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Stop what you are doing and watch Baby Queen – she’s awesome!!!!

by 56 Comments

As I shouldn’t post videos in the OP or the site goes doolally, you’ll have to trust me and open this up to access the YT.

As she sings, we can be anything.

4

Comments

  2. I was browsing an 80s pop blog, and the clips were all, yeah, synths, yeah, nice, bit derivative. And then I played this, and it was like – OMG! She’s such an amazing performer, and her lyrics are conversational but also whip-smart poetry with real rhymes and lines that scan. And the whole thing goes an emotional rollercoaster from personal sadness to universe-embracing oneness, with visual and musical swirliness. It´s just awesome and I wanted to capture some of the magic I felt at discovering another great young female musician.

    Because this isn´t just a one-off. She´s got this enormous back catalogue of emotionally-literate instant appeal literate pop songs where she just puts her heart on her sleeve and seems to sing and create from the heart. And her outfits, performances and narratives in the videos just add extra dimensions to the whole package. Just wow!

  5. When I saw your headline, Sal, I thought: Näääååååääääööö..This has got to be hype. She can’t be that good.

    I take it all back. She’s wonderful.

    Credit where credit is due. The director of that video has done a fantastic job, making a memorable song even more remarkable.

    New artist of the month. Probably the year…

  6. Thanks for taking the plunge, guys – glad you liked it. On reflection, I think it’s the demonstration of oxytocin transfer in effect which really wows me.

  9. I must admit – singles aside – I was a teeny bit disappointed by last year’s Quarter Life Crisis album. After securing the coveted 16th spot in the SR album of the year 2021, I was hoping she would make the big push with her first real full-length record.
    Definitely one to follow, though. Much better than Whitfield and may yet outshine Betty Boo (although not in my rude dreams…)

    • After being wowed by ‘We can be anything’, I dived into her videos to see what whose she’d done, and Want Me, along with These Drugs, Narcissist, Buzzkill, and especially Dover Beach and Raw Thoughts really impressed me. I wanted more to listen to, so downloaded the Quarter Life album from Bandcamp. I hear what you say about it not being quite at the high watermark of those earlier songs, but I’m happy to give them a listen and maybe find a way to get the earlier songs for my music player later. This, off of from on the Quarter Life album is pretty dandy, though, so I have hope

      When I checked the site for previous mentions, I think it was you, Sewer Robot, who was the only one to do so.

      To counterbalance the tendency for ‘old’ on this site, I’d be well happy for more posts about acts who aren’t into their x decade of performing/reforming/reissuing. Any other new or newer acts you like?

      • Hi Sal. Through no conscious effort on my part, I have found over the last twenty or so years that my listening has shifted from mostly (usually) heterosexual males whacking guitars to mostly (frequently) gay women making (often guitar free) pop. Therefore I keep a playlist of female-fronted stuff. This is this year’s so far:

        Similar to BQ, Tessa Violet was an artist I hoped would do it last year and her album My God! turned out to be my favourite. As I mentioned in Blogger Takeover, I’m lately very keen on Chappell Roan’s The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess, which passed me by when it came out. I suspect there’s something on these that might hit a similar spot for you..

        • Thanks, Sewer, I’m sure I’ll find something good among that 40+ list of strong dyke musicians. Although I twist off on the direction of all Colombian or all Arabic music, or girl jazz pop singers off the pre-Beatles era, I am also finding modern pop is most exhilarating when it’s female rather then male. I think it’s not before its time.

          I’ll report back on the ones that most appeal. Thanks again!

          • Thanks for that playlist @Sewer Robot.

            Several familiar names but a lot of new ones too.
            Just for the record, it is certainly not exclusively a list of lesbian artists.

            Although, many like Norway’s Girl in Red are explicitly Out.

            By sheer chance, I searched for “Lesbian playlists on Spotify.
            Sorry deadheads” There are far more of them then there are Dick’s Picks! What would Dusty make of all this?

            Lesbian Pop, Lesbian Country, Lesbian Break up, Lesbian Punk, Lesbian anthems, Lesbianisimo, Lesbian Roadtrip, Soft Lesbian Lovesongs, Goth Lesbain Vampires, Allman Brothers Lesbian Romp, Les Dawson Lesbian Karaoke Party….

            So much for the Well of Loneliness!

            I discovered Tierra Whack when I watched her Tiny Desk session last week and loved it.

