If anyone reads my blog with any regularity, you will have noticed that the last year was completely dedicated to the Music Jar project. I didn’t write about anything else on here during that time although I was eagerly beavering away on THE NOVEL in the background.

With a new year comes the opportunity to change it up and that feels like an understatement given what the last couple of months has thrown my way. My intention is to blog each week, with some kind of insight into a considered conversation, a fun aside or a development that is of worth for me to document. I’ve always felt that there was no point in sharing anything unless it created some kind of impact. I like conversation that makes me think, challenges me or makes me laugh. Why should what I write be any different? So that’s what I’m aiming for. To write something once a week that touches on one of those.

For now, it’s all the cliches you can possibly think of as I attempt to recover my position. I’ve quit drinking and social media. I’m in therapy, looking after my mental health and unpacking the deep abandonment issues I’ve always struggled with. This is a time to strip everything back and stare hard at myself in the mirror.

Here we are, mostly safe at the end of 2022. For the last of my Music Jar project artists, I’ve had the incredible pleasure of listening to Self Esteem.
Now, there has been little option but to have had some skin in the Self Esteem game this year (both mine and theirs). As a rising star, appearing on Scroobius Pip’s podcast as well as Friday Night Live – there was no way I wouldn’t have caught up with some of their antics.

Now, Rebecca Lucy Taylor is Self Esteem but they are also described online as being the band. I’ll likely refer to both in this blog.

I’m really into the spoken word elements, and the positivity on display across both Self Esteem’s albums – Compliments Please and Prioritise Pleasure – is contagious. I think there’s a lot to be said for Taylor’s background, working as part of Slow Club, and identifying the development of her own self esteem through her twenties enough to name her project after it. What’s even more incredible is that these extensive verses on love, loss, acceptance, sex are wrapped up in some of the catchiest choruses I’ve heard in a long time. The production on her work is amazing and as I drove down the A Roads of Essex, there was a fat smile on my face, recognising that I am enough. That’s a strong capacity for music to have. Yes, it can make us connect. Sure, you can relate to it. It’s the sense of companionship you get from Self Esteem that makes me glad she/they were the artist I wrapped this year and this project on.

This year has been incredibly transformative for me. I’ve been grateful for anything to ground me. Having something to listen to, somewhere to turn my attention to, may well have been a life saver.

For each artist I’ve listened to as part of this project in 2022, I’ve added a song to a Spotify playlist. You can listen to those here.

This week I have been listening to Jehnny Beth – thanks to Steph for the recommendation.

I didn’t know of Jehnny Beth before and I’m not sure I do now. I expected a twee singer songwriter and instead was delivered these beautiful ethereal landscapes of music that felt like they belonged in the HyperNormalisation.

While waiting for the lyrics kick in, I was getting on with some writing and then realised the scope of the song had stretched beyond an intro.

Here’s the thing. I’ve listened to Savages – maybe even seen them at some festival or other, but this is very different. It’s very French. Very cool. I should never have expected anything else from one of Steph’s recommendations to be fair.

It might not have grabbed me in the way others have but it’s great for getting into another zone and for focus.

This week, it is the turn of an out and out legend. A woman with so much clout that I daren’t do anything but adore everything that she is about. Maybe the true People’s Princess. An icon of Liverpool and a Saturday night television staple, she ate it up whatever she turned her hand to. It’s only blood Cilla Black.

I know Cilla. We all know Cilla. My introduction to this icon would have been as part of the Triple Threat of Saturday night TV in the nineties – The Real Adventures of Superman, Gladiators and Blind Date. For a long time, I don’t think I knew she was a singer. I just knew I liked her hair (or hurrrr), her teeth and her accent. She always sparkled. Cilla must be a gay icon, right?

As I learnt more about music, I discovered that Cilla was fucking cool. She was there, man! She’s got stories for days and was all over the backbeat, northern soul, rock n roll establishment of Liverpool. If you want a pretty good insight, you can’t go far wrong with the ITV drama series, Cilla, starring Sheridan Smith. I apologise to true Cilla fans and scousers if this isn’t an appropriate recommendation. Or has been shunned by the true believers.

What really struck me about this week, is that Jadeth was right all along. My mate Jade loves Cilla, holds her up as a Titan of industry, the guiding light through any storm. The truth of the matter is that you can’t go wrong with that voice. There’s so much passion and soul in Anyone Who Had A Heart, Something Tells Me and You’re My World that there’s no escaping the sprig of tension in your vertebrae as you recognise you are being aurally treated by a god.

I do find myself discovering artists through this little project and wondering how I got through 35 years without recognising their power. Cilla is up there now. Gawd bless her, and those moves.

This week I have been listening to the nu jazz musician Emma-Jean Thackray and her wonderful album, Yellow.

