
Lotus: Little Simz says she almost quit music before new album
"I've always been someone who wants to win with who I've come up with," the 31-year-old said."I love the idea of doing things as a team, you come with your people."Sometimes along the way, there's a parting, there's people going in different directions, and as I'm getting older I'm learning to be at peace with that and letting go and moving on."My music's always been a space for me to speak about those things in a way that feels authentic and that's honest. "I think that's part of my healing."
Lotus is the Londoner's sixth studio album and while she doesn't mention Inflo by name, tracks like Thief and Lonely seem heavily influenced by the breakdown of their relationship.In an interview with Billboard in April, Simz revealed she'd started four albums with the producer, all of which had to be scrapped. And on Lonely, which she performed live in a special show at the BBC's Maida Vale studios on Wednesday, she opens up about how shelving them made her lose her confidence.She raps about "sitting in the studio with my head in my hands thinking, 'what am I to do with this music I can't write?'"Despite being a decorated artist, winning the 2022 Mercury Prize and Brit, Mobo and Ivor Novello awards for her fourth album, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, Simz says she still worried she wasn't talented enough after the fall-out.
'Here's my diary'
She told DJ Target she wasn't sure if she wanted to continue making music before recording Lotus, but the thought it could be her last album encouraged her to just throw everything at it. The album, she says, "feels very exposed... literally, here's my diary".Lonely, in particular, was described by NME as the "emotional epicentre" of the work.Simz said it was "one of the moments on the album where I was like, I'm just going to tell it how it is and leave it on the record". Simz now said Lotus is the work she's most proud of and that it's restored her self-belief. "This album has really helped bring me back to what my purpose is," she told Radio 1's Jack Saunders."I definitely feel way more empowered to do what I'm doing, and more confident than I did when I was first making this record."It's really helped me find my belief in myself again."The album name, Lotus, is taken from the flower renowned for its ability to survive in hostile habitats. Simz has said, like herself, it "learned how to thrive in muddy waters"."It's such a brilliant example of something coming from these conditions and being something so beautiful and overcoming," she says."One of the themes [of the album] is growth but it's more so rising above it. "We all go through madnesses in life and we're all doing our best to figure out how to overcome things."It's OK to sometimes feel a bit lost."BBC Newsbeat contacted Inflo's representatives for comment but did not get a response. Little Simz: Live at the BBC is available to stream on BBC iPlayer now.
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Telegraph
23 minutes ago
- Telegraph
How Live Aid ruined music forever
Forty years ago this month, Bob Geldof unleashed his 'global jukebox'. With the help of Midge Ure and promoter Harvey Goldsmith, he staged a concert across two venues on either side of the Atlantic, starting at midday on Saturday July 13 1985 in London and ending at the John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia 16 hours later. Around the world, 1.7 million people tuned in, and it is seen as one of the great charity success stories of all time, raising $140 million for famine relief in Ethiopia. Live Aid was so big that it has its own folklore: Status Quo's backstage antics, Bono's messiah impression, Phil Collins hopping on Concorde to play both venues, Geldof swearing on TV and, of course, Queen's show-stealing performance. Yet Live Aid's impact on music itself is often overlooked – perhaps because no-one wants to sound uncharitable. But the truth is that it was a disaster. In Britain, up until this point, we had enjoyed a long tradition of innovation and reinvention, but this brace of charity concerts changed all that, although few people noticed at the time. It resuscitated artists on life support, invented the idea of a concert as a greatest hits parade, strangled the 'second British invasion' of great pop acts in America, and provided the model for a new consumerism, encouraging us to purchase (or repurchase on compact disc) the back catalogue of musicians who had been slipping out of public consciousness for a decade Ultimately, Live Aid heralded an era of musical regurgitation and nostalgia, an era from which we have never escaped. At the end of Martin Scorsese's 1976 film of The Band's farewell concert, The Last Waltz, Robbie Robertson turns to the crowd and yells 'Goodnight, Goodbye'. The Band's guitarist and principal songwriter was signing off on behalf of rock's great and good. 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The British singles charts had always been a mixture of genius and pap, but things began to begin to slide after the first half of the 1980s when exuberant chart acts such as Wham!, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Soft Cell, Yazoo, and ABC had dominated. After Live Aid we had Wet Wet Wet, T'Pau and Cutting Crew, all of whom looked like the kind of people you would bump into in a provincial nightclub, rather than iconoclasts who would shock your grandma. Or bands that Patrick Bateman from American Psycho would get excited about, the suit-wearing yuppie pop of Johnny Hates Jazz and Living In A Box. Record labels wanted artists with safe, cross-generational appeal. Even the sainted Bowie was affected, turning out a succession of dull, corporate-friendly duds after 1985. All the confidence was gone. In a greedy, short-termist industry, it was safer to rely on wealthier, older fans of older bands or let marketing synergies do all the work. 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