            Playful pop music with an enormous sense of fun. That band are enjoying themselves.

            I’m signing up for the Whack Fan Club!

          • A decent list of some 40+ artists, Sewer. I played a little from all of them and liked the following enough to want to explore more:
            Chappell Roan, Chloe, Griff, Aliah Sheffield, Allison Russell (beautiful voice), Lava La Rue (extraordinary), The Lovely Eggs (a bit reminiscent of Chumbawamba), Jane Weaver, Lola Young, ShyGirl, GirlBand!

            Also, my wanderings led me to Kiki Rockwell, Nilufer Yanya and Ethel Cain. Lots to explore – thanks for the playlist leading me there!

            • Even being dead, they’re as likely to show up here as Baby Queen, but that’s never on my mind when I listen to music. Nor is newness – the music I like comes mostly from a past a little further back down the line, but that’s as irrelevant as who performs it and their sexuality. What I’m getting from these clips (and the comments) is that it’s not just the music that matters here. There’s a lot of stuff that matters as much as, maybe more than, the music. It matters that she’s a young, a woman, and gay. And sad. As an old straight bloke who’s reasonably happy with life, these are aspects that do not directly resonate with me. I wouldn’t expect the Allman Brothers to seem relevant to her, either.

              Back when I was buying rock music albums, I never said “I suddenly find myself listening to men playing guitars rather than young queer women addressing their issues.” Rock music was mostly men playing electric guitars, which was and still is what I like to hear. From the moment when I first made the distinction – possibly hearing Hendrix for the first time – I preferred rock over pop. I sneered at TOTP and the charts, and that sneer was mostly deserved. It was a different world, and one I didn’t want to inhabit. The music of Baby Queen is another world I don’t inhabit. It doesn’t merit a sneer but neither does it get my automatic respect because it’s made by someone who doesn’t have me in mind when she made it. I can appreciate the craft and artistry in a pair of womens’ shoes, but that doesn’t mean I have to wear them, or feel that I should. There is artistry in Baby Queen’s music, but the “other stuff” seems to outweigh it, to matter more. The importance of “pop music” – a strange term these days, warranting the air quotes – derives from the people making it, the image they present, the issues raised, the mood evoked. I’m not denying or diminishing any of that, but I do prefer to boogie on down with the Allman Brothers. And I have just a teeny tiny smidgeon of suspicion about old men who get all excited about teen girl pop stars. I could be wrong – maybe Baby Queen’s music will last for decades (if that matters). Me, I would have found it weird if my dad blissed out to Electric Ladyland. Hey! Teacher! leave the kids alone!

              • HP, it’s just one thread about a 20-something singer I just happened to have discovered and got excited about. It is possible to ignore it and focus on the far greater number of heritage rock threads that dominate this site.

                Do you want me to respond to the multiple points you make in your comment above? I could, but I’d rather spend my time discovering more new (to me) music.

                Though I’ll respond to one. Pop music generally is made by the young, but if you want to accuse me of being an ageing letch, which is what I read into one of your points, that’s up to you. Possibly true, but as you don’t know me, I feel it reflects more on you and your feelings. These things are subjective.

                • Do I want you to respond? Not like you just did. You can read “ageing letch” into my comment, that’s up to you, but I feel it reflects more on you and your feelings. What makes me suspicious is nothing of the sort – I sense a kind of musical virtual signaling happening here, a desire to be seen as open to new music, your response coloured by the “other stuff” as much as, if not more than, the musical content.
                  “These things are subjective”? I thought about it and took my time adding something other to the thread than the “wow! thanks for this!” reaction you’re clearly happier with. My bad, dude!

                  • “old men who get all excited about teen girl pop stars”
                    seemed pretty clear to me, but ok – musical ‘virtual’ signaling? I just shared a video clip of a song/artist I enjoyed for the music, the lyrics, the energy. Frankly, I don’t care if that comes across as inauthentic. I love getting excited about, and sharing my passion for new musical discoveries – because them those who know more about then and similar artists can share and inform me – like Sewer kindly did*.

                    You’re free to post your love of Allman Brothers 40 minute rock songs on every thread in the forum, of course. It just seems a bit irrelevant here.

                    *and thanks to Sewer for owning the sexual preferences element, though I think its a meaningful perspective and don’t think you can disentangle such elements from an artist’s music – they are kind of integral, when writing from the heart.