The fun thing about Thackray is that I didn’t know of her before this came up (thanks Jamie) and I don’t know much more now. I know she’s a multi-instrumentalist with her own record label and that I really liked listening to her music but that’s about it. There’s a lot to be said for any musician who can maintain any air of mystery in 2022.

Yellow is a very experimental album with elements of house, jazz, pop, funk and spoken word thrown together to create a real work of art. I don’t know what more I can say about it but I liked it.

This week I have had the pleasure of listening to Joan As Police Woman. My thanks to Rory for the recommendation.

I didn’t know anything about Joan Wasser until this came my way. It’s been a joy to listen to her cool indie songs including the two albums of cover songs. Joan As Police Woman, Wasser’s performing name, came following her work with The Dambuilders, Black Beetle and Antony And The Johnsons, with a name referencing the Angie Dickinson series, Police Woman.

There’s a real mix of stuff in there, with appearances from other indie favourites including Anohni themselves. The songs have a European tinge and all sound like they would fit in your favourite 21st century indie romcom with a flourish. Wasser seems effortlessly cool in her approach and I found myself straining to listen to the various elements at play in her music.

A playlist of my favourite songs from this project is available on Spotify.

This week, it’s time for a legend. There have been other legends but only one was being painted by Lucy in Fear and Loathing. Only one changed the trajectory of a young Richard E Grant’s life. Only one was mentioned and not seen in Liquorice Pizza. That’s right. It’s Barbra Streisand.

Now, it’s impossible to make it to 35 years of age without having heard some Streisand, and I’m no exception but it’s a different thing altogether to indulge myself in Guilty, cry at the soundtrack to A Star Is Born or to be left aghast by that note at the end of Funny Girl.

Streisand is a legend of the highest order and there’s not a lot more I can say about it. I’d like to thank Elisa Adams for the recommendation and then for insisting on over delivering with all the songs I should be listening to and how good Omar Sharif looks in Funny Girl.
I have nothing but respect for Streisand. That voice is amongst the most incredible to grace the earth.

A list of my complied Music Jar recommendations is available on Spotify.

This week, I have even listening to Ella Fitzgerald. It doesn’t take a lot for you to realise what a big deal this has to be. There are so many songs, so many albums and only so much time.

So how best to approach one of the biggest and most influential singers of the last century. I listened to as much as I could (without listening to Christmas songs) and these are the lessons I have taken from the experience.

Ella Fitzgerald is very much a force for good. She worked with everyone, adapting her style and all the while maintaining her position as the queen of jazz.

You know her. You love her. There’s not a lot I’m going to be able to teach you about her work. Go and listen to it and marvel at what she did.

Well, this is a big one. You know her. You love her. This week I have been listening to the mighty Carole King. Does someone of that calibre even need an introduction?

Carole King is one of the most adored, prolific and cited American singer-songwriters of the last sixty years. She’s sold an estimated 75 million records worldwide, won four Grammy Awards, been inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and is a Kennedy Center Honoree. As far as I know, she’s also the only Music Jar entrant to have a Broadway musical about her life. There. Did you even need that?

My introduction to King’s music is a strange one because I didn’t realise it was her. On The Beatles debut, Please Please Me, there’s a song called Chains which I took as a Lennon/McCartney original, not recognising how many rock standards they were using at the time as they toured the seedy underbelly of Hamberg. I even learnt to play it and didn’t clock who the song was accredited to.

There are other markers along the way. It’s impossible to have got anywhere without knowing at least all of Tapestry, King’s second, and maybe most lauded album. Every song that came in was a reality check that I do know her and her music. I’d just never put a name to those beautiful lyrics. In the summer, I met with a friend to talk creative endeavours and he waxed lyrical about Carole King, so I messaged him this week to ask which of her twenty-two albums is his favourite. Pearls he said, so Pearls I listened to. It’s great. It all is.

I don’t feel there is anything I can say that hasn’t been dealt with in a much better way elsewhere. If you know Carole King, then you know. If you don’t, trust this fool and go and discover what you already know.

This week, I have been listening to Ego Ella May, another brilliant recommendation from my mate Becca. Well done, you’ve smashed this project for me.

Ego (pronounced: eh-go) Ella May is a singer-songwriter from South London. Her music is a mix of jazz, soul and some cool beats that set it apart from her contemporaries.

Her voice is absolutely incredible. It’s so rich and layered on songs like Miss U that it’s a near sensory overload to listen to with headphones. Both of her studio albums, So Far and Honey For Wounds are loaded with a variety of soulful, heartfelt songs that I got lost in completely.

Again, she’s not an artist I would have been aware of so I am very thankful for the introduction and will continue to sit with these songs for a long time.