coulda Shoulda’ are easily strong enough to scale the charts. But crucially, FLO have already built a fanbase who are invested (and brave) enough to email their management with notes for future live shows.

“I think most were valid,” Douglas says candidly. “At first we just wanted to focus on our vocals. But obviously there are so many elements that go into putting a show together, like choreography, movement, stage design.” With this in mind, fans can expect levelled up production values next March when FLO play their biggest headline tour yet, including a hometown show at London’s 5,000-capacity O2 Academy Brixton.

But above all, FLO are moving in the right direction because they have the confidence to carve out their own lane. Most songs on their album run three minutes and over, so clearly they don’t self-edit to suit the brevity-focused Spotify and TikTok algorithms. “We’re making real music, so it’s never going to be fleeting,” Downer says.

The same could be said of FLO, who are on a long-term mission to become the UK’s preeminent girl group. Or as Downer puts it: “We’re here to clear the drought”.

I will end things there. A tremendous girl group whose debut album gained applause and kudos, the future looks clear. They are set on domination. At present, they are in the U.S. and have many great dates coming up as part of their Access All Areas Tour. Go and catch them if you can. If you are not a fan of R&B or girl groups and do not think FLO are for you, I would advise you to listen and you will have your mind changed. Their amazing music is very much…

FOR everyone.

__________

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PHOTO CREDIT: Tallulah Ballard

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FEATURE: Groovelines: Stevie Wonder - He's Misstra Know-It-All

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Stevie Wonder - He's Misstra Know-It-All

__________

THERE are a couple of reasons…

why I am featuring this Stevie Wonder classic in Groovelines. The man himself turns seventy-five on 13th May. Stevie Wonder has some gigs this year and will be playing in the U.K. I am focusing on He's Misstra Know-It-All. This is a single released from his Innervisons album. The single came out in April 1974. It reached number ten on the UK Singles Chart. It is my favourite Stevie Wonder song, so I was keen to explore it more. Even though there is not a lot written about it, there are a couple of articles that I want to bring in. I have always had an impression regarding the story behind He's Misstra Know-It-All. However, exploring and researching has uncovered new dynamics and layers to the classic track. I want to start out with some observations from this article:

“Stevie Wonder is quite well known for writing songs with a political stance and indeed, in the 1980s, he campaigned to have a national holiday in America known as Martin Luther King Day. There had been attempts from 1979 but not enough votes were registered, but its success came when Stevie released the single Happy Birthday in 1980 in America (1981 in the UK) and it’s observed on the third Monday in January.

By the early seventies, Stevie Wonder had proved his worth to Motown. He’d been with them about 10 years, he wrote and produced his own material as well as doing the same for other acts and played multiple instruments. He’d married another Motown singer, Syreeta Wright and things were looking good. Berry Gordy, the label’s founder had to make sure he kept his genius and so negotiated a new contract that would grant Stevie full artistic control over all his music, allow him to have his own publishing company and an unparalleled royalty rate was agreed. No one else, certainly at that time, had been granted that much freedom. It was revolutionary. The only person who came close was Dave Clark.

IN THIS PHOTO: President Richard Nixon speaking at a rally at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island in 1972/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael Evans/The New York Times

In 1972, Stevie, now with a new contract, got to work on his 15th album, Talking Book and for many it’s said to be the start of his classic period. Although it spent nearly a year on the UK chart it climbed no higher than number 16. The following year he released Innervisions, that spent just over a year on the chart and gave Stevie his first top 10 UK album. Higher Ground, which all about reincarnation, was the first single from it followed by Living for the City, a funky but serious song examining systemic racism and in April 1974, He’s Misstra Know It All was released and peaked at number 10.

It’s a song with some mystery. Who is it about? Why Misstra? Was he a real person? Well, there are no definitive answers because Stevie has never really revealed, but it has been cited over the years that it was having a dig at the 37th President of the United States, Richard Nixon. Just bear in mind that Nixon’s nickname to those close to him was Tricky Dicky.

Now the character portrayed in the song is, to say the least, a little shady. He comes across as untrustworthy and devious – the opening line, ‘He’s a man with a plan, got a counterfeit dollar in his hand’ really set the scene. Each short version adds a line to raise an eyebrow, verse two – ‘talking fast, making sure that he won’t be the last’, verse three ‘Makes a deal, with a smile knowing all the time that his lie’s a mile and verse four, ‘He’s the coolest one with the biggest mouth’, you get the picture. He’s learning along the way that the more clued up people will not deal with him and only the stupid will. Any of this sound familiar in 2019 politics?! Another clue that Stevie Wonder was way ahead of his time.

You might also get the feeling that Stevie himself might have been on the receiving end and you can tell as the song moves on that Stevie is getting irritated by the conman. The lyrical comment, ‘If we had less of him don’t you know we’d have a better land’ makes him realise how bad things have got and that he can’t abide someone who doesn’t honour a handshake and someone who can’t accept criticism. It all comes to a head at two minutes 55 seconds in when Stevie starts to growl. He has had enough.

As for the title, if someone is so bad to you might find you can’t bring yourself to address them properly by name or title. There’s certainly one pop star that I find hard to call by name, but that’s a different story. In this case, there is no name given but maybe calling him Mister which is a title of respect and Stevie couldn’t bring himself to say that so a little jig around to still make it fit with the melody. This is not unheard of for songwriter to do that.

The parent album, Innervisions, was released on 3rd August 1973 and just three days later, whilst on his way to a radio station in North Carolina to promote the album, Stevie was involved in a serious car accident that left him in a coma for four days. It was only when his friend and singer of the lead gospel group The Dixie Hummingbirds, went to visit him did he get a response. Ira Tucker recalled at the time, “I got right down in his ear and sang Higher Ground. His hand was resting on my arm and after a while his fingers started going in time with the song. I said yeah, yeah! This dude is going to make it!”.

I want to end with an article from Medium from 2019. A fascinating song I have loved since childhood, its impact has not faded. Even if its political implications and meaning was not known to me when I was young, I have come to appreciate He's Misstra Know-It-All since. It is a stunning song that showcases Stevie Wonder’s peerless gift for melody and his phenomenal lyrics. A song that people have been picking apart and analysing for years:

“He’s Misstra Know-It-All” was the final track on Stevie Wonder’s 1973 album, “Innervisions”. Widely regarded as some of Stevie Wonder’s finest work, “Innervisions” was number 23 in Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time.

When you consider that’s a higher placing than “Dark Side Of The Moon”, “Ziggy Stardust” and “Tapestry”, among other classic albums, that perhaps gives you some idea how good an album “Innervisions” was.

You’ll recognise many of the other tracks on the album too, as they’ve become classics over the years… “Higher Ground”, “Living For The City” and “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout A Thing” all featured on “Innervisions” too, alongside “He’s Misstra Know-It-All”, of course.

Folklore has it that “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” was about President Richard Nixon…nicknamed “Tricky Dicky” in some quarters as a result of his somewhat shady reputation for being a man of his word and having other people’s best interests at heart. Harry Truman said of Nixon that “if he caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in”.

So there’s much to lead us to the conclusion that Nixon was the target of Stevie Wonder’s “He’s Misstra Know-It-All”. But I suspect the truth is more complicated than that. Certainly I can’t find anything definite attributed directly to Stevie Wonder where he says that Nixon was his intended target.

“He’s Misstra Know-It-All” is more likely to be a pastiche of a number of characters, possibly including Nixon, but the entertainment industry isn’t exactly short of smooth talking backstabbers itself.

Stevie Wonder’s boss at Motown, Berry Gordy, wasn’t always the nicest person to be around, if some of the stories are to be believed. And the same could probably be said of legions of A&R people and concert promoters Stevie Wonder will have come across in his long career.

He’s a man with a plan
Got a counterfeit dollar in his hand
He’s Misstra Know-It-All

Playin’ hard, talkin’ fast
Making sure that he won’t be the last
He’s Misstra Know-It-All

Stevie Wonder is telling us the tale of a “man on the make”…although please bear in mind this behaviour isn’t gender-specific. I’ve come across both men and women this song could have been written about.

Sadly, the undoing of people like those Stevie Wonder sings about is that they have trouble recognising that being successful in the short-term and in the long-term require two entirely different skill-sets. Before word gets round about their untrustworthiness, poor behaviour or sharp business practices, people can, and do, get ahead by screwing other people over.

Personally, I find that morally repugnant, so I’m not endorsing it as a strategy or suggesting you try this for yourself…far from it.

But I am acknowledging that sometimes, in the short-term, the strategy can look like it’s working to the uninitiated. Until you get found out…

If he shakes on a bet
He’s the kind of dude that won’t pay his debt
He’s Misstra Know-It-All

But once you get a reputation for being untrustworthy and not delivering on your promises, there’s no way back. People think they’re being screwed even when they aren’t and they’ll shy away from deals they would have taken from other people they trust more. The opportunities dry up.

After a while your “Misstra Know-It-All” characters find that only the desperate and the stupid will deal with them. But, again in the short-term, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The desperate and the stupid tend not to be the best dealmakers, so although the deals are fewer in number you can make more on each one, keeping your empire afloat a bit longer, even after most respectable operators won’t touch you with a barge-pole.

But that only lasts for as long as the desperate and the stupid remain solvent. Gradually, desperate and stupid people are subject to the same Darwinian processes that govern most other aspects of human behaviour and even that pool of people drops out.

At that point, the “Misstra Know-It-All” characters crash and burn, usually spectacularly, because they never saw it coming. They had convinced themselves they were so capable of bending the universe to their will that there would be a never-ending supply of desperate or stupid people even after the more respectable end of the market stop returning their phone calls.

They’re actually slightly emboldened by the fact that they’ve been able to keep operating, despite the fact that most of their market won’t deal with them any more. In their secret fears, they imagined that would be the point at which their business would fold.

But, au contraire, they’ve kept going just fine. For years, perhaps even decades.

By this stage they’ve suckered even themselves. They believe they can do no wrong. Their judgement is infallible. Their magnetic powers of persuasion will triumph over anyone they encounter.

They like to dispense advice on how great they are to other people. After all, they’re infallible, so who wouldn’t want to listen to them…?

When you say that he’s livin’ wrong
He’ll tell you he knows he’s livin’ right
And you’d be a stronger man
If you took Misstra Know-It-All’s advice

That was my old boss to a “T”. Someone who couldn’t even conceive that they might be doing anything wrong… “he knows he’s livin’ right”…it’s not a hope or a suspicion or a prayer. He knows it.

And if you know it, why would you listen to anyone telling you different?

But the truth is…

If we had less of him
Don’t you know we’d have a better land
He’s Misstra Know-It-All

Why I like “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” so much is that Stevie Wonder sings with sadness, not anger, in his heart.

It would be easy to angrily tear down someone who had behaved badly towards you. It takes a much better human being than I am to be sad for the person who had wronged him.

Sad that they’ll never know the joy of people warmly accepted by their peers as someone they like and trust. Sad that so many people they’ve “slashed and burned” in the past have had their lives destroyed because they trusted someone who was not deserving of that trust. Sad that a life which had so much potential was ultimately mired in failure and scandal.

“He’s Misstra Know-It-All” is a very gentle, almost contemplative, song. That’s a perspective on dealing with an unpleasant person that only someone with great personal qualities can adopt.

I just hope that in time I can feel about my old boss with the same level of class that Stevie Wonder mustered for whoever the original “Misstra Know-It-All” was.

I’ve long held the view that Stevie Wonder is one of the finest composers, songwriters and performers of the 20th Century.

Even with the high quality of his creative output over the years, “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” is one of those Stevie Wonder songs that showcases a master at the very top of his game…and bear in mind “his game” was already better than just about every other human being who has ever written a song or sung on a record.

Just the intro on “He’s Misstra Know-It-All” is better than many whole albums…even whole careers…from other artists. This style of long intro is something you’ll rarely hear nowadays, but Stevie Wonder certainly shows what you can do with a long intro if you take the time to craft something worth listening to”.

One of the greatest songs ever in my view, I was very keen to explore it for this Groovelines. The epic and beautiful finale from Innervisions, this classic is one of the standout Stevie Wonder tracks. A real gem from…

HIS 1973 masterpiece.

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Jorja Smith

FEATURE:

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Oliver Holms for Harper’s Bazaar

Jorja Smith

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THIS is an artist…

that I first covered years ago. The amazing Jorja Smith is someone that I was keen to feature for this Modern-Day Queens. This year, she has been a featured artist on a couple of singles. Come with Me is by Major League Djz. She is also on Crush for AJ Tracy. Her latest album, falling or flying, was released in 2023. I wonder if we will get another album from Jorja Smith this year. One of the best artists out there, she has a voice like no one else’s. I want to finish off with a recent interview from British Vogue. Before I get there, there are some older interviews that are worth bringing in so that we get to know more about Smith. I am starting out with an interview from last year from Numéro. That is when Jorja Smith released falling or flying (Reimagined). This is a jazzier version of the original album. Smith discussed that, the “chaos that surrounds us, her return to her hometown and the weight of judgments” – and helping people feel less alone:

“She has been compared to Lauryn Hill and to her idol Amy Winehouse, and she admires Alicia Keys and Rihanna. But make no mistake, Jorja Smith is like no other. Since her smashing debut in 2016 with the single Blue Lights, a moving anthem against police violence, the 26-year-old English singer has imprinted her sensual, soulful voice, her authenticity and her beautiful face on R’n’B music at a global scale. After a splendid debut album, Lost & Found, which quickly found its audience, and collaborations with Drake, Burna Boy, Kendrick Lamar, Stormzy and Kali Uchis, the artist has now opened a new chapter in her already very busy life. 

In September 2023, the woman who has walked for Marine Serre and posed as Dior’s make-up ambassador released Falling or Flying, a languorous and daring record about love and “baring your soul in a very critical world, when (you’ve) always been (your) first critic”, set against a backdrop of pop, house, rock and R’n’B. As she released Falling of Flying (Reimagined), a re-recorded version of her latest album, Numéro met this powerful yet vulnerable Gen Z icon, followed by almost 4 million fans on Instagram, for an intimate interview.

Numéro: Why did you choose to title your new album Falling or Flying?

Jorja Smith: There’s a song on the album called Falling or Flying, but the name of the album has nothing to do with that song. It came out of a conversation with one of my best friends. I was telling her how I was feeling, explaining that I didn’t know whether I was falling or flying. It’s a feeling that emerged almost three years ago, and I started to create that album around that time. I couldn’t tell whether or not I was doing well, whether I was happy or sad, whether I was losing or winning. The ones who know me well know that I’ve never really found myself in that in-between. I’m either one thing or the other. For instance, I’m either obsessed with something, or can’t focus at all. The title also represents the album, because when you listen to it, it flies, then falls, then topples over again, like a rollercoaster. So listening to it might make you want to laugh and cry at the same time.

How did this album come about?

This is the first time I’ve started an album almost from scratch. I only had about three songs already written. I created this record with my producer friends from the duo DameDame in a quite free and organic way, with no deadlines. I’ve known one of the members since I was 15. We just got together and had fun. We ate, talked and spontaneously wrote songs. Lost & Found, the first album I released in 2018 was imagined very differently, as a collection of songs that I had already performed on stage and wrote between the ages of 16 and 18. I started singing at a very young age, especially in front of an audience, without necessarily wanting to become famous for it.

In 2021, you left London, where you had been living for a while, and decided to move back to your hometown, Walsall, in the West Midlands, 150 miles away from the British capital… I moved to London when I was 18. I just wanted to explore, get out and experience life. I thought that I needed to be in a big city to do music. A lot of my friends also moved to London, so I wasn’t alone there. I made new friends too. Then everything ramped up very quickly with the release of Blue Lights in 2018 on streaming platforms. I went on tour, so I was away from my apartment for quite a while, always busy and moving at a frantic pace. In 2020, the covid pandemic happened and I spent the lockdown in London. At that point, I think that I associated very negative feelings with the city. So I felt the need to go back home, where I grew up. Anyway, home had been calling me back for ages.

You missed your hometown…

Yes, I really missed home. Now that I’m back, I feel like I have a new-found balance. I feel less stressed about not releasing new music at a rapid pace. This is my home, so I don’t feel anxious or nervous. I don’t know if it was because of the constant noise, or the fact that I couldn’t see the sky, but I felt a lot of pressure when living in London. I love London and I love everything it has given me. I love spending the night out when I’m there. But working with my friends from DameDame took me back to my teenage years, and reconnected me with my younger self. I remembered who I used to be before I moved to London. I used to play the piano all the time, go for walks alone or with my dog. I’ve taken up the piano again since I came back. Life is slower here. Everything’s calmer. Everyone knows everyone else.

What message are you trying to convey through your music?

I just want my music to exist so that people who listen to it can feel something, whether it’s joy, nostalgia or the desire to change something in their lives, and maybe feel what I’ve experienced too. Since I started out, I’ve just wanted to take people on a journey with my songs, whether they’re thinking about their present, past, future, or want to send that song to someone because they feel it will help them have a good day or get through a difficult situation. I’ve already found myself in a situation where I would play my music in front of someone who wasn’t a fan, and wasn’t really listening to me. Then that person changed their mind and said, “Oh my God, you’re talking to me now.” I hope I can connect with people that way”.

I am going to move on to an interview with Vogue HK from last year. Jorja Smith spoke about returning to where it all began for her and not overthinking things. I am really interested in hearing and seeing what comes next. A simply stunning artist who is always captivating and memorable, if you have not discovered Smith then follow her on Instagram. I have been a fan for a very long time and will be for years more:

“For almost a decade, Smith’s face has been ubiquitous: magazine covers, billboards, phone screens…and her voice has boomed from radios and music platforms everywhere. The Grammy-nominated R&B artist and Brits Awards winner first blew up on Soundcloud as a high-schooler with her single “Blue Lights“, leading to collaborations with music giants like Kendrick Lamar, and a successful Lost & Found album which debuted at No.3  on the UK Albums Chart and No.1 on the UK R&B Chart. Her honest lyrics have chronicled her growth throughout the years, speaking to listeners as if they were her trusted confidants. “My safe space is in my music, and that’s where I like to just be myself,” Smith revealed.