                    • I used the Allmans as an example because they are diametrically opposed to Baby Queen, and it helped – I thought – make a point. other bands are available.
                      Please do calm down. Excitement is not necessarily sexual, is it? Music can be exciting. I find some guitar solos exciting, but they don’t give me a hard-on. If I haven’t made myself clear by now, it’s my fault, but since when has contributing a thought-out point of view been irrelevant or inappropriate here?

                • All my fault for bothering to mention the sexual preferences of artists. It’s not important and certainly not the point, but I do find it noteworthy (as. for example, one could hardly fail to observe that so many of the titans of British comedy graduated from a couple of prestigious universities, without considering it a prerequisite to find someone funny) and I suppose I’ve never lost the old “compare and contrast” habit from my own school exam days. Sal wants some “new” – quite reasonable – and a fairly conventional path to same is the “like this, then try this” style recommendation of a friend/sibling/djor, in this case, fellow blogger. This daisy chain of interest is how a chap can find himself with a load of NWOBHM in 1981, quite the collection of synth pop singles by 1983 and a mucho hip hop by 1992 .
                  At a very young age, I fell in love with the vibrant pop music I saw on Top Of The Pops (there I go comparing/contrasting again!). Through curiosity I grew to like at least parts of all sorts of music, including serious, sweaty rock. That’s how I roll and to those who roll another way I say vive la différence

  11. In response to HP’s last comment, above.

    Thank you for elucidating your earlier comments, HP. Thought out comments should always be welcome on the blog/forum – but sometimes, when they are tersely expressed, the intended meaning doesn’t come through.

    I’m glad the Allman Brothers are awesome for you, though using them as an example makes me wonder if you could have used any other band that’s ‘diametrically opposed to Baby Queen’.

    That statement reinforced my perplexity at why you made the comment at all. Maybe – if you like this, then you are unlikely to enjoy this (diametrically opposed) musical act? Or, this sort of music doesn’t belong on The Afterword, here’s what does?

    • I’m exhausted, and a little concerned that I’ve already said too much and got it variously wrong and this isn’t going to help, but you did ask a question (that question mark is a bit of a giveaway), so here goes another TL-DR.

      Yes, it’s only a comment section on a music blog, and one person’s opinion is as good as another (depending on how its expressed) and everything is beautiful in its own way, even Instant Sunshine apparently, and diversity in music is as healthy as it is everywhere else, and it’s all subjective and we shouldn’t really need to restate all this bedrock Afterword Wisdom after so many years, but anyway.

      Terseness? What do you want, smiley emoticons? Terse? Nah. I just treat the comments here like a pub conversation. We shouldn’t have to cringe around each others’ feelings, we’re big boys (and girls) and we should be able to type what we think without fear of causing pearls to be clutched and downy feathers to be ruffled and ickle pink toesy-wosies to be trodden upon. I like a discussion, me, and that generally needs a little more than thumbsalofts if it is to be involving.

      So – what concerns me (too big a word, but anyway) is the way pop music is shaped by much more than merely punting a Good Song out there. You cannot isolate (say) a Baby Queen song without its broader context, which is inevitably framed by the internet and social media. It’s all part of phone-stroking. Image, issues, and (crucially) mood mean more than just a Good Song used to, more than a tune. It’s a complex interconnected world, and every new pop song comes packaged with a set of signals and references. It’s no longer something you simply heard on the radio. The associated visuals are as important as the music, and the online reactions and quotes and whose playlist it’s on.

      None of these signals and references connect with me. The music itself is okay, competently performed, not stupid, but the distance between me and the audience for which it was produced is just too much for me to reach across. I’m all for the Young People Of Today having their own music, it’s essential and good, but like so much of contemporary culture it leaves me blinking stupidly and wondering what the fuss is about.

      The title of your piece, with its three (!!!) screamers and injunction to stop what I’m doing and “watch” Baby Queen because awesome – I did. I did what I was told. I even listened more than watched, which is still for me the experience of music. And I found your excitement (!!!) baffling. I could understand a Young Person’s enthusiasm, but you’re a Dad, aren’t you? Can’t you let the kids have their fun without Dad Dancing in their mosh pit?

      • Thanks, HP, for your full reply, and sorry for exhausting you – although we don’t know each other, we have hung out on this forum for more than a decade, and I like to think there’s never any offence expressed or felt between us. Just maybe mutual bafflement and incomprehension sometimes., Now *flexes swiping fingers* let’s get down to responding to your latest massive missive…

        2nd paragraph – I agree.

