From living in his car to writing for Beyonce: who is Boots?

Jordan Asher is wading through leaves on a crisp autumn lunchtime in New York’s Washington Square Park, contemplating his Cinderella story. Under the alias Boots, he is one of the most sought-after and speculated-about writers and producers in pop music. But that’s inevitably what happens when you come from nowhere and end up shaping the sound of a Beyoncé album. Asher co-wrote and produced a remarkable 80% of Beyoncé’s self-titled, surprise-released record in 2013 but that sound is best exemplified by the track Haunted, all pulsing trap beats and nasty, distorted bass. Here was someone no one had heard of, who was nudging a superstar’s style into murky new territory, seeping menace into pop’s escapist bubble.

Four years ago, though, Asher was homeless. From his late teens to early 20s he lived in a beaten-up Chevrolet Gladiator and, for a period, on the streets in South Florida, swerving Walmart security guards to sneak whatever sleep he could in the warmth of the store’s bathroom cubicles. Once, when spending the night in a “sorta shanty town” under a highway in his home town of Miami, he was alerted by the tyre screeches of military jeeps.

“George Bush was in town,” he remembers, his voice heavy with disgust as he recalls the local authority “cleaning the streets of the homeless” to impress the president.

Asher mostly declines to talk about how he stopped living on the streets and of the apparently chance encounter that led him to become Beyoncé’s number two. Like much about the 28-year-old, that story is fogged in mystery – mostly of his own making – and any attempt to demystify it is met with short, sharp, stock answers. But he mellows slightly amid the greenery of the park today, quiet but for B-boy dancers pulling shapes to 90s rap around a boombox.

“I was in a room I probably shouldn’t have been in and had an opportunity to play a song to someone,” he says, smiling. “That’s all anyone needs to know.”

His fairytale is so fantastical that it makes you wonder just how legit it is, especially given the rise of the “shadowy producer”, a well-worn ruse in which buzzy electronic acts, from Jungle to Jai Paul, are marketed as mysterious in a bid to turn intrigue into a record-buying fanbase. Indeed, as the internet frantically speculated about his identity after the Beyoncé album came out – according to Pitchfork there were 452m Google queries of “who is Boots?” in seven days – Asher was eventually unmasked as the former frontman of a failed indie band called Blonds, suggesting he didn’t meet her without some toilet-circuit gigging first.

But while he won’t budge on that part of his past, questions over his authenticity don’t seem to bother Asher. “If people want to question the validity of my story, that’s fine, I don’t give a shit. I know I’m real,” he insists.

Perhaps that’s because, in the two years since Beyoncé, he has gone some way to prove himself, and his trademark sound has become as much his calling card as his secrecy and abruptness. He has continued to pull pop and hip-hop in swampy directions, laying glassy beats for R&B innovator FKA twigs’s M3LL155X EP and doomy production for political rap duo Run The Jewels. He’s also keen to prove himself as a solo artist and last month released his debut album, Aquaria – “Something uniquely me that no one else could do,” he says.

Asher is relaxed today: rough-shaven, showing off a tattoo on his hand that Grimes gave him with a biro pen and needle, your everyday hipsterish music dude. But Aquaria shows off a far darker alter ego: in it he plays an unhinged Mad Max-style loner, spitting Cormac McCarthy-ish poetry about “ghosts in the tar pit” and “blood in my piss” around synths that churn like dentists’ drills in an exorcism. Even the song titles – Earthquake, Bombs Away – suggest a world hurtling towards oblivion.

“Well, I’m not wrong! Listen to all those gas-guzzling cars,” he says, bending my ear towards the hum of New York traffic. “The effort it would take to replace all those with electric cars? It’s easier and cheaper for that industry and for us to not do anything. That’s what gets me down. My problem isn’t the laundry list of things fucking the planet up; it’s the mindset that keeps us there.”

His own mindset on Aquaria is mainly of fevered paranoia: on one track, C.U.R.E, Boots depicts an Earth governed by sinister puppeteers exploiting “cash in the rat trap”. It is perhaps because of this bleakness that Aquaria has confused critics, but it certainly marks Asher out from your average rent-a-pop producer. While others embrace the click-happy internet age with saccharine synths and hyper-glossy sounds, Asher’s music reflects the information-overloaded grimness and anxiety.

