I like Anna Calvi, she’s a bit ‘lady Nick Cave’, virtuoso musician, Mercury nominated, all that stuff. She’s a bit like an English version of St. Vincent.
What irks me is… Anna’s new record is great, but the ‘angle’ all the interviews and reviews I’ve read have chosen to take is ‘Anna’s come out as gay’. It’s 2018, FFS. Does anybody really care?
Or am I just being a middle-class liberal ponce again?
Hunter is an album about sexuality and gender – “I believe that gender is a spectrum. I believe that if we were allowed to be somewhere in the middle, not pushed to the extremes of performed masculinity and femininity, we would all be more free.”
http://annacalvi.com
That might be why her sexuality comes up in interviews and reviews.
How contemporary of her. Jump on that bandwagon?
Yes, it’s germane to the album in question. And I would bet dollars to donuts that this focus has come from the label and artist, and is not the creation of the media.
Pretty much, yeah. Anything else we can help you with, @fentonsteve?
I don’t disagree, but it is exactly the type of story that lazy, unimaginative journalists will lap up.
“It’s 2018, FFS. Does anybody really care?”. I’m afraid it would seem so.
The number of attacks on lesbian, gay and bisexual people in the UK has soared by nearly 80 per cent in the past four years, new data shows. More than one in five LGBT people have experienced a hate crime or incident due to their sexual orientation or gender identity in the last 12 months, compared with 16 per cent in 2013.
Things like that make me wish for a different world, Kid.
My pal’s French wife was asked, the day after the Br*x*t result, when she was “going back home”… in, of all places, Cambridge – a more liberal, cultural, melting pot of a place it would be hard to imagine. They’ve since moved to Edinburgh.
Thank goodness my kids are of a generation which seems not to care about creed or colour. If I ever joke about their mother’s strange “Foreign” habits (Mrs F is half-Spanish and was raised in France), they give me what for. And quite rightly so.
I’m rubbish at maths… how is 16 to 20 an 80% increase?
“More than 1 in 5”.
16% * 180% = 28.8%, which is more than 20%.
That’s more than 1 in 4, though. So all logically true, but I detect a mathematically-challenged journo.
If that’s true, it shows how elastic statistics can be. 28.8% is closer to one in three than it is to one in five.
Here’s the report. https://www.stonewall.org.uk/comeoutforLGBT/lgbt-in-britain/hate-crime
The specific figure referred to is that 16% of LGBT people say they experienced hate crime in 2017, compared to 9% in 2013. That is indeed a ‘nearly 80%’ increase (77.77% to be precise) in the percentage reporting this. So, to take Alias’s theoretical illustration below, based on 1m people it will have risen from 90,000 to 160,000, an increase of 70,000. I’d say that’s a pretty significant leap.
yes, that explains it – the numbers KD quotes are wrong.
It could be the numerator has increased by 80%, that is the actual number of incidents. However, there has also been an increase in the denominator, that is the actual number of LGBT people. As a result the percentage of incidents to LGBTs hasn’t changed as much.
Therefore, the count of incidents has risen by 80%, whilst the percentage of the LGBT community experiencing them has only gone up from 16% to 20%.
So from 16 percent to 20 percent is soaring? Any hate crime is unacceptable but that is just a shoddy reporting.
Not really bothered about the sexuality issue surrounding the album – I don’t like her music it is one dimensional.
If for the sake of argument we say there are a million gay people in the UK (I don’t know the number, but that would be less than 2% of the population) then 16% is 160,000. 20% is 200,000. That is an increase of 40,000 hate crimes a year. I don’t think the poor maths detracts from the seriousness of the issue.
Not at all, but it does detract from the credibility of the source.
No, I am with you 100%. A person’s sexuality is the least interesting thing about them, whatever their persuasion; unless personally involved in a relationship with said person, of course – otherwise it is none of my business and I don’t give two hoots. I am more concerned in whether or not you are a twat than what you choose to do with your anatomy in the privacy of your own boudoir (or anywhere else for that matter). If your partner (or partners) of choice are consenting, then fill your boots.
The fact that Lily Allen, Macca and now, Ms Calvi deem fit to reveal ‘shock’ news of a sexual nature on the eve of a new album release only convinces me to give said products a swerve.
If it needs a drop of ‘sauce’ to be palatable, then the meal is probably shite.
Agree!
To be fair, I don’t think Anna Calvi has ever hidden her sexuality. The press releases around her latest reflect the subject matter of identity
As I understand it her album is very much about sexuality and gender so it’s hardly surprising if that comes up in the interviews. If we dismissed every album as crap based on the usual round of promotional interviews that go with it we wouldn’t be left with much to listen to.
And in Lily Allen’s case she’s promoting an autobiography so as with every autobiographical promotion ever, of course there’s going to be a focus on the salacious stuff. As I recall, the promotion of Keith Richards’ book had an unhealthy focus on the size of Mick Jagger’s penis….