        3rd paragraph – maybe concise would have been a friendlier adjective than terse. I’m not worried about criticism. Your deconstruction of Baby Queen is far more interesting and involving than the earlier Allman Brothers comments. As I said before, thanks for taking the trouble to spell out what may have been implicit in your mind but wasn’t obvious to me.

        4th paragraph – here I profoundly disagree – a) that it’s different today than it was in earlier years – every major pop act has had an image, a cultural context, and yes, signals and references – from The Beatles and the Beach Boys onwards, if not before, and b) that you can’t take the song on its own without the visual package and internet/social media framing. I was listening to it and other songs from the album yesterday evening on the way to get a takeaway in the warm Bonn summer glow, and it sounded and felt fantastic – an extraordinary rollercoaster of emotions from a self-acknowledged ADHS-affected musician singing about her life experience.

        5th paragraph – I love what you write here. it’s so honest and cuts to the heart of your reaction to the music. I wish you had said this at the start. It’s really something to engage with. Thank you, HP.

        6th paragraph – why do I, a middle aged Dad enjoy young people’s music? Partly curiosity – what is the current music scene? Do I like it? (Some, definitively not, others, enormously so). Also, I have young daughters, – I’d like to know something about the world they’re growing up into – it’s very different, but also relatable to that I grew up into. I have twenty-something colleagues – it’s actually quite nice to have some shared frames of reference, rather than being stuck in an old person’s musical/cultural ghetto. And most importantly, as you said, it’s ultimately about the song, the music, the sound, shorn of cultural and generational context – and I just love what I’m hearing. I’m not in their mosh pit*, Dad dancing – I’m ear-budding my way down the pavement. Anyway, as long as I respect personal space, I don’t care any more about being embarrassing (except when out and about with my daughters – that IS a crime).

        I have enjoyed our discussion. I how you have too. I also hope we’ve come to a places of mutual understanding.

        Now, are you going to start that Allman Brothers thread, or am i?

        *Do the kids still have mosh pits? (Asking for an elderly Dad dancer)

        • I haven’t even started the Myth Of The New yet. Any music I haven’t heard is new to me, doesn’t matter when it was recorded. All recorded music is stored in the great warehouse of the past – it hardly matters what shelf it’s on. F’rinstance – I discovered the first Argent album this last week. Thought I knew it but I’d only heard the track on (I think) the “Fill Your Head With Rocks” sampler. Released in 1970, which is about two hundred and something years ago as the crow flies but every note was fresh as the new-born dew to me. It’s basically a follow-up to Odyssey [sp?] and Oracle; melodic, varied, with just a hint of ‘seventies prognatiousness. Jaw-dropping harmony singing (all live in the studio, of course), and Russ Ballard’s almost operatic range. Not swamped by keyboards and owing really nothing to the blues, it’s a perfect rock album that never descends into cliché with a production that (to me) doesn’t sound dated, just clear and powerful. I’ve lived for over fifty years without it, and I wonder why and how. It’s sort of like an English (very English) Sardonicus. And, for me, definitively new. Album Of The Year.

          • Album of the Year? Don’t you want Boneshaker’s thread? Rather than completely ignoring everything I’d written which your Argent comment was supposedly a response to?

            Edit: *checks Boneshaker’s thread* Oh, I see you did post there as well. Even so, I think your well-written critique of that album would have been better placed there.

                    • You have to accept that it IS very different today to back when some of us started wasting our pocket money on what was the new music at the time.

                      The vast majority of recordings these days are terrifically overproduced; there’s not a lot of humanity on the discs. No room for bum notes, drums bleeding onto other tracks, missed cues etc. etc. All obliterated by a computer. Click tracks. Eurgh.

                      Not only that, but the most powerful medium of popularisation is also profoundly new – soshul meedja innit. And by definition, finding out about new stuff by one’s active subscription to channels of material micro-targeted at specific demographics means there’s reduced cross-fertilisation of discovery.

                      Which is one reason why this place, with an open access policy that anyone can join in with is so refreshing. I would never have heard the artist you promote here any other way. I probably won’t make any effort to hear her again; just not my cup of chai, but that’s entirely by the by.

  12. A reference to the band Argent immediately transports me back to those first years watching TOTP.
    And Russ Ballard’s Since You’ve Been Gone, as performed by Rainbow, was one of the first records to stimulate my interest in chart-friendly metal.
    Small (pop) world, eh?