Yet in this age of heightened access where Instagram reels can relive a person’s whole day (from their “9-6 after their 6-9”), and where revealing far too many details on Threads has become the norm, Smith has taken a step back.“I’ve got a weird relationship with social media, a bit of a love-hate relationship because it’s a lot,” Smith said, “I think it can be an amazing place. That’s how I got discovered, because of being on Soundcloud, but I just think it’s intense and I’m still trying to navigate my way around it and get back on there a bit.”

At the same time, she’s traded the bustle of London living for the relative calmness of the West Midlands where her hometown Walsall is. “I felt like London was great, but where I began creating was home,” Smith explained. “I think I’ve needed to come back home for years. I just feel more myself, a bit more grounded.” At home, she’s planning to build a studio and has returned to playing on the keys — something she always used to do as a teenager before moving to London. And as though reconnecting with her inner child, Smith started Blue Lights, an all-girls choir in Walsall.

“Hopefully when I finish this tour, I can get back to seeing the girls, and I want to have them play with me at a show or something which will be really good,” Smith beamed like a proud older sister, “But they’re loving it. They’ve been doing loads of pop performances here and there, and it’s just great because I never had this when I was younger.”

Speaking with an unbridled enthusiasm that might be akin to flying, the “Falling Or Flying” singer spoke of fellow artists like she wasn’t a global sensation herself. When asked about an artist she would love to perform for, she said Frank Ocean in a heartbeat, “I love him so much, I’d love to work with him.” Then, she named Adele as the person she would love to perform for, “I love Adele. I want to go to her show and I’d like to invite her to mine,” Smith confessed.

And with the same conviction, she shared the most valuable lesson she has learnt in her 20’s so far. “I’ve realised I don’t owe anybody anything,” Smith said, “I used to be such a people pleaser, and only as I’ve gotten older I’ve realised not everybody deserves your energy or time and to try and protect that.”

She continued, “I don’t overthink as much, and that’s something that has come with age. I’m still young, I’m still 27, but I think I’m really proud that I don’t overthink so much, because I’d be worried about absolutely everything, like too many things to name”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Mel Bles

I am going to end with a recent interview from British Vogue. This is a new phase of Jorja Smith’s career. She has a string of tour dates coming up. Even though she has moved out of London, that has not affected her popularity and visibility. Her sheer talent overcomes that disadvantage some feel about being away from the capital. It seems like Jorja Smith is more settled and happier than she has ever been. Let’s hope that this continues:

“Still, somehow, only 27 years old, Smith is nearing almost a decade in the music industry. She was 18 when she uploaded her debut track, “Blue Lights”, to SoundCloud, an urgent ballad that felt both modern and instantly classic, full of mournful keys and raw, jazz-infused vocals which told a cinematic tale of inner-city turmoil. Overnight, she became not just a name to know, but a defining voice in a new generation of contemporary soul.

Her debut album Lost & Found was both Mercury-nominated and won her two Brit Awards and, by 22, she’d cemented her star status. It was only in the lead up to her second album, Falling or Flying, in 2023, that the attention took its toll. In press mode for the release, suddenly every public appearance Smith made was greeted with debate over her body, her looks, her skin. Cruel tweets and commentary on every live show surfaced. Even those who supported Smith, added to the noise so that, at one point, “Jorja Smith weight gain” was trending on Twitter, now X, for two days straight.

It not only showed just how narrow and fickle our society’s definition of beauty is – especially when it comes to women of colour – but revealed how many still hold “hotness” as the most important thing a woman has to offer, above their talent or their art. Even when that art is exceptional.

“It did really get to me at a certain point,” she exhales, chewing a nail, “because I felt really happy. That was the maddest thing. I was eating better – sometimes I’ve not been very good at [not] missing meals, being too busy, being a bit too focused on the gym, a bit too obsessed with how I look… So I was quite happy and then suddenly I’ve got people talking about: ‘What happened to her, she’s let herself go, she’s out of her prime, she’s this, this, this.’”

Beyond a new ease in her style, a fundamental ground shift has occurred for Smith. On “High”, her first single back last year, she asked: “Where do you run if you can’t?” For Smith, the answer was simple: home to Walsall, the West Midlands town just north of Birmingham. Inspired by a friendship breakup and reconnection, the track flows almost like a voicenote. When she sings, “I went to find myself, I couldn’t take you there”, it feels like she’s addressing something deeper. “I can’t lie, I didn’t think me moving back home would be such a big thing,” she says, laughing. When she made the move from London in 2023 it became a news story in itself, people seemingly incredulous that a star might choose to live somewhere other than the capital. “I’m from Walsall, and I’ve gone back home,” she shrugs. “That’s it.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Mel Bles 

She has chosen a home town date in Wolverhampton to kick off her upcoming tour in May, which will be followed by two London shows and dates in Europe, North and South America. After we meet, she releases a new single, “Crush”, with AJ Tracey, which sees her try her hand at a sprinkle of rapping, over a beat that feels like it’s lifted directly from the Channel U era. (Days later, her Black Country accent goes viral on TikTok, with thousands of viewers around the world lipsyncing to her playfully rounded vowels.) A joyous performance at the Brits, where she was nominated in the best R&B category, with Mercury winners Ezra Collective, was proof of just how pleased she is to be back where she belongs.

“When I was in the studio and he played me the song, it just took me back. It’s proper nostalgic,” she smiles. She connects to my Bluetooth headphones to play me the two songs she’s working on right now, written with Maverick Sabre and producer Ed Thomas. Even in their nascent stage, I’m transported. The lyrics are brooding, her vocals that signature rich blend, over a Y2K-tinged breakbeat. “I used to come up to London when I was 15, in the summer holidays and work with Mav and Ed and it just felt like that. They were the first people I ever wrote with.” Playing the next one, she says, “This reminds me of a sunrise and a sunset at the same time.”

Even if Smith doesn’t get the big deal about leaving London, when I ask how she’s gotten closer to the peace she’s after, it dawns on her that the biggest catalyst has been her move. “Maybe moving back did have a big impact on me, I think it did,” she pauses. “Even my mum says to me, ‘You look like your old self.’ She texted me that and I thought it’s kind of sad and really sweet.”

She’s protective of her privacy now – be it familial or romantic – and says she now fills her time with stillness and play; writing songs at the piano and going on long countryside walks like she did when she was younger. “I like getting lost,” she says with a smile. “Phone’s dead, off-track, but I’ll find my way back eventually.”

The circular nature of life is not lost on her; of connecting with baby Jorja, returning to where she began, musically, emotionally, geographically. “I’m still her,” she smiles. “I said to my manager the other day, when we were talking about putting new tunes out: ‘Can we just pretend we’re starting again?’” She starts to gather her things, raising her hood in preparation to weave through the busy hotel lobby, back out into the sunshine of the Strand before it disappears. “I think I’ll always be falling or flying,” she says, borrowing from her album title. “But at the moment, [I’m] flying. I’ve been flying for quite a bit”.

I am going to include many other phenomenal women in this Modern Queens feature. Jorja Smith is someone I have always loved. A pure and jaw-dropping talent who I can see putting out music for many years more, I would advise everyone to follow her closely. Such a treasure in the music industry who is inspiring so many other people. As she said in that British Vogue interview: though she feels she is always falling or flying, at this moment, she is…

DEFINITELY flying!

FEATURE: Modern-Day Queens: Billie Marten

FEATURE:

 

 

Modern-Day Queens

PHOTO CREDIT: Katie Silvester

Billie Marten

__________

I am starting this feature…

PHOTO CREDIT: Frances Carter

back up (that I originally entitled Modern Heroines), as there are some amazing women in modern music who I want to celebrate. Some of the finest artists of their generation. The first artist included in the revival is one of my favourites ever. Someone whom I have a lot of affection for. That is Yorkshire-born, London-based Billie Marten. People who read this blog know that her 2016 debut album, Writing of Blues and Yellows, is among my favourite ever. Definitely my top album of the 2010s. This year I think marks ten years since Martin was included in the longlist of the BBC Sound of… 2016 poll. She has been making music for quite a while now. She has a gorgeous new single out, Leap Year. Het upcoming album, Dog Eared, is out on 18th July. A ten-track album, its three singles – Leap Year, Feeling and Crown – prove it is among Billie Marten’s strongest work to date. Only twenty-five years old, this remarkable artist has achieved so much already. She is busy touring this year. Next month, she starts a run of U.S. shows at First Avenue in Minneapolis. She is going to be in the U.K. later in the year. There is so much to love and admire about Billie Marten. Make sure you pre-order the amazing Dog Eared. I am a huge fan so cannot wait for this album. For this feature, and for those who maybe do not know Billie Marten, I am going to bring in some interviews. One is from 2023 and the other two are from 2024. Before that, go and follow her on Instagram. Before getting to those interviews, here is some information about the approaching Dog Eared:

“Billie Marten loves to leave her mark on a good book—underlining important passages, scribbling ideas in the margins, folding the corners of pages into dog ears to mark her place. The 10 songs of Dog Eared serve that purpose, telling the story of who she was as she wrote and recorded it, cleaving her adolescence from her adulthood in order to move forward. She is the songwriter who finds wisdom in horses and encourages self-reflection while realizing she has barely begun her own. She is the singer who makes the chorus of “Goodnight Moon” as beautiful as a lunar corona and smartly lets dissonance slip between her voice and the band around her as she watches something she loves disappear during “Crown.” Marten is a consummate singer-songwriter who has dared to push beyond the limitations of that form and make a stunning record that marks a new page, suggesting what comes next through the strength and beauty of what’s right here”.

I am going to head back to 2023 and an interview Billie Marten had with The Line of Best Fit. Speaking about the astonishing Drop Cherries, It is particularly interesting when she talked about her songwriting and working method and how that changed for her fourth studio album. If you have not heard it then I would urge you to check it out. A sublime and beautiful work from one of the most distinct and consistently brilliant songwriters this country has ever produced:

“It’s called The Essence Game,” she explains from her London flat. “One person leaves the room and then they come back and ask the others questions to find out who this person is. Questions like, ‘If they were a flower, what flower would they be?’ It goes on for hours because you can get really into it, describing the true essence of someone and not the surface level. Basically, I think I've made an album based on the essence game.”

The album she’s talking about is Drop Cherries, Marten’s fourth record which is a collection of songs and fragments of memories that explore the different parts of her relationship. Things have been said at length about Marten’s evolution as an artist and her growth from her debut in 2016 to 2019’s Feeding Seahorses By Hand to her most recent record, Flora Fauna, in 2021. She’s dealt with the same things her counterparts have struggled with: self-doubt, forced creativity, and the attention span of today’s listeners in the world of TikTok and streaming. What’s plagued her most, though, is contorting herself and her music to be what others want to hear.

“I used to spend a lot of time comparing my songwriting style and how often I would do it,” she states. “I would feel like a fraud if I wasn't writing all the time, but then I would feel fraudulent because what I was writing wasn't very good. There has been so much alleviation for me on Drop Cherries because it really just came as it wanted to arrive over two years.”

“I used to spend a lot of time comparing my songwriting style and how often I would do it,” she states. “I would feel like a fraud if I wasn't writing all the time, but then I would feel fraudulent because what I was writing wasn't very good. There has been so much alleviation for me on Drop Cherries because it really just came as it wanted to arrive over two years.”

Taking the time to create work is something Marten doesn’t take for granted, given that her rise as an artist has been documented in its entirety online like a time capsule she’s always mirrored against. “Everything is permanent, everything is online, and you’re not even old enough to get a smear test,” she remarks. “When I look at my first album [Writing of Blues and Yellows], I really thought I was an adult and I wasn’t even a person yet,” she laughs. “If I was in any other life, I would just be beginning now. I feel comforted now that people trusted me [back] then. They clearly thought something was going to become good and allowed me to have this time to get to this point, which is very much a new beginning. I’ve been living at this weird turbo pace and now I’m learning to slow down.”

For Marten, slowing down means leaving London for Somerset and Wales to record alongside her co-producer Dom Monks throughout the late summer of last year. Drop Cherries isn’t a reinvention or a complete left turn from her previous albums. For a lot of artists, there seems to be a desire to mark every album with a new artistic statement; a desire to keep oneself shiny and fresh to stay relevant. But, like with the aforementioned pressure she once struggled with, Marten has let go of the inclination to reinvent herself to appeal and appease. Instead, she makes music the way she has from the start: writing as a way to make her feelings tangible.

The title Drop Cherries was first inspired by an old tale Marten heard from a friend prior to creating the album. In the tale, a gift of cherries is a declaration of love and affection. With that, Marten visualised “stamping blood-red cherries onto a clean, cream carpet,” a blank slate now stained with love. With that image, it’s easy to understand why Marten resonated with the story.

“It’s about looking at people in their simplest form. When I think of a friend, a colour or object comes to mind. This album was really my personal quest to find out the true essence of both myself and this person and our essence together, living as one, which I write about on ‘This Is How We Move’ and ‘I Can’t Get My Head Around Us.’ The album is categorised in four parts; the initial excitement and disbelief about finding something so beautiful, the mundanity of love, pushing away the negative thoughts and cyclical things, and finally arriving at the end. The first lyric on Drop Cherries is “Here as I am / like the toes on my feet,” which is basically me saying this is it, this is what you get, remarkably unremarkable. The final lyric [on the title track] is “I drop cherries at your door / when you ask for more / now I know what I’m here for.” I know what I was made to do, which is the ending of the album. The tone [of the title track] is me closing the chapter and finishing the book; it’s all I have to say on the matter”.

I cannot see any interview from this year yet. In the lead-up to Dog Eared coming out, there will be new stuff for sure. It is an exciting and busy time for her. With a load of tour dates around the world, Marten will be playing to thousands of fans. Someone who I have been a fan of since her debut album. I know she will be releasing so many more albums in years to come. I want to come to some interviews from last year. Starting out with Something You Said and their interview from December. This was ahead of some tour dates in New Zealand and Australia.

“You’re about to tour Australia and New Zealand for the first time! What are you most looking forward to?

I’m *really* looking forward to that. I’ve not so much as dipped a toe in the waters of that world so everything will be new to me; a real assault on the senses, especially given I’ll be coming straight from family Christmas and 2 or 3 degrees. I’m most looking forward to seeing New Zealand for the first time, and really sinking myself into the indigenous culture.

It’s a long old flight from the UK! Do you fly well? How are you going to spend your 24 hours on a plane?

I have spent what feels like half my life on planes, especially in the last couple of years, so I’ve somewhat perfected what one can achieve in economy class. I like to do this trick with my bag and tie it around the seat tray, then it’s a nice hold for my feet so I don’t get back ache. That’s my top tip. Also sweets, always bring sweets on a flight. I intend to watch the LOTR [Lord of the Rings] extended series, of course.

Last time we spoke was when Flora Fauna was coming out. Since then you’ve released the brilliant album, Drop Cherries. Is there another album in the works now?

I suppose always, which is a strange realisation that there’s never _not_ an album!

Tell us about your latest single, Crown…

Well I love it very much and it’s the first slice of my time spent in NYC this summer with the formidable Phil Weinrobe. He’s a special maker and capturer of music and it’s just such a joy to create with him. Crown sounds like a bouncy ball to me.

What are your plans for 2025, after you’ve been Down Under?

Very much getting over the beauty of that trip, I imagine. Also writing. Nesting. Getting ready to tour again.

Can you give us your recommendations from 2024? What have you been watching/listening to/reading?

Watching – I’ve been re-watching The Sopranos, so my walks around London are hallucinating New Jersey mafia scenes. So so good. I have a thing for vulnerable yet powerful male characters.

Listening – my friend Clara Mann is about to release the most beautiful and well made record. Check out her first few singles. There’s also an ABBA song (old) that I never knew about that I’m obsessed with called If It Wasn’t For The Nights. The chorus is HEARTBREAKING.

Reading – I’m soon to post my annual end of year book list, in the least pretentious way possible because it’s just random stuff I’ve read over the year. But a favourite from there would be Horse of Selene by Juanita Casey. A really beautiful Irish story and a great take on raw feminine strength and horses and the wildness of a landscape.

And finally… last time we spoke you said you’d got really into Line of Duty! Did you end up finishing the whole series and if so, what did you think of the finale? It was quite divisive…

Ha yes! I certainly did. And I remember feeling a little let down with the drama of it all, but, wow what a show along with Happy Valley!”.

I am finishing off with another interview from last December. Junkee spoke with Billie Marten about her then-latest single, Crown, and they looked back at Drop Cherries. An artist who makes music that is honest to her, I always love reading and hearing what Marten has to say. I am also looking forward to seeing what interviews come in promotion of Dog Eared. This is one of the most astonishing musicians I have ever experienced. If you have never heard her music then please do:

“But that tenderness is front and centre of her newest single ‘Crown’, which she wrote in her garden staring at her cat . “The cat sits in the shade/And I am not afraid of love,” she sings. The very same cat that makes an appearance during my Zoom interview with Billie. “He's a perpetual con artist,” she says. “He will act like he's a starving, malnourished animal, and he eats like a king. So he's dancing around me now, even though it's 9pm and he's had three meals already.”

The question I was going to ask Billie, before her definitely hungry cat jumped up on the table next to her, was what she was most looking forward to on her upcoming Australian tour. “I am so ready to go out there. I feel like I've waited my whole musical career to get to you.” And equally so, we’ve been waiting for her.

In terms of her new direction with music, Billie wanted ‘Crown’ to be an introduction to a “newish sound in quite a soft way.” “I feel like it's a good representation of what the album will sound like,” she says. “The vibe from a narrative point of view is always a continuation. I'm always an autobiographical writer, and I have only just realised that. In the past, I've sort of felt pressure to or felt self indulgent with it, and I think that's something a lot of artists sort of carry with them, but I'm flipping that narrative for myself and just reminding myself that there's nothing else I can do. When I try to write like another person, it doesn't work.”

Ultimately, Billie just seeks to be honest with her music, and in turn, with us. “Perhaps that’s why shows have become so lovely, and relationships with fans have [too] in some cases. It's really kind of intertwined, and I know that with the amount of work that's out there now, people have had enough life to live with the music. So there's quite profound relationships with the songs, which is a blessing.”

“[‘Crown’] was written quite quickly, between touring Drop Cherry stuff, and it was certainly recorded before I was ready. I did it in July, and we did it in about, I think about six days. It's all completely live. And because of that, there's a new feeling that you can hear, and this sort of palpable… I don't know, it feels very tingly. I was talking to Phil [Weinrobe], the producer I've been working with, and we cannot figure out what this album sounds like. The only thing I can give to you is that in my head, it sounds like a lava lamp.” That might just be my favourite way to describe an album. “I want one,” she adds. “I'm gonna get one in commemoration of the album.”

Billie, who’s been releasing music for almost a decade now, has noticed herself evolve and mature as an artist. For her, creating music is cyclical. “For me it tends to be that you're in the album presence every two years, and it feels very much to me, like a natural cycle,” she says. “We think about the leaves on the trees. It’s very much that feeling for me. And by the time an album comes out, I've shed every leaf possible and there’s nothing left. I am a wooden husk, and then I'm ready to start rebuilding and soak the sun in. And what a lame analogy. It's late.”

Lame analogy or not, it’s still a beautiful way to think about making music. You can tell that Billie pours all of herself into her albums. That’s probably why they feel so personal. And probably why Billie focuses all her attention on one song at a time. “I'm always just trying to write one song, and I won't stop until I write that song,” she says. “I don't know what that is. I think everybody wants a personal statement creatively. I'm just on my daily adventure, looking to find out what that is. And I'm certainly still in the early stages of life, but having lived a stupid amount already feels like I am relieving some of that pressure to find out the answer, you know? So I suppose the mood on this next album sort of reflects that, and it's lighter and it's more about the instrumentation and the lyrics were sort of subconscious and free-flowing. And I think that's a really good way to get stuff out and you figure out what it means after you've written it.”

I’ve always loved to think of albums as time capsules of where the artist was at that time in their lives. And that’s how Billie thinks of her albums too. “You have certain feelings attached with each album,” she says. “And regardless of what it sounds like, it’s a very immediate gut feeling. The first one, I'm really fond of that time. I was really lucky and grateful that I managed to make an album at 17. I think it's a really good document for me when I become an older woman to look back on. That teenage diary, essentially, was documented right then and there. Then the second one, I definitely struggled with the industry, and I struggled with just everything in life. I'd moved to London and obviously left school and was sort of feeling a bit rudderless. I think that's a definite theme in that album. I was not happy. Someone in their early 20s [being unhappy] is a really common feeling, and I'm glad I was a lot braver then than I am now to sort of expel that sadness and grief and sort of raw emotion.”

“Then the third one I just sort of went a bit mad, and we made an album. Rich Cooper and I, who worked on the first one with me, and a song called ‘Mice’ as well, which is one of my favourites and always will be. We worked together in lockdown and I think we got a bit excited about making the largest sound we could with two people, and I was sort of getting a bit more into the social, cultural aspects of writing and having a bit more of a voice to share. And then the fourth was very much, I've said this before, but it really felt like my third album, and it was the album I thought I was making when I was 17, but I was so not ready or capable or equipped to make an album like that.”

Billie’s music made me think that she’s always been so sure of her emotions and in tune with herself, but according to Billie, that wasn’t always the case. “I felt very alone in teenagehood,” she says. “And going through puberty was weirdly difficult for me, and I couldn't find a voice and I certainly found that in music.” But what she couldn’t find within herself, she found in other artists. “The aspects I was looking for I found in the introspective, sort of tortured artists, Nick Drake being one of them. John Martyn was a biggie. That's why my last name is Marten. I just took somebody else's name and changed a letter and thought, ‘Let's go with that”.

On 18th July, Dog Eared arrives. Billie Marten’s fifth studio album is going to be one you will not want to miss out on. Ten years ago, Heavy Weather was released. From her debut album, Writing of Blues and Yellows, it is a mesmeric track. Since then, her music has shifted and evolved but it remains as spellbinding and unique. With Leap Year out, proving that this is an artist in a league other own, I was keen to revisit her music for this feature. In the next instalment is Jorja Smith. Billie Marten is a simply phenomenal talent who is going to be making golden music for…

YEARS more.

FEATURE: Don’t Call Tonight: Why Wasn’t Lady Gaga Afforded a U.K. Headline Slot for This Year’s Festivals?

FEATURE:

 

 

Don’t Call Tonight

Why Wasn’t Lady Gaga Afforded a U.K. Headline Slot for This Year’s Festivals?

__________

I know I have written about this…

PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coachella

a few times before, but looking at the festival line-ups this year and there do seem to be these gaps and talking points. One of the biggest artists in the world, Lady Gaga, was overlooked for this year’s Glastonbury. When asked in a recent interview what it would take for her to accept a Glastonbury invite, she said it would be a matter of a phone call. I have been debating why she has been overlooked. Granted, her sets are quite big and extravagant. Phenomenally engaging, dramatic and theatrical at times, maybe there would be quite a sizeable budget involved. There does seem to be an age issue when it comes to booking women as festival headliners. The likes of Reading & Leeds and Glastonbury very rarely book a female headliner over the age of forty. Lady Gaga is forty next year and, even though Glastonbury has booked maybe one female headliners over the age of thirty (maybe two), I think Lady Gaga would be have been the oldest of the Pyramid Stage. I did wonder why Kylie Minogue was not booked this year. I guess there are reasons why an artist like Lady Gaga might not have been considered for Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds or another big festival. However, like Charli xcx, is producing the best music of her career. One cannot accuse all major U.K. festivals or being ageist when it comes to women. I know that Glastonbury’s Pyramid Stage is broad and has welcomed some legends through the years, there does seem to be this block when it comes to women. Why are icons like Lady Gaga not considered?

When it comes to a headline act, I admire festivals that book women regardless of age. However, there does seem to be this tendency for the major U.K. festivals to put women over the age of thirty/forty on lesser stages. If you take age out of the equation, is it just a case of cost? Lady Gaga having these huge shows that would blow a budget?! In terms of creating spectacle and delivering one of the best headline sets ever, there are few as good as she is. It is a bit baffling. Consider this review from her recent headline slot at Coachella:

“Did she ever. Gaga, more than any other contemporary pop star, has approached pop as transmogrification, live performance like a hunter – the piercing gaze, transparent hunger and annihilating focus of an apex predator. And with Gagachella, as her fans have already termed a thesis statement of a set, she goes in for the kill. You knew from the minute she appeared in full deranged queen regalia, the head of a multi-story hoop skirt that opened to reveal a birdcage prison of backup dancers, that the vision was nigh. The nearly two-hour performance, covering 22 songs from her dance pop catalogue, joins Beyoncé’s postponed Homecoming in the pantheon of groundbreaking Coachella headliner sets – a fully realized vision of a pop master, a testament to years of hard-earned experience at the highest level, and a banger dance party with production and delivery in a league above her peers.

At 38, Gaga reigns as a monarch in pop music, a fact she wielded to stupefying effect on Friday evening to a crowd that extended far beyond any eye could see. “Welcome to my house,” she intoned before opener Bloody Mary – understatement of the month, as her house was the sprawling skeleton of a neoclassical opera house, her domain an arresting realm of elaborate make-believe. For the purpose of Mayhem, the new album that returns to her original principles of pounding volume, dirty synths, high theatrics and irresistible hooks, Gaga conjures an entire fantasy of witches and queens, a typically twisted, self-referential fairytale of literal dark and light told in five acts.

Gagachella was notably not a full career retrospective – no tracks from Artpop, Joanne or Chromatica, with just A Star Is Born’s Shallow as the lone representative of Gaga’s decade-long pivot away from gritty, sticky music that makes you want to move. Yet it still felt comprehensive, all-encompassing, by seamlessly braiding her foundational texts – The Fame, Born This Way – with her latest one. Mayhem is easily Gaga’s best album since Artpop, both a return to form and a hard-won study of warring personas contained in one self, pop music with sharp teeth and beastly desire. Ever the visionary and literalist, she rendered her internal strife as a court battle between a domineering queen in black and an innocent in white, with full wig changes from black bob to blond ringlets necessitating long, pulsating transitions that lavished attention on her army of backup dancers and, frankly, metal instrumentalists.

Gagachella, too, marks a return to form – from the outset of her career, Gaga has treated pop music as possession, her spasmodic dance style like an exorcism, more refreshingly loose and instinctual than her peers. The Mother Monster’s visions – a chess battle to the death (Poker Face), rage at fame sung to a skeleton (Perfect Celebrity), new Gaga strangled by 2009 VMAs Gaga in a zombie-filled grave (Disease, the concert high point that left me agape) – possessed Coachella with an unstoppable need to dance, primal screams of the gagged.

Gaga’s voice, honed with time, was more dextrous and luminous than ever, and though she didn’t miss a note, the performance was as much a feat of acting as singing – Gaga the possessed, the haughty, the hunted, the strangled, the Oscar nominee. Her performances often have the feeling of life-or-death stakes; even a track as sinuously groovy as Killah gets the embodiment of a demonic fever, accompanied by French producer Gesaffelstein entombed in black, the oil-slicked phantom of Gaga’s twisted opera.

PHOTO CREDIT: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Coachella

But in the spirit of duality, she also broke character just enough – to salute her fans, her fiance, her spiritual belief of interconnectedness. “The truth is we’re all one. It’s all just one big fucking thing,” she said before the triumphant victory lap of Born This Way. “I love you so much.” The mayhem carried through a transcendent finale of Bad Romance staged, naturally, as a Frankenstein-esque revivification with plague masks, Gaga’s face at the conclusion shifting between performance snarl and personal joy. With both, she led not one but two extended curtain calls with the full cast and crew – unusual for a music festival, but fitting for an all-timer night of pop theater in the desert”.

The festival season is close at hand. It will be with us soon. It has been a bit disappointing that some incredible women making the best music of their careers have been either booked on smaller stages or not booked at all. Not to say that age is the main factor. However, it is something that holds weight. I realise that booking a major artist can be costly and festivals do not really have a massive budget to spend. Think what an artist like Lady Gaga could deliver at a U.K. festival. I don’t think it was a case of her being a risk. That she might not be in top form and it would have been a mistake. After a triumphant Coachella set, it would have been nice to cap that off with one or two big U.K. headline slots. One wonders whether she will be considered next year. When it comes to this year, a lack of Lady Gaga seems like…

A major oversight.

FEATURE: Trash Talking: Shirley Manson’s Blast Against Ageism: A Music Industry Issue Slow to Shift

FEATURE:

 

 

Trash Talking

IN THIS PHOTO: Garbage’s Shirley Manson in 2022/PHOTO CREDIT: Kathryna Hancock

Shirley Manson’s Blast Against Ageism: A Music Industry Issue Slow to Shift

__________

I can’t recall when it was…

IN THIS PHOTO: Garbage/PHOTO CREDIT: Garbage

but Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant said that ageism in music wasn’t a think anymore. Although ageism does impact men, it is still an issue very much faced by women. A fresh and sadly unsurprising case of ageism against Garbage from Daily Mail recently provoked rebellion and anger from their lead, Shirley Manson. Labelling the band as “unrecognisable” in their new photos, it did seem very much pointed at Shirley Manson. The fact is that she looks amazing! A remarkable beautiful and vibrant woman who, as she says herself, rocks harder than anyone. A hugely influential musician who has been at the front of one of the greatest bands of their time. Even if the comments came from the bowels of the gutter press, it still can’t be ignored. The fact that there is still this problem of ageism in the music industry. One that exists throughout society. In recent years, artists such as Kylie Minogue and Lady Gaga have addressed ageism levelled at them. These amazing women producing the best and most essential music of their careers. It is sad and a horrible example to set when women are judged on their looks and age. A lot of women who ruled in the 1990s and are still making music today being compared to their former selves. Judged to be unrecognisable or strange because, and how dare they, they have aged! And wonderfully too. However, if a woman doesn’t look like she is in her twenties and is how she ‘should’ look, then she is maligned, criticised or marginalised. I am going to come to some comments Shirley Manson made in a recent interview. Before that, here is her reaction to the Daily Mail article:

“Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson has responded to “weaponised” comments about her appearance.

Taking to Instagram this morning (April 13), Manson shared a screenshot of a Daily Mail article that claimed the rock band looked “unrecognisable” in new album promo photos for recently shared single

“Quite a header from the Daily Mail yesterday,” her caption began. “What is THIS supposed to mean?!? The Druids look almost exactly the same as they have always done for thirty years so I can’t help thinking this is directed at me.

“Look – I’m nearly sixty years old. Of course I’m not going to look anything like my late twenties self?!?” she continued. “Quite honestly I think it would be a bit creepy if I did but hey that’s just me. Either way – this kind of language is weaponised to put a woman like me in my place.”

Manson’s comments come after Millie Bobby Brown slammed numerous tabloids that criticised her appearance in March, while Lady Gaga also hit out at “ageism” in the music industry the same month.

The ‘Stupid Girl’ singer went on to say she rejected the “gift”, writing: “This gift is a fail. I shall continue to age as I am. I will continue to wrinkle and flub – lose an inch of my height here and gain a new inch or two there – but I will still look cute in my pyjamas with bed head and no make up on and I will always – no matter what I look like – no matter what they say about me – I will always – and forever – rock HARDER than most.”

News of the band’s upcoming eighth studio album ‘Let All That We Imagine Be The Light’ was first shared back in February, when it was confirmed that the band had finished work on the 10-track follow-up to 2021’s ‘No Gods No Masters’. The record is due for release on May 30 (pre-order/pre-save here)”.

In an interview with The Guardian recently, Shirley Manson talked about her experiences as a woman in music in the '90s.  Even if the industry has shifted in terms of its misogyny and sexism – not fully but it is not as flagrant as it was back then -, it is clear that things have not changed completely. Ageism still an especially big concern. Sexism evident when we look around the industry: from playlists to festival line-ups to headline acts. It seemed like a brutal landscape thirty years ago:

“The 90s were also brutal to women in the music industry. “I was so young and I was hungry and distracted. I didn’t notice a lot of the micro-misogyny and the micro-sexism at first,” Manson says. “I was blinded by the dazzle of my career. I wasn’t paying attention. Back then, I read my own press, like a fool, and I was reading these horrible descriptions of me, really degrading or sexual in nature, or just nasty shit. It wasn’t just the male writers, although primarily the 90s music journalists were male. It really stung, and I found that hard.”

Critique was often lascivious and slavering, but any amount of objectification was supposedly fine because it was always ironic, and that, in itself, was bullshit. But it morphed into a kind of bitterness and resentment, which I never understood. People would tear into Manson – and everyone: Kenickie, Sleeper, even Salad – and I never really got where the anger came from”.

Ageism shouldn’t have a place in modern music! It is not only tabloids and the garbage press that are offending music royalty. Is there still this invisible line between women in their twenties and early-thirties and those who are older. If you are in the latter camp then are you less relevant? The ludicrous clickbait from Daily Mail. Suggesting a woman in her fifties should be subjected to this toxicity and ageism. Manson and her contemporaries look and are amazing! Some of the finest and most engaging live performers are in their forties, fifties and sixties. Kylie Minogue still delivering five-star sets! Someone, as I argued, who should have headlined Glastonbury this year. Lady Gaga – again, where was her call for this year’s Glastonbury?! -, is someone who has faced ageism. She recently spoke about it at the iHeartRadio Music Awards:

“Lady Gaga has reflected on ageism within the pop industry in an acceptance speech at the iHeartRadio Music Awards.

The US singer, 38, who recently topped the UK album charts for a fifth time with her latest album Mayhem, said she is “just getting warmed up” even though “the world might consider a woman in her late 30s old”.

The Abracadabra singer picked up the innovator award and also won the best collaboration gong, along with US music star Bruno Mars, for their hit single Die With A Smile, which features on her new record.

“I don’t know totally how to think about this, because winning an award honouring my entire career at 38 years old is a hard thing to get my head around,” she said, while accepting the innovator award.

“On the one hand, I feel like I’ve been doing this forever, and on the other hand, I know I’m just getting started.

“Even though the world might consider a woman in her late 30s old, for a pop star, which is insane, I promise that I’m just getting warmed up.

“Innovation isn’t about breaking rules, it’s about writing your own and convincing the world they were theirs all along. 

“Like showing up to the Grammys in an egg, or creating an anthem that everyone told us was too controversial until it became undeniable.”

The singer was once carried onto the red carpet in an egg at the 2011 Grammy Awards.

“If I have learned anything in three decades I’ve been at this, it’s that the most powerful innovation is your authenticity,” she added.

“Every time I was the only woman in the room, the loudest voice was inside my own head telling me not to compromise.

“Listening to that voice always showed me exactly where I belonged.

“And tonight I think of my grandmothers, fiercely brilliant Italian-American women who reinvented their destinies with nothing but strength and dreams and determination.

“They didn’t invent technology or art – they invented possibility, shaping the future with nothing more than their minds. And those women, my ancestors, they’re the greatest innovators that I’ve ever known”.

I didn’t really want to leave things at liking and interacting with Shirley Manson’s Instagram post. It is always women calling out ageism. You do not see that many men shouting against those who seem to feel women in music are faded, past it or do not appeal to the eye if they are past the age of thirty. It is always horrible when you see a woman in music have to speak out against comments from the media, fans or someone in the industry. There does need to be this vocal outcry from men in music. One can say artists like Shirley Manson and Lady Gaga have fought back and rightly stated how women their age are in their prime, just getting started and not going to take notice of the kind of crap they are subjected to. However, you feel like the problem of ageism is not going away. Rather than judge women and castigate them if they have the audacity to not stay super-young forever, these queens should be given….

THE respect they deserve.