  13. Hi Vulpes. Thanks for your comments, which I’ll reply to here, as they don’t really seem a response to anything particular in the thread to which they are added. (Maybe they are, but I can’t see it|).

    Hearing (and buying) new music is different from when I was young, so I imagine it was even more different in earlier decades. I was 3 when that Argent recording was made. Radio shows and TOTP were the only sources of new music, Peel and Janice Long being my main sources of something different from the playlist standard. NME was good to read and learn established prejudices about music, but not to hear it. The image was as/more important as/than the sound.

    Now there is an embarrassment of riches, as well as plenty of noise to accompany and drown out the signal of decent music.

    “The vast majority of recordings these days are terrifically overproduced…”

    That may be true (though it seems like hyperbole), but I think an original artist can still stand out among the overproduction and generic flotsam and jetsam. There always were manufactured bands and derivative acts associated with and hanging onto every music scene from Merseybeat to Madchester and beyond. If I hear a song I like, like the Baby Queen track above, I hunt out others by the same artist, particularly live recordings or the NPR/KEXP sets, to see if they can cut it outside of a promotional video. That’s all I have to go on, but it’s enough.

    Social media and micro targeting? Well, it’s always possible to be led by the nose in diminishing circles of interest (and keep returning the AW site to prog and the 60s/70s whenever possible). But what I thought I liked about the AW (as with The Word magazine before it) was that alongside the thick slices of ‘old’ & reissued there was a welcoming of the new and diverse.

    As the active membership shrinks to a core of veterans, I guess that’s less and less going to be the case in the future. It is possible to take an interest, say in something new but outside my comfort zone and head down that rabbit hole for a bit. And I think that’s what you are saying in your last paragraph, and I salute you for giving Baby Queen a listen then edging away, not wanting to hear it ever again. I have done exactly the same with the Argent clip. I will always give new (to me) prog a try, but so far I have never heard anything of the like that I have ever wanted to hear again.

    Horses for courses and vive la diversité.

    • I think I read your disagreement comment (up there ^) incorrectly – I thought you were saying things were the same then as now as regards the exposure to new music.

      Doffs cap, sucks on gasper and slips off clogs before spinning up a Back Door album.

      😉

      • Cheers, VV. Now I understand the context. ( I am so slow). Exposure to new music sure is different. – there we agree.

        What I think (and was arguing above) hasn’t changed is the idea that pop and rock acts have an image and a backstory, references and codes (mediated through inkies or now social media). And a song can be heard on the radio (6 music or internet) as much as it can be absorbed with bells and whistles on instagram or wherever young people get their new music (box set/Netflix series theme tunes? Playstation/XBox soundtracks?).

        Now, about that Back Door album.

        Ooh yes, I do like that free/wheeling jazz sax. Almost skronky! Thanks for the tip

  14. Back in the day we all did what the NME said and not much beyond that narrow world got in. Now these youngsters chance upon all sorts of material from different eras on Spotify and are open to it all. It’s all a question of how you look at it. The boomer despairing perspective or the kids are all right, thank God for their refreshing perspective.

  15. As this thread prepares to slip off the front page, I’m off to listen to Baby Queen and some of the artists recommended by others in response. I will post again when I’m captivated by another artist I discover (like Dua Lipa or Maggie Rogers before), and I hope others will as well. There’s a lot of great music out there.

  16. Regular viewers may know that I have a house stuffed to the gills with teenage offspring. One of them amazes me with her frequent singing of sometimes quite obscure 70s and 80s tracks but she has absolutely no backstory on who those acts are. They are in a generic lump, much the same as I view variety hall performers and songs of the thirties.

    They do have opinions about current acts though. Some to-and-fro between Drake and Kendrick Lamarr seems to have been big news around the dinner table a few weeks ago.

    To follow on from some of the above conversations, I am still hugely open to new pop music but it doesn’t propel me to want to hear more by way of investment in an album until they get a bit of a run going. I think the last time that happened with me was with Lorde because the singles that followed Royals were really strong. Teenage me would be a fan and would have bought everything and defended the next albums to the hilt. As it is, I think Pure Heroine is a masterpiece.

    The next time I do this though, I assure you it won’t be because I want desperately to appear “cool” and “with it”. I’m long past caring about that sort of thing.

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