FEATURE: The Digital Mixtape: Mel B at Fifty

FEATURE:

 

 

The Digital Mixtape

PHOTO CREDIT: Sami Drasin/NBC (via Glamour)

Mel B at Fifty

__________

THERE is always that hope…

IN THIS PHOTO: Spice Girls in N.Y.C., April 1997 (Left: top to bottom: Geri Halliwell-Horner (née Halliwell; ‘Ginger Spice’), Emma Bunton (‘Baby Spice’) and Melanie Chisholm (‘Sporty Spice’). Right: back to front: Victoria Beckham (née Adams; ‘Posh Spice’) and Melanie Brown (‘Scary Spice’)/PHOTO CREDIT: Michael O'Neill

that the Spice Girls will perform together again. Whether there are tensions within the group that can’t be healed or it is about timing, we do wish that one day they would reconsider taking to the stage again. Maybe a festival appearance or another tour. The Spice Girls’ final album, Forever, turns twenty-five on 1st November. One celebration that we have before then is the fiftieth birthday of Mel B. On 29th May, fans will mark the birthday of an artist who, with Emma Bunton, Victoria Beckham, Melanie Chisholm and Geri Horner, transformed music in the 1990s. They made a huge impact and created this phenomenon. Whatever you think of the solo output of the individual Spice Girls members and whether it came close to their work as a group, you cannot deny that Mel B was a huge reason for the Spice Girls’ success. In July 2024, Mel B was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Leeds Beckett University for her career and work for the charity Women's Aid. She is someone who I really respect. Because she turns fifty soon, I am going to end with a compilation featuring Spice Girls classics and deep cuts. A few solo songs from Mel B. Before then, here is some biotrophy from IMDB:

“Born on May 29, 1975 in Leeds, England, Melanie Brown became a member of Spice Girls in 1994.

As a recording artist, Mel B's achievements with the Spice Girls are legendary: 55 million records sold worldwide, nine number one singles in the UK, 11 gold records as well as a total of 24 platinum and multi-platinum records. The Spice Girls reunion World Tour was a critical and popular triumph and the group was recently named Best Band by the U.K. Glamour Awards. Mel B has continued the same successful ways as a solo artist. Her 1998 single "I Want You" with Missy Elliott sold 80,000 copies in its first week, and gave Mel B her first solo #1. "Hot" was her first solo album, released on 9th October 2000. It entered the UK charts at #28. Despite producing 2 Top 5 singles (3, if you include the hit "I Want You Back"), the album only ever re-entered the chart once after dropping out of the Top 100 - peaking at #95 when "Feels So Good" was being promoted in February 2001. She followed up with the release "LA State of Mind" in 2005.

Mel B has also shone brightly as both an actress and television personality. She starred as "Mimi" in the smash hit Broadway musical "Rent", performed in the Vagina Monologues in London, had key roles in the feature films "LD 50 Lethal Dose", the Will Smith co-production "The Seat Filler", and appeared as a comedic performer in the British show "Burn It". Mel B has made a significant impact in the world of television, hosting "This Is My Moment", "The MOBO Awards", "Pure Naughty", "Voodoo Princess", "Top of the Pops", "Party in the Park for the Prince's Trust", and "The All Star Animal Awards" in addition to her role as a correspondent on the highly-rated "Access Hollywood." Mel B's most recent triumph was taking America by storm by on ABC's smash hit "Dancing with the Stars". Mel B and her partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy were the highest-scoring couple during the 2007 season and made it to the finals, earning a perfect score on their final dance.

Mel B is also a best-selling author; her hit autobiography was released in 2002. The book features her compelling personal insights and experiences, both as a Spice Girl and in her own life. "Catch a Fire" reached #7 in book-sales charts”.

That biography is a little out of date, though it does give you an indication of her legacy and brilliance. I would advise people to buy her 2024 book, Brutally Honest. As Melanie Brown, she wrote it with Lucy Gannon:

“As a Spice Girl, TV talent show judge and Broadway star, Mel B a.k.a Scary Spice, has been a global icon since her twenties. But behind the glittering façade of fame, the struggles and pain of this working-class, mixed-race girl from Leeds are laid bare in her critically acclaimed best-selling memoir, Brutally Honest.

With deep personal insight, remarkable frankness and trademark Yorkshire humour, the book tells how she went from Girl Power to girl powerless during her ten-year emotionally abusive marriage. Tracing a path through the key moments in her life, she reflects on her childhood, rise to fame and her chilling downward spiral before she finally broke free.
In this expanded edition, written with Louise Gannon, Mel brings her story up to date. With her trademark honesty, she tells the unfiltered story of piecing herself back together, dealing with trauma and new heartbreak whilst becoming a champion for survivors of abuse, performing once more with the Spice Girls and receiving her MBE from Prince William.

MEDIA REVIEWS

You cannot underestimate the awareness this book is raising about coercive control – it is helping us to save lives.

This book is so powerful so real, so strong and so emotional – this is exactly Melanie.

An unflinching account of how an icon of girl power became utterly powerless in her own life, this brave and important book deserves to be read by fans and non-fans alike. Utterly absorbing and deeply affecting. - The Guardian

This is the most gut wrenching, punch-in-the-stomach honest celebrity autobiography I’ve ever read. Mel B […] takes us to the darkest places behind her Scary Spice persona, educating about the true horror of domestic abuse in the process. - The Sun

If [Melanie] Brown awakens even one reader to the reality of their situation, her legacy will endure long beyond the second Spice Girls reunion. - The Observer

By opening up about the realities of abuse and addiction, Mel B has launched a new, but equally important, version of Girl Power. Brutally Honest will grip you from the start - Grazia

Much like a rolling Netflix series, you find yourself hungrily digesting chapter after chapter of Melanie’s life in one sitting. Some parts are hilarious and relatable; others are just painfully difficult to read. - Gal-Dem

Brutally Honest is a captivating memoir that candidly discusses the chain of abuse that still exists for women in society and what it will take to break it. - OK! Magazine

Brutally Honest is just what it says. Melanie Brown’s account of an abusive relationship – of the once fearless Scary Spice being made to feel so worthless that she believes suicide is the only way out – is gripping, shocking and harrowing. - The Guardian”.

We will soon mark the fiftieth birthday of an artist and songwriter who has accomplished so much. Doing wonderful work as an Ambassador for Women’s Aid, she is someone who has written about her experiences of domestic abuse and discussed it. Mel B gives strength and support to so many people. In terms of the future, maybe a Spice Girls reunion will wait. Wannabe turns thirty next year, so the members might do something for that. Regardless, I wanted to salute the wonderful Mel B (or Melanie B/Melanie Brown). Below is a mixtape of Spice Girls and solo songs where we get to see her talent shine. In the world of music, there is nobody like her. An icon and inspiration for millions through the decades, she is so loved and admired. Whether new music, a book or acting, I hope that we get something new from Mel B…

VERY soon.

FEATURE: All His Love Is 'til Eternity: Kate Bush’s Timeless The Man with the Child in His Eyes at Forty-Seven

FEATURE:

 

 

All His Love Is 'til Eternity

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

Kate Bush’s Timeless The Man with the Child in His Eyes at Forty-Seven

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IT is no surprise that…

Alexis Petridis wrote the following in 2022 about Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in His Eyes: “Bush wrote The Man With the Child in His Eyes when she was 13, which frankly beggars belief: eerie, sexually charged and astonishingly beautiful, it would be an incredible achievement for an adult. As it was, it offered the first sign that Bush wasn’t merely a prodigiously talented writer, but an actual genius”. Released on 26th May, 1978, I am looking ahead to the forty-seventh anniversary of this exceptional song. The second single from her debut album, 1978’s The Kick Inside, it reached number six in the U.K. Bush performed The Man with the Child in His Eyes during her sole appearance on Saturday Night Live in the U.S. There is still a lot of mystery around the song. I have written about it numerous times through the years. Nobody knows for sure exactly when The Man with the Child in His Eyes was written. I have always assumed Bush wrote it at East Wickham Farm when she was thirteen. Anywhere between 30th July, 1971 and 29th July, 1972. Bush herself has said she wrote it when she was sixteen. Maybe some time during 1974. Perhaps when she was living at 44 Wickham Road. A year before she stepped into AIR Studios in London and recorded it. Although we should believe Kate Bush, I do hope it is true she wrote it when she was thirteen, as it gives extra weight to the beauty and maturity of it. However, she was still a teenager so it is a remarkable achievement! The B-side of The Man with the Child in His Eyes was Moving.

There is also debate and mystery as to who the titular ‘Man’ is in the song. Even though many feel it is a former boyfriend, Steve Blacknell, others feel it is her mentor David Gilmour. However, Kate Bush has always said it is about nobody specific and it is about men in general. Before re-evaluating the song and arguing why it still sound otherworldly and unique to this day, I want to bring in some useful background and analysis. I will come to part of an article from Dreams of Orgonon and their inspection of The Man with the Child in His Eyes. Before that, returning to something I have quoted before, here are examples of Kate Bush discussing the meaning behind one of her most loved songs:

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

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

Oh, well it’s something that I feel about men generally. [Looks around at cameramen] Sorry about this folks. [Cameramen laugh] That a lot of men have got a child inside them, you know I think they are more or less just grown up kids. And that it’s a… [Cameramen laugh] No, no, it’s a very good quality, it’s really good, because a lot of women go out and get far too responsible. And it’s really nice to keep that delight in wonderful things that children have. And that’s what I was trying to say. That this man could communicate with a younger girl, because he’s on the same level.

Swap Shop, 1979”.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1978/PHOTO CREDIT: Paul Fievez/ANL/REX/Shutterstock

Prior to getting to that Dreams of Orgonon article, it is worth acknowledging how loved The Man with the Child in His Eyes is. Covered by quite a few artists, it is played widely to this day. Ranked highly when it comes to her impressive catalogue of songs. In 2018, when ranking Kate Bush’s singles, The Guardian placedThe Man with the Child in His Eyes second to Running Up That Hill (A Deal with God). MOJO ranked Kate Bush’s fifty-best songs last year and put The Man with the Child in His Eyes in fifth. Even if I have sourced these quotes before, this warrants repeating. This is what they said: “The contemplative but still visionary preamble to Wuthering Heights, which it preceded on The Kick Inside. The soundtrack is assured orchestral pop – imagine an autumnal daytime analogue to Scott Walker’s Sleepwalkers Woman – and within she cross-fades the archetypes bewilderingly. Simultaneously a daughter/mother/lover, her reverie concerns an understanding father figure who’s also a child – and who, it appears, exists only in her imagination. Still wholly bewitching, though, and incredibly she wrote it when she was just 13”. Stereogum included The Man with the Child in His Eyes in their top ten Kate Bush songs feature (“Written by Bush at age 16, “The Man With the Child in His Eyes” is another example of her knack for introspective songs that validate the interior lives of women and girls. “It was a very intimate song about a young girl almost voicing her inner thoughts, not really to anyone, but rather to herself,” she said during a 1981 appearance on the TV show Razmatazz. Sparkling orchestras and her burbling piano intertwine in a gorgeous, almost fugue state, bolstering the character’s observations. “The piano just started speaking to me,” she said in a promo interview. “It was a theory that I had had for a while that I just observed in most of the men that I know: the fact that they just are little boys inside and how wonderful it is that they manage to retain this magic”). No denying the fact that this song is a work of genius.

I will come to my point and main argument. Before that, I do want to get to the Dreams of Orgonon analysis that I have teased. There are some observations made about The Man with the Child in His Eyes. One of those Kate Bush songs that stops me in my tracks every time I hear it. Something that holds that much power. It is mind-boggling how beautiful and accomplished it is:

“It’s a song that’s as striking for what it is as what it isn’t. It’s simple and incomprehensible, childlike and mature, populist and intricately niche. And it just works — “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is as deliberate and intelligent a song as Kate Bush has recorded so far. It lingered in obscurity and exploded into the light. That’s probably as apt a metaphor for the Bush story in this era as anything.

“The Man with the Child in His Eyes” resembles little else Kate ever produced in its content or historical context

We’re in the era where Kate is a precocious unknown, venturing into the recording studio for the first time and staking her claim to it. The most commonly remarked-upon aspect of “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” is Kate’s age when it was written. The song’s recording date and release date are spaced out by about three years, putting the creation and publication of the song in entirely different worlds. I’m not going to quibble with exactly how old she was at the time (13 or 14 according to popular accounts, and 16 by Kate’s own memory, which would dates its composition some time before the ’75 AIR London session), but there’s a point to be made here: discourse around on this song tends to point out Kate’s age at the time and leave it at that. And it’s hard to fault that—it’s unheard of for someone in their early-to-mid teens to write pop songs this good. The song stuck out to everyone during production—everyone from ubiquitous beneficiary Dave Gilmour to EMI manager Bob Mercer knew they were hearing something special. But plenty of artists record hits at a young age. What makes “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” stand out?

The answer presents itself immediately—most young artists in the Seventies didn’t write their own hits, and their hits were rarely so good. The only other UK hit single written by an under-18 female artist by the time of “Child” that I can find is “Terry,” an a lugubrious piece of grimdark pop from 1964 by 16-year-old Twinkle. Apart than that, young singers didn’t (and probably weren’t permitted to) write their own songs. The lack of songwriting royalties certainly didn’t hurt precocious young stars—Helen Shapiro recorded hits without writing them, and Little Jimmy Osmond hit number 1 at the age of nine with the agonizing “Long Haired Lover from Liverpool.” Picking on these young artists who sang some micromanaged mediocre hits four to five decades ago would be petty at best and mean-spirited at worst, so we’ll eschew that, but all this shows just how odd “The Man with the Child in His Eyes” was. It was as far from micromanaged as possible. Its inception and recording predate its public release by about three years, and Kate was mostly left to her own devices while creating it (her family helped her procure business deals that would basically allow her to do whatever she wanted creatively).

So what we’re given with “Child” is that ever-so-rare thing in pop music: a young person’s vision of the world, undiluted by executive interference. In it Kate sings about a strange, wonderful man, older than herself but with an adolescent spirit that’s not unlike hers. The song is somewhat impenetrable, like any artistic work by a young person beginning to navigate the world, and it’s accessible and applicable and gorgeous.

We find eyes romantic and beautiful—there’s an aesthetic thrill to them as well as the excitement of seeing someone’s emotional state reflected in them. The old adage about eyes being the window to the soul is a tedious aphorism because of its obviousness, not because it’s not true. The singer of “Child” is discussing their point of view, but also finding joy in the perspective and experiences of someone else. It’s a straightforward dynamic, expressed obscurely. Few details are imparted about the titular Man at all—the singer is interested in capturing their spiritual essence. There’s an implication of the picaresque to the song, particularly in how the singer refers to the object of their attention as someone “telling me about the sea,” suggesting someone who’s embarked on adventures, probably imagined ones. Reality isn’t what counts when you’re young—it’s the inner landscapes you’ve traveled.

There’s a nice lack of dependence to the song as well. Kate leans on no one here—the song’s protagonist places themselves at a safe distance from the Man, and Kate herself has even more control of the affair than she’s probably aware of. She doesn’t lean on male-pioneered rock or ballads—she offers her spin on the genre by discussing her experiences as a woman. As we’ll see, Kate Bush isn’t above gender essentialism—she’s written countless songs about the supposed central human dynamic of relationships between men and women”.

Nothing really exists like this. In terms of the themes and ideas behind the song, has another artist talked about the child-like wonder and playfulness of men? The fact that a part of them never grows up. I Can’t really think of a track like it. There are female artists who write songs in their teens, though I have not discovered a song like The Man with the Child in His Eyes. The blend of the piano and orchestra. Again, there has been nothing like Kate Bush’s masterpiece since. The effect it has on the senses. That production sound and Bush’s vocal. That combination still has not been bettered for my money. There are Kate Bush songs where you can hear comparable efforts. Maybe tracks that have not aged that well. However, The Man with the Child in His Eyes is ageless. Like its central hero, the track has something inside that remains child-like. It sounds spine-tingling now because it is not overloaded with technology that is dated. It is a pure and from the heart. Not a bid for commercial success or trying to fit into what was around in 1978. A song that sounds classic and modern. Like nothing else but somehow relatable and universal. A set of lyrics that could only come from Kate Bush but could also be seen as poetry. Many artists have been compared to Kate Bush but none have written a song like this. One of the reasons why it is seen as one of Bush’s best and is going to be impossible to equal. I don’t think an artist today could write a song like it. They would get it wrong or it would sound insincere somehow. Whether she wrote it aged thirteen or sixteen, you can imagine her sitting in her room with a pink felt tip pen and composing these lyrics. Picture Kate Bush at AIR Studios in June 1975 backed by an orchestra and delivering this sublime and faultless vocal. As it turns forty-seven on 26th May, I felt it was important to mark that anniversary. Hard to believe it turns fifty in three years! Alexis Petridis wrote how the song showed that Bush was a genius. When you listen to The Man with the Child in His Eyes, it is…

HARD to disagree with.

FEATURE: Kate Bush: The Tour of Life: Never for Ever: An Album on the Cusp?

FEATURE:

 

 

Kate Bush: The Tour of Life

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980/PHOTO CREDIT: Brian Aris

Never for Ever: An Album on the Cusp?

__________

SOMETHING I have written about…

when discussing Kate Bush’s work in the early-1980s, there was this moment of transition and change. For Kate Bush feature 997, I am returning to Graeme’s Thomson’s brilliant Under the Ivy: The Life and Music of Kate Bush. I like what he says about her third studio album, 1980’s Never for Ever. It was a crucial moment in her career. We can discuss the aftermath and legacy of the album. How it went to number one and there was this boost in terms of how EMI viewed her. Bush would solo-producer 1982’s The Dreaming and was given a lot of freedom. There is no doubt that Never for Ever is simultaneously a remarkably successful and brilliant album but one that remains underrated and very rarely discussed. It is a brilliant album that contains some of her best songs. Maybe not as daring and epic as Hounds of Love (1985) or as raw and layered as The Dreaming, it is one of her very best releases. You can definitely feel the bridge between her first two albums – The Kick Inside and Lionheart were both released in 1978 – and where she would head for The Dreaming two years later. In terms of creative leaps, few are bigger than what Kate Bush did between 1980 and 1982. One cannot compare a song like Blow Away (For Bill) from Never for Ever and The Dreaming’s final track, Get Out of My House. They are extremes. If some say Bush was transitioning in 1980 and Never for Ever is this centre point between a simpler style and sound and something more advanced, some like to think of it as her on the cusp. Producing with Jon Kelly on Never for Ever, there was more responsibility and freedom. However, she would be truly unleashed and set free for The Dreaming. Do some people think of Never for Ever as promising or a compromise?

Graeme Thomson describes (Never for Ever) as a “tentative autocracy”. Her working relationship with Andrew Powell (who produced her first two albums) had run the course – though he did arrange strings for The Dreaming’s Houdini -, and this was Kate Bush in control. Never for Ever seemed like a rebirth. Her first, anyway. Beginning again. After finishing work on her 1979 On Stage EP, Bush did say that she had not really begun. When working on Never for Ever, there were new rules and players. This was not going to be a similar experience to the one she had in 1978. After the success and experience gained for 1979’s The Tour of Life, new boldness and inventiveness came into Kate Bush’s work. New technology and lyrical directions. However, one can see Lionheart as an album that needed more time and room for Bush to create and The Dreaming as this new phase of her career. Never for Ever perhaps an awkward bit in the middle that nodded to where she came from and hinted at where she would go. The feeling about this being an album ‘on the cusp’ is mirrored by Graeme Thomson. In the sense that it marries older songs with new compositions (The Dreaming was the first album since The Kick Inside with all-new songs).  It was released in 1980 but was being recorded in 1979 (and 1980). Spanning the old and the new in terms of compositions and decades, Bush also fused players from her live band and those who worked on her first two albums. This sense of the old and new. Does this make Never for Ever unfocused, unbalanced and lacking originality? I don’t think so. What we do have is an artist not repeating herself but not yet in a position to release something like The Dreaming. After the energy and planning it took to get her tour going and successful, Bush did not really have the headspace or time to labour in the studio intensely. Del Palmer, Paddy Bush, Brian Bath and Ian Bairnson part of the eclectic array of musicians Bush assembled.

As I mentioned in previous features, Bush cast players for Never for Ever. Even though the recording environment was not as intense as it was for The Dreaming, there were still many hours dedicated to some songs. Pushing her players to get the best performance. Maybe a bit of a diversion, but I am going to reframe Never for Ever. Rather than it being ‘on the cusp’ or a period of transition, it very much is this new creative period and iconic album. I am not going to source an interview. However, I did find something Kate Bush wrote for Flexipop that was published in September 1980. It is her weekly diary and gives you some idea of how she was living during the time of recording the album:

“Friday

One hell of a day. I get up at about half ten. I don't have breakfast--I never do. Just a cup of tea. The first thing on the agenda is an interview with Paul Gambaccini. Before I leave I read my post, which is mostly business. Most other mail goes to my fan club, which is really well organized now. Fantastic. My driver picks me up at about noon. We go to a small studio in Soho. I can't drive. Apart from my driver I go everywhere unaccompanied. The reason I use the driver now is that it was getting ridiculous with cabs, it really was. It's so much easier now, it's just wonderful. [Actually Kate did obtain a drivers license, after one failure, in 1976.]

About three o'clock we go from Soho to Round Table at the Beeb, which Gambaccini also does. [This is a radio programme in which celebrity musicians and critics sit around to listen to and review new records.] We get there about four-thirty. A couple of kids outside--one who's always there every time I go to the BBC. His name is Keith. Must be in his early twenties. He always shows me things I've never seen before, like posters out of record shops. Old magazines. A picture of Pink Floyd before Gilmour was in it--I went WOW. I was really surprised, you know--they were all autographed and everything. I sign a few things, and then go in.

I don't have a go at anyone on the show. There's never any reason to do that. After, I have to go down to Abbey Road studios to re-mix the new single. We get there at about eight-fifteen. About this time I have my first bite to eat of the day--a toasted sandwich and chips. And of course, lots of cups of tea. The only way I can tell if I need food is when I feel sick. I smoke more at night, but I still usually get through less than twenty a day. John Player Special at the moment. We're still at it at three a.m. and I feel fine, but the engineer wants to call it a day. He's a great engineer, and I know he can finish it tonight, so I talk him into it. Come seven a.m. I'm not exactly perky, but I'm still not at all tired. I'm very much a nocturnal creature. My driver picks me up and I get to bed about seven-thirty a.m.

Saturday

I live alone--in southeast London--and today I don't get up until late: perhaps one or two p.m. A friend of mine from the Hare Krishna temple rang me up about eight-thirty, but I was too tired to natter much. About three o'clock I go over to my parents'--they live twenty minutes' drive away, in Kent. I'm doing a TV show in Germany on Tuesday [the programme was RockPop, and the taping was in mid-September, 1980] and my Mum's got some clothes to lend me. I'm going to do two numbers for the show. Army Dreamers is one, and I want to dress up as a cleaning woman. My mother lends me a headscarf, an old apron, and lots of my old jumble clothes. The song is about a mother who lost her son overseas. It doesn't matter how he died, but he didn't die in action--it was an accident. I wanted the mother to be a very simple woman who's obviously got a lot of work to do. She's full of remorse, but he has to carry on, living in a dream. Most of us live in a dream

I stay round my parents for a few hours--after all, you can't just go round, take all the clothes you want and rush off--drink lots of tea and eat chocolate eclairs and sandwiches, the sort of things that mothers like to fill you up with. I feel absolutely delightful after that, and I go back to start work on my routines for Tuesday.

What I do is have a little cassette machine with the mixes I'm going to work on, and I go into my back room where I have four mirrors propped up against the wall, and I rehearse in front of them. It's all very well to work out the routine for Army Dreamers, but the two dancers I work with [Stewart Avon-Arnold and Gary Hurst] are busy--one's in Godspell and one's in France. So I needed people who would be able to perform. Paddy, my brother, he does pretty well. And the guys from the band, who are natural performers anyway. I am pretty wiped out still, and I don't get as much done as I could have. After working out for a while I don't feel too good, so I have a bath and try some more. I work out for two or three hours, then cook a meal for myself.

I'm not a bad cook. I love making bread. It's such a wonderful thing to do. So I watch the telly--the late-night movie: guys having their eyes pulled out, or something really awful. Paddy has come back by now, so we have a long chat and I get to bed about three o'clock. [Apparently Kate was still sharing the family's Lewisham building of flats with her two brothers. She has since moved to a house of her own, situated nearer her parents's home in Kent, and she uses a third building as a private dance studio.]

Sunday

Sunday is definitely the day that I have to physically work out. When I get up I can hardly stand up. My calves are beginning to feel sore from the night before.

Again, I get up around early afternoon. I don't bother buying Sunday newspapers--I don't read newspapers much at all, though if there's one around I'll read it. I don't read books very much either. I have a big guilt thing about that--I'm missing out so much, I read fact rather than fiction, usually when I'm on holiday. I tend to read religious things or theories on the universe. [This sounds like an early reference to Stephen Hawking, whose book, Kate has since explained, partially inspired her 1989 recording, Deeper Understanding. Another example of the long gestation periods typical of Kate's work.] I love Don Martin (of Mad magazine), he cheers me up. And if there's a Beano around, I've just got to look at it. When I was a kid that was really my thing. The illustrations are really great.

I spend all the day working out the routine for Babooshka. All Sunday is working out--dancing and miming. For miming you have to get the inflexions exactly right. I don't do that in front of mirrors, though. I hate watching myself sing. It's really weird. I also do more work on Army Dreamers. Gary, the dancer who's in Godspell, rings me up--and I've been sending out messages for him to ring me all day. We have this weird telepathic thing with the telephone. Whenever I want him to ring and whenever he wants me to ring him I get these 'messages'. So he rings up and says, 'I've been getting these messages all day, what's the matter?' I tell him that we've been trying to work out these routines, and quite honestly it would be useful to know what he thought of them. He says he wants to see me anyway, so he comes around at about midnight. He gets home at about five or six in the morning. I have a bath and go to bed.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980

Monday

I have to get up early because the single is being cut. I have to be at Abbey Road at two o'clock, and while I do the cut, the band go off to get their army gear for Army Dreamers. Then we all go over to my parents' to rehearse--there's no room for full-scale rehearsal in my flat. We do it in the garden. That song is pretty well tied up by the evening, so I go home. I generally get stuff ready for the trip. I don't take huge amounts of stuff with me, just hand luggage. Waiting for luggage at the terminal roundabouts is such a drag. Again, I get to bed around four a.m.

Tuesday

The car for the airport leaves at eight-fifteen, so I'm pretty wiped out. No one hassles me at the airport. A few years ago there used to be loads of photographers, but they don't bother me anymore. It makes things a lot easier, not having to walk up a corridor with everyone going 'OOOH LOOK'.

We arrive at about half one, and go straight to the TV station. I'm not very successful in Germany, and it's a big market, so it's an important show for me. Problems straight away. The stage has three tiers, which are going to get in the way. It has a big glass section they want me to work on--I work ninety-nine per cent of the time in bare feet, and there's this huge chunk of broken glass in the middle. I say, 'no way, you'll have to get rid of it'. It takes them half an hour to take it apart, and then I notice all these huge staples sticking out of it, so I ask this guy to pull them out.

The show starts at about eight--I fill in the time doing my make-up, sewing up little bits and pieces of my costumes that are falling to bits. I like to do that myself, it saves time. I'm so pleased when the show is over, and it went well. We go for a lovely meal courtesy of the record company. Things like that normally aren't lovely but I enjoyed this a lot--really nice. Leave the restaurant about one, go to the hotel, have a FANTASTIC bath and go to bed about three.

Wednesday

We have to be ready downstairs by half eight, and go straight to the airport. Flying doesn't bother me too much--only when I fly a lot in a short space of time, because then the odds seem to get higher. I try to be philosophical about it--once you're in the plane there's not too much to be done. Arrive in London later than morning. Do an interview at the Heathrow Hotel, and have some photos taken. Then I go home and feel wiped out again, so over to my parents' to sit in the sun. I recuperate, and go home again. I slob around, clean the flat up--it's in awful shape...I feed the cats, Zoodle and Pyewacket. Even when I'm that tired, I still don't get to bed till three or four. I spend a lot of time on the phone.

Thursday

Radio all day. I was meant to start with Luxembourg, but they pulled out, so I go straight to Capital. [Capital Radio is the independent station that broke Kate in 1977 by playing Wuthering Heights months before its official release date.] There for three, a very short chat. Then I do Radio One, then hang around a bit to do Brian Matthews on Radio Two. I leave about nine, and go home. On the way I pick up a Chinese takeaway. I don't need a bodyguard or anything for stuff like that. If people do recognize me they're not too likely to smother me in kisses or anything. Get home about ten, look through some photos with my brother [this would be John Carder Bush], and natter about odd bits of business. If I've got nothing to do I have a quick tinkle on the piano, which I try to get to all the time. Bed as usual three a.m”.

I want to source from two articles before finishing up. In 2020, to mark forty years of Never for Ever, Ben Hewitt wrote an article for The Quietus. He noted, though Never for Ever may not be her most celebrated, it is probably her most pivotal – “ the start of her transition from artist to auteur”:

“Another Bush biographer, Rob Jovanovic, estimates she spent an unprecedented five months writing and demoing at Abbey Road, honing new and old ideas alike, while keyboardist Max Middleton told Thomson the sessions were so exacting because of her obsession with finding “something nebulous that was hard to pinpoint”. For Bush the autonomy was worth savouring, no matter how painstaking the process. “It was the first step I’d really taken in controlling the sounds,” she said, “and being pleased with what was coming back.”

Listen now and you can still hear that fundamental shift Bush spoke of, the birth of some new, peculiar magic

Never For Ever is a starting point, not a zenith, and those miraculous opening six minutes aren’t as groundbreaking as her later innovations. But it is, I’d argue, the first of her LPs that’s genuinely experimental.

While Bush’s earlier albums are full of idiosyncrasies, these songs offer a fuller glimpse of the pioneer who’d make The Dreaming, Hounds Of Love and the rest: not just a wildly creative songwriter, but an intrepid explorer and studio perfectionist to boot.

In that sense, the LP’s final two tracks, despite being the most explicitly political Bush had ever written, aren’t quite the radical outliers they seemed back in 1980. For all their polemical grist, she saw them as personal, poignant stories just like all her others, and although most critics lauded them for reckoning with ‘real life’ in a way her older efforts didn’t, their power transcends such bogus rules of authenticity. They’re spectacular not because their subject matter is inherently weightier than yarns about paranoid Russian wives or grumpy syphilitic composers, but because Bush brings it to life with exactly the same kind of exquisite, singular imagination; they’re political songs that have been twisted and transmogrified so they can exist in her strange universe, not the other way round. If Never For Ever made her a bolder, sharper songwriter, it was still absolutely on her own terms”.

In 2022, PROG celebrated Never for Ever as this visionary album. Rather than it being a transition album, latchkey kid or merely promising, this was and is a groundbreaking album. One that was record-setting and influences artists to this day. I have taken sections that provide some insight into the recording in addition to the way Never for Ever was very much Kate Bush starting anew. She saw it that way. Rather than dismissing her first two albums, it was the first Bush could grasp creative control and make an album that stood and felt true to her vision:

“Never For Ever was an album of firsts for Kate Bush: her first co-production; her first release after renegotiating her EMI deal; her first time recording at Abbey Road, and her first use of the (then brand new to the country) sampling synthesiser Fairlight CMI, which was so to shape her material for the next decade.

Bush’s new-found confidence and step away from the machine (something she was soon to perfect) was to inform Never For Ever – an album influenced by death, technology, relationships and a 21-year-old simply bursting with ideas. “There are 10 tracks, and if there is a main theme, it’s about human communication and its difficulties,” Bush wrote in September 1980, a few months after her 22nd birthday. Although largely stylistically different, Never For Ever fitted into the pattern of the day for art rock experimentation crossing borders and genres. It is blessed with the same spirit as Robert Fripp’s Exposure, David Bowie’s Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), Fear Of Music by Talking Heads, and Peter Gabriel’s third album. Never For Ever may not be the masterpiece that 1985’s Hounds Of Love is frequently cited as being, but, for many, it remains their favourite Kate Bush album, and one that unquestionably paved the way for future triumphs.

She had already established her own royalties company, Novercia, with eldest brother John Carder Bush (aka Jay) co-ordinating the business. Her family members were directors, and her new lawyer, Bernard Sheridan (who looked after artists such as Matt Monro and Pink Floyd), renegotiated her contract with EMI as a tape lease deal, meaning that she owned her recordings. Still a rarity then (as now, some would argue), the final decision on everything would be hers.

IN THIS PHOTO: Kate Bush in 1980 signing copies of Never for Ever/PHOTO CREDIT: Chas Sime/Central Press/Getty Images/File

In the studio, all the trappings were sheared away; although she was clear about who would have final say, Bush was in no doubt that she was dependent on the people in her team. And there was a cast of musicians: brother Paddy was there, as always, as well as fellow KT Bush Band alumni guitarist Brian Bath and bassist Del Palmer – who had played on Wow and on The Tour Of Life – were now in the pool of players, as were drummer Preston Hayman and guitarist Alan Murphy. Returning across the sessions from earlier albums were Ian Bairnson and Duncan Mackay. It was the first time for Peter Gabriel bassist John Giblin and keyboard player Max Middleton. It was very much a case of selecting the right player for the right song.

Never For Ever can be divided track and feel-wise by the studios in which they were recorded. Egypt and Violin (both premiered on The Tour Of Life); The Wedding List and Blow Away were all 1979 recordings at AIR. These are the most conventional-sounding tracks, imbued with the deep-brown shagpile carpet late-70s feel of her first two albums.

The move to Abbey Road (“the land of Beatles, tea, smiles and sticky buns,” she was to write) in January 1980 marked the quantum shift in the album and Bush’s work. “It was a very magical experience,” she told seasoned EMI publicist Brian Southall. “Being on your own in Studio 2 is fascinating… as I felt there were at least 10 other people with me; the place has tremendous presence. I don’t think it’s just the fact The Beatles recorded there, but a combination of all the people who have been there over the years and all their combined creativity.”

“It was a real home record for Kate,” Jon Kelly told Mojo in February 2003 – her first time at the St John’s Wood complex was marked by the studio being filled with flowers and plants.

Recording for Never For Ever was completed on May 10, 1980. It was readied for release in June, but EMI held it back until September to avoid other key releases of that summer, McCartney II and The Rolling Stones’ Emotional Rescue. In late June, another taster was offered as Babooshka was released as a single. A much more conventionally commercial song, it had a killer chorus, and was based on the traditional English folk tune Sovay. Its tale of intrigue with John Giblin’s fretless bass, and the breaking glass solo so gleefully arrived at Abbey Road, propelled the record to No.5 in the UK charts. It was Bush’s highest single placing since Wuthering Heights, and 11 places higher than Breathing.

Lionheart had the inscription ‘hope you like it’ etched into its run-out groove; almost underlining late teenage anxiety wondering if lightning would be able to strike twice. There was no such concern with Never For Ever. Emboldened by her tour, maturing with new friends, technology and allies, from Nick Price’s memorable cover illustration inward, Never For Ever was a grown-up record. Its sleeve notes and thanks were telling: to “all the musicians who have worked patiently and understandingly on this album to make it the way I always wanted it to be.”

“Kate was a joy to work with,” Larry Fast, who played the Prophet synth on Breathing, recalls. “I have the highest regard for her artistry and she was one of the nicest people that I’ve had the pleasure to be invited to work with.”

Never For Ever is the album on which Kate Bush grew up. The naïveté of her first albums was being replaced with a conscience, new wonders, and a hint of despair. The inexorable pull of art rock was intoxicating – there was something in the air – the rush of available, and in time, affordable technology, the freedom to discuss art in a way that seemed less pretentious than a decade earlier – it was like punk had shooed away the pixies and goblins and now one could talk of existentialism without fear of being attacked. Never For Ever proved that Kate Bush was a serious artist. It opened the Pandora’s box of the studio to her, and technology and sound became the vehicle in which she could best present her work.

Richard Burgess saw how she thrived in this environment and recalls his role in altering her sound with great affection: “I love being in the room with people who are more creative than me; the ideas start flowing and it just bounces back and forth: when a creative spiral starts to happen and you just start to take off. Definitely with Kate it was like that. There’s no barriers; no ego. If someone has a better idea, you are on it. Five minutes later you can’t even remember whose idea it was because it was all so seamless. It’s exhilarating in itself to be in that kind of environment, never mind the actual end result that you create.”

David Mitchell retrospectively calls Never For Ever “a cabinet of curiosities housing some highly desirable items.” It’s her transitional album and it benefits greatly from that; in fact, the recording spanned two studios and two decades, it was as if she was putting old diaries away and starting afresh”.

Released on 8th September, 1980, Never for Ever turns forty-five later this year. I hope that people reapproach the album and, rather than see it as a sign of what was to come, they do recognise it as a moment when Kate Bush announced herself as this serious artist. In the sense that her production, songwriting and vision was beyond fault or parody. That she was not the artist she was in 1978. Only twenty-two when Never for Ever came out, it is a remarkably mature and confident work. One that does not betray her past or radically departs from that early work, it is an album that is its own thing. A revolutionary album. Rather than Never for Ever being on the cusp or caught between the old Kate Bush and what would be, we have to acknowledge that Never for Ever is a  groundbreaking work of genius that…

WARRANTS a lot more respect.

FEATURE: Feminist Icons: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

FEATURE:

 

 

Feminist Icons

PHOTO CREDIT: Pari Dukovic for The New Yorker

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

__________

MAYBE she would find it…

PHOTO CREDIT: Emma Summerton for Harper’s Bazaar

problematic or inappropriate being called a ‘feminist icon’. At the very least, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has discussed the reasonability of being labelled as such. For this part of my series, I wanted to shine a light on the Nigerian author. Even though her heart is in fiction and her new novel, Dream Count (“Through the interconnected lives of four women, the critically acclaimed author of Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah spins a mesmerising and moving study of love, happiness and the quest for fulfilment in contemporary society”), is highly acclaimed, she is someone who is regarded as a central figure in postcolonial feminist literature. The Nigerian’s 2012 talk, We Should All Be Feminists, was sampled by Beyoncé as well as featuring on a T-shirt by Dior in 2016. She is remarkably powerful and influential voice in feminism. Before getting to some interview where we can learn more about Adichie as this iconic and influential feminist, I want to grab wholesale from Wikipedia when it comes to her legacy.  Adichie is also on the Concepción Feminist Mural in Madrid, Spain:

“According to Lisa Allardice, a journalist writing for The Guardian, Adichie became the "poster girl for modern feminism after her 2012 TED Talk 'We Should All Be Feminists' went stratospheric and was distributed in book form to every 16-year-old in Sweden". Adichie has become "a global feminist icon" and a recognised "public thinker" per journalist Lauren Alix Brown. Parts of Adichie's TEDx Talk were sampled in the song "Flawless" by singer Beyoncé on 13 December 2013. When asked in an NPR interview about that, Adichie responded that "anything that gets young people talking about feminism is a very good thing." She later refined the statement in an interview with the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant, saying that she liked and admired Beyoncé and gave permission to use her text because the singer "reached many people who would otherwise probably never have heard the word feminism."

But, she went on to state that the sampling caused a media frenzy with requests from newspapers world-wide who were keen to report on her new-found fame because of Beyoncé. Adichie said, "I am a writer and I have been for some time and I refuse to perform in this charade that is now apparently expected of me". She was disappointed by the media portrayal, but acknowledged that "Thanks to Beyoncé, my life will never be the same again." Adichie was outspoken against critics who later questioned the singer's credentials as a feminist because she uses her sexuality to "pander to the male gaze". In defence of Beyoncé, Adichie said: "Whoever says they're feminist is bloody feminist."

Scholar Matthew Lecznar said that Adichie's stature as "one of most prominent writers and feminists of the age" allowed her to use her celebrity "to demonstrate the power of dress and empower people from diverse contexts to embrace [fashion] ... which has everything to do with the politics of identity". Academics Floriana Bernardi and Enrica Picarelli credited her support of the Nigerian fashion industry with helping put Nigeria "at the forefront" of the movement to use fashion as a globally-recognised political mechanism of empowerment. Toyin Falola, a professor of history, in an evaluation of scholarship in Nigeria, criticised the policy of elevating academic figures prematurely. He argued that scholarship, particularly in the humanities, should challenge policies and processes to strengthen the social contract between citizens and government. He suggested that the focus should shift from recognising scholars who merely influenced other scholars to acknowledging intellectuals who use their talents to benefit the state and serve as mentors to Nigerian youth. Adichie was among those he felt qualified as "intellectual heroes", who had "push[ed] forward the boundaries of social change”.

I want to go back to 2017 and an interview from The Guardian. In it, she answered the questions/accusation aimed at her that she was making equality mainstream (as The Guardian noted: “Isn’t that the point?”). Adichie is fascinating to listen to and read. As a diversion, Adichie is a key voice when it comes to feminist fashion. How women who love fashion and makeup are often seen as silly, shallow or vain and without any depth. She has acknowledged the relationship between beauty, fashion, style and socio-political inequalities. Adichie is also hugely committed to promoting body positivity as a way of acquiring agency. She is someone who takes immense pride in her African features such as her skin colour, hair texture and curves; dressing in bold designs featuring bright colours to make a statement about self-empowerment:

“The success of We Should All Be Feminists has made Adichie as prominent for her feminism as for her novels, to the extent that “now I get invited to every damned feminist thing in the whole world”. She has always been an agony aunt of sorts, “the unpaid therapist for my family and friends”, but having the feminist label attached has changed things, and not just among her intimates. “I was opened to a certain level of hostility that I hadn’t experienced before as a writer and public figure.”

This is partly why she has written the new book, to reclaim the word feminism from its abusers and misusers, a category within which she would include certain other progressives, and to lay down in plain, elegant English her beliefs about child-raising.

In Nigeria, you control children. My daughter is 15 months. So she tears a book? Whatever. She throws my shoes down. So?

Dear Ijeawele is, in some ways, a very basic set of appeals; to be careful with language (never say “because you are a girl”), avoid gendered toys, encourage reading, don’t treat marriage as an achievement, reject likability. “Her job is not to make herself likable, her job is to be her full self,” she writes in reference to her friend’s daughter, a choice Adichie has come to elevate almost above any other.

That day in Lagos last summer, her friends were furious at the cheek of the young man’s question, but she rather liked his bravery and honesty in asking it. She replied in the same spirit. “Keep your love,” Adichie said. “Because, sadly, while I love to be loved, I will not accept your love if it comes with these conditions.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Stephen Voss/The Guardian

Having a baby has made Adichie think differently about her own parents, particularly her mother. Grace Adichie, who had six children and worked her way up from being a university administrator to the registrar, taught her daughter to love fashion as well as books, and was a “very cool mum” whom she idolised as a child. Nonetheless, and in the manner of most snotty young adults, young Chimamanda went through a phase of being “very superior” to her mother. Now, the novelist looks at her daughter and gulps.

Adichie recently came across her own kindergarten reports. “My father keeps them all. You know what the teacher wrote? ‘She is brilliant, but she refuses to do any work when she’s annoyed.’ I was five years old.” She laughs. “I couldn’t believe it. My husband couldn’t believe it. I must have been an annoying child.”

It’s not as if she comes from a family of radicals. “My parents are not like that. They’re conventional, reasonable, responsible, good, kind people. I’m the crazy. But their love and support made that crazy thrive.”

Unlike Adichie, who was raised exclusively in Nigeria, her daughter will be raised in two cultures and subject to slightly diverging social expectations. Already, Adichie says with a laugh, friends and relatives from home are concerned that her mothering is insufficiently stern. 

“A friend was just visiting and she said to me, ‘Your parenting is not very Nigerian.’ In Nigeria – and, I think, in many cultures – you control children. And I feel like, my daughter is 15 months, she doesn’t have a sense of consequences. And I enjoy watching her. So she tears a page of a book? Whatever. She throws my shoes down. So? It’s fun. I love that she’s quite strong-willed.” The joke between Adichie and her husband – whom, to her intense annoyance, their daughter looks much more like – is that her character cleaves to the maternal side. “He says to me, ‘Well, at least we know where she got her personality from.’ She’s quite fierce.”

In the new book, Adichie’s advice is not only to provide children with alternatives – to empower boys and girls to understand there is no single way to be – but also to understand that the only universal in this world is difference. In terms of the evolution of feminism, these are not new lessons, but that is rather Adichie’s point. She is not writing for other feminist writers, and shows some frustration at what she sees as the solipsism of much feminist debate.

The proposition is that feminism has become so mainstream as to be an empty marketing tool, a mere slogan on a bag or a T-shirt. Without being named, Adichie is implicated in this critique, given that last year she collaborated with Christian Dior on a T-shirt bearing the line We Should All Be Feminists; depending on one’s view, this is either a perfect example of pointless sloganeering or a brilliant piece of preaching to the unconverted.

“I’m already irritated,” Adichie says. “This idea of feminism as a party to which only a select few people get to come: this is why so many women, particularly women of colour, feel alienated from mainstream western academic feminism. Because, don’t we want it to be mainstream? For me, feminism is a movement for which the end goal is to make itself no longer needed. I think academic feminism is interesting in that it can give a language to things, but I’m not terribly interested in debating terms. I want people’s marriages to change for the better. I want women to walk into job interviews and be treated the same way as somebody who has a penis.”

Adichie’s irritation with aspects of what she thinks of as “professional feminism” is that it runs counter to her ideas as a writer: that people contain multitudes. She is a brilliant novelist and a serious thinker, and she is also someone who makes no apology for her own trivial interests. “Life doesn’t always follow ideology,” she says. “You might believe in certain things and life gets in and things just become messy. You know? I think that’s the space that fiction, and having a bit more of an imaginative approach, makes. And that the feminist speaking circuit doesn’t really make room for”.

Before ending with a couple of recent interviews, I want to come to this interview from last year and some takeaways. It really captured my eyes. An interview people should listen to/read in full. In it, “Chimamanda delves into gender dynamics in African societies, the influence of colonial histories on women's narratives, and the crucial work of reframing African stories. From literature to feminism, this episode explores the rich complexity of African identity and storytelling through the lens of one of the continent’s leading literary voices”:

“Makhtar: Thats very powerful and personally touched me. Let me go back to feminism. What I see in your literature is that you talk about the resilience, the strength of women, I found a lot of this resilience in what you mentioned about these ancestors, these women which were very strong. And people forget, often that Queens were the head of some empires in Africa, people forget it. So, tell me the link between what you express as feminism today. And that affiliation that you have with our history.

Chimamanda: I think I've always said that there are different feminism's and that for me, my feminism is African, because I'm African. And really, it's just this belief that women are equally human. It's actually quite simple. And, you know, I think that my ancestors believed that as well. And I don't I don't like to romanticize our history, I don't want to suggest that, oh, everything was fine before the white man came because that's not true. But at the same time, there's a complexity that we had that somehow has been erased from, from us, collective idea of ourselves. So the way that we have learned to talk about ourselves, for me is not authentic. And so, I like to talk about my great grandmother, who I've already mentioned who she was, she was described as a headstrong woman. But that's because she stood her ground. That's because she was a feminist. That's because she felt that the parts of culture that diminished her, she wanted to resist. Her husband died quite young. And so his brothers wanted to sort of take over these things. And she said, No, and that was kind of unusual at the time. So she was labeled headstrong. But in the stories that we tell about our past, the women are all kind of really submissive, and they don't really have a voice.

And, and that's not true. I love reading about pre-colonial Africa, I find it fascinating just how just wonderfully complex the worlds were. So, I remember reading this account of an English woman who was sort of touring through Igbo Land in the 1860s, 70s. And she was just shocked that women did so much because she'd come from this Victorian England where women just sat at home. And Igbo women were the traders in the market, Igbo women, and she just found it shocking. And because she found it shocking, she labeled it bad, because it did not match her own idea of what the world should be. So imagine this person then writing a book, and saying, oh, this terrible thing they do. And then people go to school and read that book, and they absorb these ideas. And that's how we start to think of ourselves in just really, in my opinion, dangerous ways because we learn to diminish who we are. So, there's a part of me that just wants to really resist that and to say, there's a lot about our history that we can take in and be proud of. Because, you know, it was beautiful.

Makhtar: And you know, an example of that I sometimes give is ‘Mrs.’. Yes. Mrs. doesn't exist in my traditional culture. Women keep their name. And that just illustrates for me some of the things that sometimes were not identified as belonging to our society.

Chimamanda: I'm not a Mrs. I do have a wonderful husband, and children. But so in Nigeria, many people did not understand why I choose to keep my name. And so often some people would say to me, this is very bad, because you're not following Igbo culture. And then I would say, this is not even Igbo culture. I mean, you can choose to do whatever you want, but don't justify it using culture in a way that is not true. And we're teaching our children what is not true. Because actually, traditionally, in Igboland, people did not have surnames, children were identified by the names of their mothers, because often it was polygamous. So you know, my father, for example, would say to me that his grandfather was known as Mya Omeni. Omeni was his mother, and had my father not gone to school, he would have been known as Mwanem, son of his mother. And actually, in Igbo the word for sibling is my mother's child is one name, my mother's child. And so, you know, I think about these things. I think, ‘I wish we had more of an infusion of our real history, so that we actually know what it was like’. We don't have to follow it if you don't want it. But you know, I think we've lost that as well. And I really have been thinking about waste. I'm thinking about writing something about pre colonial Africa, for example, that will, you know, again, not romanticize, but just tell it like it was because there's so much that's beautiful. And you look at the history of Europe, for example, which many of us know, because we went to school, and a lot of it is still a kind of selective storytelling, you know. So the reason that we can think about the monarchies of Europe with a kind of respect is because they have been selective about what they told us, you know. I want to do that for West African history as well”.

I am going to finish up soon. Before I get, there are a couple of other interviews that I am keen to include. Harper’s Bazaar recently spoke with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Someone who claims fiction is her religion, this is a great discussion. The world has waited a long time for a new novel. It is wonderful that “the author, activist and cultural phenomenon is back with a book full of dreams as big as her own”:

“While her award-winning novels – Purple Hibiscus, Half of a Yellow Sun and Americanah – are transportive, incisive portraits of family and societal conflict within sweeping political contexts, her lectures and essays seem to encapsulate truths of the modern age, whether she is examining grief, championing storytelling or speaking out against artistic censorship. Her prescient ideas have helped define feminism for the 21st century, the message adopted and the word spread not just via bestselling books or TED talks, but also through the lyrics of Beyoncé or Maria Grazia Chiuri’s launch collection at Dior.

Adichie had concluded her talk with the sentiment: “I like to think of literature as my religion… fiction is in many ways like faith, which is a leap of the imagination.” When we connect a couple of months later in February – she in her bright Maryland home, hair up, and clad in a coral sweater; me in London – I remind her of the last time we met: how the setting had amusingly reinforced that parallel between fiction and faith. I ask whether she finds herself turning to the latter more nowadays. “I think that is such an important and relevant question, so the short answer is ‘yes,’” she responds. “You know how young people say, ‘I felt seen?’ You just asking that made me feel ‘seen.’” She gives a deep laugh. “But seriously, it’s not just that we live in – at the risk of sounding melodramatic – perilous times. We do. It’s also that after my father died and then my mother died, everything changed for me. I changed. I have felt this awareness of how fleeting life is, and suddenly this deep longing for meaning. That’s all tied up with the idea of faith”.

I am going to end with an interview from The Guardian from February. It is quite a revealing and open interview. Adichie has lost both parents and seen Donald Trump become President again. She has also come back to writing fiction following backlash regarding her comments on gender and trans women in particular. A writer and feminist whose work I am quite new to, having read interviews and experienced some of her work, she has definitely opened my eyes and mind.  I am definitely going to seek out Dream Count:

“Incubating for some time at the back of her mind was the idea that she should write more about the “gritty reality” of women’s bodies and the obstacles to women’s lives caused by gynaecology. She saw it as demystifying the experience of, say, premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Or fibroids. Or the violence of the birthing experience. “There’s a lot that has to do with having a female body that isn’t much talked about,” she says, “and it’s consequential for women’s lives.” For a long time, she was reluctant to discuss these, fearing she – a renowned feminist – would fuel a tendency to treat things such as PMS as a joke. “Code for a woman being unreasonably irritable,” she says, darkly. But in addition to the “remarkably unpleasant experience” of having surgery for “a very big fibroid”, hormonal issues have plagued her entire life.

“If one is writing honestly about women’s lives, it seems self-evident that we have to talk about these issues in a very open way, because they affect everything. They affect how well a woman does. They affect your emotional wellbeing. They get in the way of your dreams. If you’re a woman whose dream is to have a family, for example, fibroids can get in the way.” She laughs that she is not trying to raise awareness in an NHS public service announcement sort of way, but because “I was trying to write about women’s lives in a way that feels truthful and wholesome and full for me”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Jared Soares/The Guardian

She says hers was a life “deeply shaped” by her parents, that their deaths have left her truly changed. In this way, Dream Count is a “departure”: “The person who wrote Purple Hibiscus was young, but still the person who wrote Half of a Yellow Sun. And in some ways also the person who wrote Americanah. But today I am alone. I’m a person who looks at the world differently.” She spoke to her mother the night before she died. “She was fine; she went to mass. The next morning – my father’s birthday – she was gone. If somebody wrote that in a fiction class I was teaching, I’d be like, ‘No, this is too much.’”

The time since has involved much self-reflection. There are “things I regret; positions I took”. Can she name any? She clicks her tongue. “Not even so much the position as the how.” She says she didn’t want to talk about this because she knew she would cry. “My mother and I were very close. But there are many times when I was short with her when I didn’t need to be. There’s a tendency for girls to do that with mothers. I wish we would stop. I want to tell all the girls in the world. I’m not saying, ‘Don’t express frustration.’ I’m just saying, take a step back and think, ‘Am I doing this with grace?’ Was this in her teenage years? “No, older. When I was a teenager, I was equal opportunities horrible: I felt I knew everything, that my parents knew nothing. Sometimes, I would not be patient with her. I would be patient with my father. She saw the world a lot more clearly, as women often do.

“Women go through a lot. I wish I could have done better.” She finds a tissue. “Lord, why did I start saying this?” She smiles. “My mother would not read everything I wrote, but she would tell everybody that it was wonderful”.

Maybe some might not feel Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a feminist icon or someone who is seen as one of the great feminist voices and writers. I would disagree. Whether you agree with her comments about trans women in 2017 or feel that the way she was criticised was fair or not, she is a modern-day feminist icon. On the transgender argument, it is something that I have had to think about and wrestle when writing this feature. Whether, if anyone reads this, people would criticise me for celebrating her in light of her remarks. I am a huge advocate and supporter of the trans community so cannot wholeheartedly agree with and support Adichie’s phrasing. However, I can recognise how powerful her writing is regarding women and feminism. This article highlights the importance of feminism and gender discourse. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is an activist and author whose…

WORK you should read.

FEATURE: Groovelines: Donna Summer – I Feel Love

FEATURE:

 

 

Groovelines

Donna Summer – I Feel Love

__________

A huge song that…

must rank alongside some of the best of all-time, I Feel Love came out on 2nd July, 1977. Originally a B-side, Donna Summer’s classic was produced and co-written by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. Included on Summer’s phenomenal fifth studio album, I Remember Yesterday, it was the B-side to the single, Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over). It seems like one of the oddest A and B-side combinations in music history. Given how much more emphatic and better the B-side is! A couple of months after the single was released, it was reissued with the sides reversed. I Feel Love reached number one in many countries and is one of Donna Summer’s most iconic songs. This futuristic cuts that sounded like nothing else in 1977, it struck a chord with David Bowie and Brian Eno. When making the Berlin Trilogy, Eno came running in after he heard I Feel Love and told Bowie that the song would change the sound of Club music for fifteen years to come. Quite a lot has been written about I Feel Love. I am going to source from a few features. All state how this 1977 song was the sound of the future. One that sounds ahead of its time and untouched now. In 2017, Pitchfork marked forty years of I Feel Love. They look at the background and history of the song and spoke with the studio gurus behind the masterpiece. The Robot-Funk classic that has endured for decades. Rather than include the whole feature, I have taken the opening sections - but would advise you to read the entire thing:

“Released 40 years ago, in early July 1977, “I Feel Love” was a global smash, reaching No. 1 in several countries (including the UK, where its reign at the top lasted a full month) and rising to No. 6 in America. But its impact reached far beyond the disco scene in which singer Donna Summer and her producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte were already well established. Post-punk and new wave groups admired and appropriated its innovative sound, the maniacal precision of its grid-like groove of sequenced synth-pulses. Even now, long after discophobia has been disgraced and rockism defeated, there’s still a mischievous frisson to staking the claim that “I Feel Love” was far more important than other epochal singles of ’77 such as “God Save the Queen,” “Sheena Is a Punk Rocker,” or “Complete Control.” But really it’s a simple statement of fact: If any one song can be pinpointed as where the 1980s began, it’s “I Feel Love.”

Within club culture, “I Feel Love” pointed the way forward and blazed the path for genres such as Hi-NRG, Italo, house, techno, and trance. All the residual elements in disco—the aspects that connected it to pop tradition, show tunes, orchestrated soul, funk—were purged in favor of brutal futurism: mechanistic repetition, icy electronics, a blank-eyed fixated feel of posthuman propulsion.

“‘I Feel Love’ stripped out the flowery aspects of disco and really gave it a streamlined drive,” says Vince Aletti, the first critic to take disco seriously. In the club music column he wrote for Record World at the time, Aletti compared “I Feel Love” to “Trans-Europe Express/Metal on Metal” by Kraftwerk, another prophetic piece of electronic trance-dance that convulsed crowds in the more adventurous clubs.

The reverberations of “I Feel Love” reached far beyond the disco floor, though. Then unknown but destined to be synth-pop stars in the ’80s, the Human League completely switched their direction after hearing the song. Blondie, equally enamored, became one of the first punk-associated groups to embrace disco. Brian Eno famously rushed into the Berlin recording studio where he and David Bowie were working on creating new futures for music, waving a copy of “I Feel Love.” “This is it, look no further,” Eno declared breathlessly. “This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years.”

In the wake of “I Feel Love,” Giorgio Moroder became a name producer, the disco equivalent of Phil Spector. He even appeared on the cover of Britain’s leading rock magazine, New Musical Express. The Moroder hit factory was widely considered the Motown of the late ’70s, with Donna Summer as its Diana Ross”.

In 2022, Jude Rogers spoke with co-producer Pete Bellotte about the song. She also spoke with a few of its famous fans. Published by The Quietus, it is a fascinating and insightful feature. There is a whole new generation who are discovering Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. It is a song that will never sound dated or a sad product of its time. I have been thinking about the track a lot recently and how ahead of its time it was. Such an amazing moment of gold that must have sounded completely unlike anything else when people heard it in 1977:

“But ‘I Feel Love’’s magic is also about another extraordinary element: Donna Summer’s ethereal vocal, which helped create a template for the future of club mixes, and the bedrock of genres like house and garage. Summer had had hits already with Moroder and Bellotte, most famously 1975’s ‘Love To Love You Baby’, inspired by a lyrical ideas of hers, which she recorded lying on the floor in the studio, so her friends couldn’t see her, singing it in an approximation of the voice of Marilyn Monroe. She had intended that to be a demo for somebody else, she told German TV in 2009, as it felt “too sexy a song” for her to sing.

But the emotion behind ‘I Feel Love’ came from a very real place. “We wanted the music to sound like an automaton – relentless,” Bellotte explains. “The beat sounded heartless, but Donna was the heart. She was love.”

On the night that Summer was meant to be writing the song’s lyrics with Bellotte, he was kept waiting for three hours. Summer was having a romantic crisis, trying to work out whether or not to leave the boyfriend she had thought about while writing ‘Love To Love You Baby’, artist Peter Mühldorfer, for a man she’d just met, Bruce Sudano, of the group Brooklyn Dreams. “She was on the phone to her astrologer trying to work out her astrological compatibility with both of them,” Bellotte says, a smile in his voice. “And that was the very night that she decided to be with Bruce, who became her husband, who she had two children with, and who she stayed with for the rest of her life.’

Bellotte completed the lyric himself while he waited. Summer apologised profusely to him when she came down – "she was always such a lovely, easy person to work with" – and delivered the song in one take. Summer was also fun, Bellotte says: she loved messing around with different tones and delivery. “Whatever suited the song. She just did the vocal for ‘I Feel Love’ that way, going high, in that range.” As she did, the idea of female pleasure and ecstasy entered the synthesiser’s mechanical world, one often thought of as very masculine before, especially in the world of prog. A new shimmering juggernaut of sound was launched into the world, accessible to everyone.

The trio “didn’t think that much” of their new song to start with, but their boss at Casablanca Records, Neil Bogart, jumped on it. He’d also spotted ‘Love To Love You Baby’’s commercial potential in 1975, after seeing the effects it had on people at an orgy in his house, and asked for it to be made into a 17-minute mix, long before the era of the commercial twelve-inch disco single). “He was an incredible music man,” Bellotte says. “He also suggested three edits to the track which really made it work. He understood what it could do and where it could go.”

Despite its success, Bellotte is still staggered by the song’s ongoing legacy. “Thing is, none of us – me, Giorgio, Donna – ever planned anything. Things just evolved. Here we were, an Italian, an Englishman and an American in Munich, three foreigners in a foreign land – it was an accident we got together in the first place.” Giorgio, Donna and him were in the studio all the time, he adds, working hard. “We didn’t drink, smoke, or take drugs. We barely went out.” After ‘I Feel Love’ was a huge global smash, however, things changed a bit. “We’d stop at 6 pm, and go out to nice restaurants every night for our dinner.”

Bellotte also only saw ‘I Feel Love’’s impact in a nightclub once, in the late 1970s. A friend had begged him to come along, and see it for himself. “I couldn’t believe it. I’m not a nightclub person, as you may have realised from my other interests. But people were going absolutely mad.”

In the last forty-five years, he has also had time to reflect on why the song might work. “Music changes but love doesn’t. Love’s the same as it was centuries ago.” And when it’s coupled with a relentlessly physical, sexual beat – bringing men and women, men and men, women and women, together – love keeps going, backwards, forwards, everywhere, forever”.

I am going to end with a couple of features from The Guardian. First, in 2012, music critic Jon Savage and producer Ewan Pearson spoke about the iconic and majestic I Feel Love. A song that clocks in at under four minutes, it packs so much in during that time! It is an epic track with a short runtime. I want to include what Jon Savage noted:

“Pop critic Jon Savage

A cinematic drone comes in fast from silence, quickly overtaken by two synthesised rhythm tracks that will go in and out of phase for the next lifetime. On top, Donna Summer soars and swoops as she tackles the minimal lyric: "It's so good [x five], "Heaven knows" [x five], "I feel love" [x five]. The words are so functional that her voice becomes another instrument, almost another machine, but then there is the real heart of the song: "Fallin' free, fallin' free, fallin' free …"

I Feel Love was and remains an astonishing achievement: a futuristic record that still sounds fantastic 35 years on. Within its modulations and pulses, it achieves the perfect state of grace that is the ambition of every dance record: it obliterates the tyranny of the clock – the everyday world of work, responsibility, money – and creates its own time, a moment of pleasure, ecstasy and motion that seems infinitely expandable, if not eternal.

Back in 1977, I Feel Love was a radical breakthrough, and was designed as such. It was started as a cut for I Remember Yesterday, an album that producer Giorgio Moroder originally planned as a mini-tour through dance music history: a Dixieland number here, a Tamla number there. To complete the project, he needed what NME called a "next-disco sound".

"I had already had experience with the original Moog synthesisers," Moroder told NME in December 1978, "so I contacted this guy who owned one of the large early models. It was all quite natural and normal for me. I simply instructed him about what programmings I needed. I didn't even think to notice that for the large audience this was perhaps a very new sound."

I Feel Love was quickly remixed and, extended to eight minutes on a 12in, made an immediate impact. As Vince Aletti wrote in his 13 August 1977 column for Record World, "perhaps the most significant development in disco sound this year is the success of totally synthesised music. Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express was the breakthrough record." Name-checking Space (whose all-synth Magic Fly was a huge UK hit in late summer 1977), Aletti observed that Kraftwerk's "impact was immediately underlined by Donna Summer's I Feel Love, which took the synthesiser rhythm and compressed and intensified it so it was both more physically exciting – like stepping into a tangle of high-voltage wires – and more commercial".

I Feel Love went to No 1 in the UK during the high summer of 1977, and stayed there for four weeks – filling dance floors everywhere, because it's so good so good to dance to. Like David Bowie's Low and Heroes, and Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express, it was also the secret vice of those punks who were already tiring of sped-up pub rock, and it sowed the seeds for the next generation of UK electronica.

It didn't chart as high in the States – No 6 – but it became an all-time gay classic, a totem of the pre-Aids era ("Fallin free, fallin' free, fallin' free"). That iconic status was reaffirmed by (Sylvester producer) Patrick Cowley's monumental 15-and-three-quarter-minute remix, which really does go on for ever and ever without trashing – even enhancing – the concept of the original.

I'm guessing many of you will have heard I Feel Love pumped out loud, will have felt moved to dance, and will have felt time stop, the instant prolonged. Something of that feeling attaches itself to the record wherever it's heard, and it never gets dulled by repetition – or endless imitation. I must have heard I Feel Love a thousand times and it still takes my breath away: it's one of the great records of the 20th century, and the name on the label is Donna Summer”.

PHOTO CREDIT: Daniel Simon/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

I am ending with a feature from 2020. The Guardian were ranking the best British singles of all time. Donna Summer’s I Feel Love came in fourth. Hailing its “Hypnotic synth, peerless vocals and visionary ambition”, they remark how this timeless song is one of the greatest ever. A huge moment in popular music. A turning point. It still sounds so bold and hypnotic to this day. A track we will be talking about for decades more:

“I Feel Love began life in 1977 as a bookend track to round off a disco concept album. The theme of I Remember Yesterday, Summer’s fifth album, was to evoke different decades, starting in the 1940s and ending up with a song that would represent the future. Moroder and Bellotte realised the sci-fi textures they needed could only be produced using a modular synthesiser. The pair had previously used a Moog Modular 3P to record Son of My Father but found the process of wrangling the complicated, Tardis-like rack of oscillators and patch cables to be “a pain in the butt”. The process was complicated by the fact the synth was owned by a pop-phobic avant garde composer called Eberhard Schoener.

But Schoener’s assistant Robby Wedel – the unsung hero of the I Feel Love story – borrowed the Moog and reassembled it in Moroder’s studio. As well as supplying the technology, Wedel solved the most pressing of many problems that the team faced in creating the sound of the future by sequencing the electronic composition to the 16-track recorder. It was this act that made it such an outstandingly avant garde track – no one knew the synth was capable of this, not even Robert Moog himself. But the task remained painstaking. The highly temperamental instrument would not stay in tune for long and had to be manually retuned after each 20-second section was recorded.

Wedel nails one of the key ingredients of the track when he describes the bassline as being like “a giant’s hammer on a wall”, its power matched only by trance-inducing hypnotism created by astute use of a delay-like effect. If you listen to the track through good headphones you can hear the bassline hit first via the left channel only to play again a sixteenth later through the right channel, giving it that instantly recognisable juddering spatiality.

Of course, it’s not entirely machine-made. Apart from Summer’s peerless vocal performance, which included a spontaneously improvised falsetto, there’s also the beat. Wedel, who knew the Moog inside out, used it to generate hi-hat and snare sounds with white noise but couldn’t quite get the bass drum sound right, so a session musician, Keith Forsey, was brought in to play the metronomic 4/4.

Remarkably, Casablanca didn’t think that much of I Feel Love’s future potential and it was consigned to the B-side of the Can’t We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over) single, released 1 May 1977. Yet the track soon took on a life of its own and began tearing up dancefloors. By 2 July, it had been released as an A-side. It went to No 1 in the UK, Australia, Austria, Belgium and the Netherlands.

For many, what was already a damn near perfect track, was – somehow – improved the following year by a remix. Patrick Cowley, a visionary cosmic disco producer who was part of Sylvester’s backing band, warped the track into a psychedelic 15-minute masterpiece. What’s truly stunning about his remix is that it was a bootleg made from an off-the-shelf copy of the album, with him adding extra percussion, crackling snare fills, and washes of ecstatic electronic noise. Not having the luxury of having Wedel sync his work, he did everything painstakingly by hand. While initially only available on DJ acetates and white labels during Cowley’s active lifetime, it got an official release at the end of 1982 and became a massive hit all over again.

It’s impossible to completely quantify the effect of I Feel Love on dance music. It signified the end of one era in disco (that of lush orchestration and large bands) and the start of another (the producer as electronic auteur backing a diva). Along with Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, it acted as a conduit between the avant garde and the dancefloors of the world. It foreshadowed the rise of house music and techno. Despite early outlier users such as Stevie Wonder, I Feel Love decisively recast the image of the synthesiser. It was no longer primarily the tool of pallid European futurists and the toy of rich prog rock musicians, but the key to dance music’s revolutionary potential going into the 1980s and beyond.

Not only has I Feel Love never gone out of fashion, it has consistently jumped between genres in the intervening decades with incredible ease. I Feel Love is, or has been, a staple of house, techno, electroclash and nu-disco sets while also exerting an influence on post punk, new wave, EBM, hi-energy, P-Funk and industrial. There is no end to the list of artists who have been influenced by this track, but one exchange acts as a revelatory example: in 1977, Brian Eno charged into the studio while David Bowie was recording, brandishing a copy of I Feel Love, and stated excitedly: “This is it, look no further. This is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years.” His only mistake was one of gross under-exaggeration”.

I thought I had included I Feel Love in Groovelines before but haven’t. It is long-overdue that I should come to this song from the late and great Donna Summer. A classic B-side that got a swift promotion, Brian Eno underestimated the power and legacy of the track! It completely changed Pop music. Such a radical and futuristic piece of art, it is still inspiring artists now. I Feel Love has a huge impact on genres like Post-Punk and New Wave. It also affected and influenced future sub-genres of Electronic Dance Music such as Techno and Italo Disco. One of the greatest Dance songs ever and one that has been ranked highly by critics through the years, I was excited to explore it for Groovelines. Such a work of genius that will…

NEVER lose its magic.

FEATURE: Spotlight: Pozer

FEATURE:

Spotlight

PHOTO CREDIT: Nelta Kasparian 

Pozer

__________

I am shining a spotlight…

on the sensational Pozer. Tyrone Paul is a British rapper from Croydon, South London. The artist gained success and attention after his debut single, Kitchen Stove, peaked at number twenty-two on the UK Singles Chart. His E.P., Against All Odds, was released in February. It is an incredible release. Pozer is a Drill talent that incorporates Jersey Club. A unique and fascinating artist who is going to go a long way. I am going to get to a few interviews. I want to start out with one from last year from NME. I only recently discovered Pozer but I can recognise he is someone who is a vital and powerful voice in modern Drill:

“What made you want to fuse UK drill with Jersey club?

“I was paying attention when the New York drill scene was coming up. There’s a batch near Harlem called The Sweepers – and they do this Jersey-style drill, full-on – so I’m bumping their tunes, taking in how energetic the songs are. But I’m also taking in how atmospheric Jersey club can be, deeping how jumpy the drum patterns are.

“I’m feeling the Jersey-style beats but thought, ‘Hah I can’t do the full on American style – the screaming – because that’s not me.’ If I do my ting in the typical UK drill sense, it’s not going to be widely acceptable and it’ll be oversaturated. I thought I could merge the Jersey club wave with my UK heritage and see what happens.

“With my beats, I met [producer] RA [‘Malicious Intentions’] through my manager. I dug through a lot of these beats and his beats stuck out to me the most. Young Madz [‘Kitchen Stove’] is a magician too, I tell him what I want, we run through drums, pick which ones we like the most and he makes the magic happen.”

Are there any other types of experimental beats you’ve rapped on?

“I’m a rapper’s rapper. I did it boom-bap style but it goes over people’s heads. I got a song where I remixed Luther Vandross’ ‘Never Too Much’ too.”

Credit: Press

Who’s on your Mount Rushmore of UK rap?

“Skepta, JME, D Double E, Ghetts.

“My favourite is JME but I rate the whole of BBK. [JME] really set the lane, he would rap about nerdy shit but you could tell he grew up in ends. When I was young, me and my uncle would watch Channel U and that’s where it came from – the sets on the rooftops, Crazy Titch’s flows, bare man squashed in a basement spitting – that’s the essence. It set the tone for me to be in the position with the advancements and with the internet, they’ve already paved the road for me to run.”

Have you done any live shows?

“I’ve done one or two little open mics before Kitchen Stove. It was good, I got a lot of love. It’s nerve-wracking when you first start but that’s why I needed to push through and just do it – you can’t get too comfortable in your comfort zone in situations like that and I learned there’s many levels to performing, engaging with the crowd and breath control.

“Me, personally, I’ve never been gone to shows really but allow going to a show as a fan and I’m having to sing your songs to your face when I can do that at home for free? I want people to make me stay on the stage. I want them to experience something and think, ‘Rah my man performed, the show was banging, the tunes were lit’”.

I am going to move on to a conversation with i-d. After Pozer’s first two singles set records, with the release of Puppies, this artist was stepping into the big leagues. Pozer plays Reading & Leeds in August. I can see him playing a lot of festivals in years to come. If you have not followed Pozer on social media then make sure that you check him out. The sound he is creating is unlike anything I have heard. I am excited to see where he heads:

“His confidence in his voice is unmistakable, bolstered by the fact that he became the first UK rapper to have his first two singles chart simultaneously in the UK charts — no small feat for an artist still in the infancy of his career. But “Puppies”, for Pozer, is more than just another song. It’s a statement of intent. “I’ve worked very hard to be here,” he says of his rise. “Everything else before was an introduction.” 

Growing up in an estate in Croydon, south London, as the eldest of 11 siblings — he has ten younger sisters — Pozer slipped easily into the role of older brother. “I was very responsible,” he says. “I wouldn’t call it a burden. Pressure makes diamonds, and even before the rap, I was under pressure.”

Pozer’s first foray into music came from informal cyphers with friends. “We’d just spit bars on the way to places, but no one was recording anything,” he says. “I didn’t do open mics, and I didn’t go to many concerts.” When most of his peers were out partying or hitting the club, Pozer stayed home. “My parents always wanted to know where I was, so I kept it low-key,” he says. “When I should have been out partying, I was working, writing. My music is my life.”

“I was working and this man recognised me from TikTok. I couldn’t get my head around it.”

Pozer observed the stark wealth disparity that existed in London, and how “the fine line between having and not having” influenced everything around him; that divide would go on to drive him to keep his head down and write about his experiences and his life. “Life moves fast,” he says. “Either you’ve got money, or you don’t, but you learn from the struggles: I wrote about my day-to-day, about the experiences I’ve been through.” 

A series of freestyles in 2018 on TikTok found Pozer a bit of a following. There were early comparisons to UK heavyweights like Fredo, Nines and Skrapz. With gritty beats and raw lyricism, his sound echoed the sounds of Chicago drill pioneers like Chief Keef, Lil Reese and Young Chop. But it was the breakout hit “Kitchen Stove”, released this past February, that truly established Pozer’s place in the UK rap scene, peaking at No 22 on the singles chart. Two months later, he followed it up with “Malicious Intentions”, a sharp, sleek track that landed at No 41.

These two songs touch on the quintessential Pozer style: music that blends the kinetic energy of Jersey club with the realism of UK drill, creating a sound that’s tense and visceral, and which prioritises ceiling-threatening basslines. “I can just hear it – the pocket. I’ve always had that ability. Play anything, even Rick James, and I’ll find the pocket to rap over it,” he says. “Writing has always come naturally to me. Music was always loved in my family, but no one took it seriously. I did.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Nelta Kasparian

True to that bravura, Pozer’s flow feels effortless, but it communicates vivid depictions of the life he’s left behind: “I sauced my first blade at nine / At the age of 12, slap bine, 15, beat a court case,” he raps on “Kitchen Stove”.

After the success of his first two singles – as well as a warm response to their follow-up, “I’m Tryna”, the veil between fame and obscurity started to wear thin. Suddenly, Pozer was leading a double life: working at a paint store while also seeing a new path unfold before him. “It was crazy, you know,” he says. “One day, I was at the store and this grown man recognised me, and said, ‘I see you on TikTok.’ I couldn’t get my head around it because a lot was happening very quickly.” 

He’s now found himself in increasingly rarefied spaces: earlier this year, Pozer was in Paris for fashion week, hanging out with AJ Tracey, a longtime inspiration. “When I first heard him, I was like, ‘Oh, he’s hard’,” Tracey says. “Reminds me of me a lot: deep voice, that cadence and flow, clarity where you can hear every word. It sounds like proper British music.”

When Tracey and Pozer met, Tracey gave him a piece of advice: to take care of his newfound wealth by learning financial literacy skills. “I’m not trying to big bro him,” Tracey says via phone interview. “He’s his own man, but I just thought it would be helpful if I say to him, ‘Yo, look, there are a couple of the things that you need to be working on to make sure that all this success that you’re due to have, God willing, the funds are channelled into the right places.’

“It’s very important that I pass that on to people who are going through the same kinds of motions,” he continues. “When I was younger and I was coming up, no one did that for me, bro. It’s about paying it forward.”

For Pozer, who spent his first paycheck from music on “rent, buying out JD and Foot Locker”, it was wise counsel. “Rap doesn’t last forever,” says Tracey. “So you need to make sure that you know on the flip side you’re good, otherwise you don’t want it to be for nothing.”

Even as Pozer’s star has risen, he’s stayed committed to perfecting his craft. Every detail, whether in his music or his visuals, is meticulously planned. “I know who I am and what I’m trying to get across. I set the foundation, and my team and I build from there. We’re perfectionists, always pushing ourselves to raise the bar,” he says. “Whether it’s a Jersey beat or something different, it has to be at 110%”.

I am going to wrap up with an interview from Rolling Stone UK from earlier this year. Blending the harder-edged and moody U.K. Drill with the syncopation of Jersey Club, it has allowed Pozer to engage with a wider audience. Against All Odds is a lighter and perhaps more accessible version of Drill. It still holds huge power. Pozer is now an award-winning artist and chart success. It is clear that his sound has struck a chord with so many people:

“Meshing together the moody atmosphere of UK drill and the upbeat, bouncily syncopated kick formulations of Jersey Club (which emerged from Newark, New Jersey, in the early 2000s) has allowed Pozer to appeal to a wide audience. Before the release of ‘Kitchen Stove’, he built huge anticipation by posting snippets of the track on social media, and when he shared his second single ‘Malicious Intentions’ a few weeks later, he became the first UK rapper in history to have their first two singles chart in the Top 40.

The 22-year-old tends to keep a low profile, but this kind of success doesn’t go unnoticed. In February, he beat big-name nominees like Central Cee, Headie One and K-Trap to win Best Drill Act at the MOBO Awards, and his position at the forefront of Rolling Stone UK’s Future of Music list for 2025 represents another landmark achievement. Elsewhere, on collaborations with artists including AJ Tracey, Nemzzz and JS x YD, he’s stuck to his distinctive sound while reaping the lyrical rewards of hours spent chilling with friends as a teenager, competing over who had the best eight-bar.

Satiating fans’ calls for new music, Pozer has just dropped his debut project Against All Odds, a four-track mixtape focused on the significant changes he’s been going through lately. It’s purposeful and forward-thinking, laced with hopeful bars like “Trials, tribulations, strife and struggle / I come from the dirt, mud, rubble… take risks and I make stacks double” and “I used to bruck down packs in tens / And now I get paid for spitting out gems.” At a poky cafe/bar in Hoxton — a slightly confused cross between a cocktail-centric tiki bar and a gentrified east London cafe — Pozer explains the project’s key objectives.

“The whole tape is there for inspiration value,” he says. “It’s for every yout from the ends that’s tryna do more than what is stereotypically shown. Against All Odds is on the lighter side of what we know as drill… most guys don’t wake up in the morning listening to drill, so I wanna shine a light on the other side of the people who come from these places but don’t 100 per cent resonate with everything drill as a subculture has to offer. I’m shining a light on me and everyone else living normal lives, talking about your habits, and [about] breaking bad ones.”

PHOTO CREDIT: Ryan Saradjola

That theme is central to tape opener ‘Habits’, which sees Pozer rap: “Badness, from a yout I’ve been on badness / I’ve shed blood, sweat, tears / And still I ain’t shed these bando habits”, storming through confessional bars on top of a chunky, industrial, Mumdance-esque beat. The Croydon-raised rhymer recently followed through on this desire to break habits by moving to north-west London, in search of a fresh chapter in his life.

While Pozer didn’t view music as a serious career option until last year, he’s been creating it for as long as he can remember. “My earliest step was drums, I used to bang on everything, so my mum bought me a drum set for my birthday. That was my first introduction to music; then I hit seven, eight or nine, and I started seeing my uncle using [production software] Fruity Loops and listening to music on his iPad. I grew up on the essence: poor recording quality, hearing guys spitting bars, and being like ‘Yeah, I know him from down the road, fam,’ you know when it hits home who these people are and where they’re coming from.”

A love affair with grime ensued. Pozer started hoovering up old DVDs of rooftop clashes, high-energy live sets and behind-the-scenes footage showing MCs like Crazy Titch chilling on the block or walking their dog. Since he was young, he’s loved the raw energy and dynamism of artists like JME, Skepta, Wiley and Kano, and in his clean, urgent delivery you can spot solid traces of this heritage. Sonically, there are also parallels with the kinds of dark, ominous flavours that define grime beats by producers like Rude Kid or Sir Spyro, lurking in the murky synth chords of tracks like ‘Malicious Intentions’ and ‘Puppies’. The man responsible for crafting most of Pozer’s instrumentals is RA.

“You have to shout out RA the God, he’s pivotal!” Pozer enthuses. “I met him through my manager sometime after the ‘Kitchen’ snippet was doing well. He’s a magician. For the sound I was trying to make, he understood everything, and he understood what I wanted to portray on the beat. For me, you have to talk to me outside of music to understand what I’m trying to do with the music, and he’s a man I can have those conversations with.”

Pozer’s close relationship with RA has helped spawn a futuristic sound that’s often guided by long, drawn-out synths that ooze and fizz, and tightly compressed, generously scattered kicks that build tension. The focus on creating suspense is replicated in recent visuals; the blockbuster music video for ‘Shanghigh Noon’ (directed by Red Moons and Arseni Novo) takes the track’s East Asian-inspired central melody and constructs a dramatic, fast-moving shootout sequence that speaks to the high production quality of UK rap videos today. For Pozer, it’s all about making the videos “a strong depiction of the lyrics”, building a world that extends beyond the four tracks of his debut tape.

There are certain parallels to be made between Against All Odds and other recent UK rap projects with an experimental sci-fi-esque tint, like CASISDEAD’s Famous Last Words or Jawnino’s 40. It’s not outlandish to say that what links these sounds is a desire to reach beyond a difficult or underwhelming reality, and grasp something otherworldly.

So, what does success look like in 2025? “I’m adjusting on the go, brushing shoulders with people who are setting the tone for my behaviour, and trying to soak up as much information as I can wherever I go and apply it elsewhere afterwards,” he says. “I just wanna do more musically, and I wanna have bare fun with everyone that’s got man to the position I’m in now”.

I am going to end things there. If you are new to the amazing Pozer – like me -, then I would urge you to check his music out. Having completed a strong of gigs and more ahead, this is a very busy time for him. I know the rest of this year is going to see new fans and success come his way. I think that we all should investigate and respect an…

INCREDIBLE voice in British Drill.

___________

Spotlight Pozer

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/pozer_bigcrd/

TikTok:

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

Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/artist/438fi8qqvXNEPoUrYLIO7J?si=BXTx3ChCQh-o6N8evBAc_g

YouTube:

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

FEATURE: Bravo, Cuntissimo: Why Messages in MARINA’s New Track About Fearless Women, Patriarchy and Ageism Strike a Chord

FEATURE:

 

 

Bravo, Cuntissimo

Why Messages in MARINA’s New Track About Fearless Women, Patriarchy and Ageism Strike a Chord

__________

ONE of my favourite artists around…

it is always great when new MARINA music comes around. Formerly Mariana and the Diamonds, I have been following the work of Marina Diamandis for years. The Welsh-born artist is someone I really admire. Her debut album, The Family Jewels, was released in 2010. Her current album, Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land, was released in 2021. Her forthcoming album, Princess of Power, arrives on 6th June. Butterfly and Cupid’s Girl have already been released from the album. Exceptional songs that hint at what is to come from her sixth studio album. One that might be her best yet. With a fabulous album cover and a gloriously-named new single, Cuntisissmo – I have not heard it on the radio yet but wonder if broadcasters can say the title and get away with it -, it made me reflect on a recent interview. One where MARINA was discussing the album but talking about Cuntissimo. What it means and the spirit behind it. I think that we still have a music industry where women are judged and subjected to misogyny and sexism. Any fun-loving, fearless and free-spirited women seen as disruptive or messy. Maybe Charli xcx is an example of a female artist not subjected to that sort of judgment. However, greats like Madonna have definitely been judged through their career. In her case, there has been ageism and sexism for years now. Someone constantly judged and criticised. That subject of how women are judged and expected to ‘act their age’. It is something that still happens now. Although there is not the same tabloid scandalisation and obsession with women in Pop and harassing them, you still get women called out and attacked for having fun or being bold. There is still ageism. A music industry where women especially are seen as essential only if they are under the age of thirty. In a modern Pop scene, there is very much this emphasis on the young. Though a few modern icons – such as Charli xcx – are over thirty, most of them established themselves in their twenties. Many stations not playing music by women of a certain age.

This is something most often discussed by women. Men not really addressing the issue. Even though it does not affect them directly, it is something they should voice their outrage at. Taking from this Rolling Stone interview, it is interesting what MARINA says about Cuntissimo and the subjects of ageism, women living life to the max, and the patriarchy:

“Marina wants you to meet the Princess of Power, the love-radiating heroine of her new album. The cult-favorite pop queen has revealed full details of her sixth studio album, Princess of Power, out June 6, and released its third single, “Cuntissimo,” ahead of her main stage Coachella performance on Friday, April 11.

“We are meeting a Marina who is not guarding her heart so much anymore,” she tells Rolling Stone. “I think part of why this album has felt so freeing is that I think I’ve really dove into my fear of love. That’s why for me, it’s so powerful that this superheroine’s biggest power is love.”

She adds: “It can sound trite, but the ability to love is so powerful and brave. It’s a courageous thing, particularly if you’ve been hurt in the past. It can be really hard to reprogram yourself, and I’ve finally been able to do that.”

Marina sees Princess of Power, which she recorded with producer CJ Baran, as reflecting something true about her inner self. “Maybe to others, I’ve had a bold energy. Internally, I’ve always struggled to feel like I’m allowed to be my own person,” she says. “The album is about teaching yourself — or re-teaching yourself — how to love.”

IN THIS PHOTO: Sophia Loren in 1955/PHOTO CREDIT: John Springer Collection/Corbis via Getty Images

The single she dropped along with the album announcement, “Cuntissimo,” is an anthemic pop song inspired by glamorous, brave, confident women “who enjoy life to the max.” As she says this, Marina scrolls through a list of queens who embody “Cuntissimo” on her phone — Elizabeth Taylor, Sophia Loren, Madonna, and Rihanna among them.

“That’s really key: pleasure,” Marina says. “Throughout the centuries, it’s been denied us that freedom to be silly and messy. Women have been under such a strict patriarchal power for so long, but this is just like, ‘Fuck you.’”

She pauses before adding: “I want women to not be afraid to age. I think it’s not talked about in pop. Pop pretends it’s not happening. We are getting older. But I don’t want to feel ashamed about it or feel like I have to cling on to youth.”

In some ways, the song recalls themes from her first album, 2010’s Family Jewels, on which she sang about how “girls are not meant to fight dirty/Never look a day past 30.” (The song’s video drops Friday morning.)”.

I love the meaning and mandate behind Princess of Power. I was especially struck reading about Cuntissimo and the meaning behind it. It got me thinking about the music industry and whether it has shifted. Society at large. How there are these incredible women who are brave, fun and fearless. Rather than being celebrated and seen as icons, there is normally this kickback and judgement. In a patriarchal society, there is never going to be respect and equality for women. When women get past thirty, seen as less vital or relevant. MARINA talking about age and it not being a barrier.

Women denied of fun. I still think it holds true. Maybe not to the same extent as years or decades past, we still exist in a world where free and strong women are not as valued as men. Where there is this strict double standard and set of rules that is not shifting. It is wonderful that artists like MARINA are addressing the patriarchy, brilliant queens and not being afraid to age. It does make me wonder, as usual, why there is not more allyship from men. Using their platform to deliver protest against patriarchy and the way women are still reduced to their looks and youth. How women who are unconventional and enjoy fun attacked or seen as bad role models. Pop music especially has always been seen as an arena for young women. Even if things have slightly shifted, there is still ageism and this sense of taboo. That is a woman is past thirty or hitting forty – MARINA is forty this year –, then they are relegated to certain stations and would not get the same focus as younger women. Men not really exposed as much to ageism. I am really looking forward to Princess of Power. I think it is going to be one of the albums of the year. I would love to see MARINA perform it live. Hopefully, there will be dates in London. She has dates in the U.S. booked through this year that stretch from now until August. I am sure there will be some U.K. dates soon. MARINA really is…

ONE of our most important artists.