“If it sounds like I don’t trust people, it’s because I’ve watched humanity fail me and others like me,” he says hastily, nodding to his past horrors.

The criticism hasn’t stopped others from knocking on his studio door. He has to rush off soon to a recording session, which he teases could involve Frank Ocean, a film score or alternatively just be him “fucking around” on his own. Cinderella story or not, it’s his past struggles that keep him going. “Everything that happened before keeps me sharp, keeps me hungry... you don’t forget that.”

SISTAR Choreographer Chae Dasom To Hold Special Dance Workshop In Hong Kong Next Month

SISTAR fans in Hong Kong will get the opportunity to experience the rigors of learning new moves from the group's very own choreographer.

Chae Dasom, the woman behind some of the K-pop group's hottest dance moves, is heading to Hong Kong to host a special dance workshop for Hallyu fans.i

Announcing the news on B Soul Dance Production's official Facebook page on Nov. 10, reservations for the workshop are ow open for interested applicants who want to meet and learn some amazing dance moves from SISTAR's choreographer Chae Dasom.

SISTAR member Hyolyn went as far as to promote the workshop in a promotional video uploaded on Secret9 Entertainment's official YouTube channel. In the video both women talk about how excited they are for the upcoming workshop.

The dance workshop will be held with Secret9 Entertainment in Hong Kong at the studio run by B Soul Dance Production Ltd. from Dec. 21 to 23.

Chae Dasom is known for working with not only SISTAR, but other K-pop stars such as 4Minute, BESTie, Lee Hyori, and G.NA.

Source

YG Entertainment Acts Big Bang, 2NE1 Likely To Be Absent From MAMA 2015 Ceremony

One of Korea's biggest entertainment companies may be absent from the 17th Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA).

YG Entertainment revealed on Tuesday that none of their acts received invitations from Mnet to attend the event, which will be held this year in Hong Kong on Dec. 2. The agency reported that it would be "difficult" to plan on sending any YG artists to the event at this late of a date.

None of YG Entertainment's most popular acts, including the iconic K-pop groups Big Bang and 2NE1, are currently slated to appear at the event.

"It usually takes at least two months to cast, direct, and select candidates for the awards," a YG Entertainment rep told Korean outlets, reports The K-Pop Herald.

A representative from Mnet revealed that plans are still underway regarding nominees and lining up artists to perform at the event.

2015 saw a long-awaited and well-received comeback from the idol group Big Bang, as well as the debut of YG's group iKON. The agency also represents top acts like Psy, 2NE1, Epik High, AKMU, and Winner.

YG Entertainment artists - 2NE1, Big Bang, Epik High, and Big Bang's G-Dragon- have all received awards at past ceremonies.

Big Bang dominated Korean music charts for much of the summer, but due to the lack of an invitation, the quintet is not currently set to attend the ceremony or nominated for any awards.

The MAMA first aired on Mnet in 1999, and has been held overseas since 2010. MAMA has been hosted by Hong Kong since 2012.

Bob Dylan's latest Bootleg Series release to cover his classic 1965/66 recordings

The latest instalment of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series looks set to be most exciting set yet. Ultimate Classic Rock reports that The Cutting Edge 1965-66: The Bootleg Series Vol 12 will include demos, unheard versions and outtakes from Dylan’s “thin, wild mercury sound” period, which saw him release the albums Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde.

Though there has been no official statement from Dylan’s camp or from Sony Legacy, the label that releases The Bootleg Series albums, the report seems credible, based on information the Guardian has seen. Ultimate Classic Rock reports that the set will come in three different versions – a 2CD set, and six-disc edition, and an 18-disc package, which will include comprehensive coverage of the sessions for Like a Rolling Stone.

If the18CD set manages to come anywhere near 80 minutes of music per disc, it will include around 21 hours of recordings, which would allow scope to include an enormous amount of the material Dylan recorded in during an incredibly fertile period.

The report says the set will include one of the great unreleased sessions of Dylan’s career – the original recordings for Blonde on Blonde, made with the Band, before Dylan scrapped that version of the album and decamped to Nashville to record it with session musicians from the city.

The sets will reportedly be released on 6 November.

Red Velvet Tells Aspiring Singers To "Never Give Up"

 Red Velvet Tells Aspiring Singers To "Never Give Up"

Girl group Red Velvet sent a touching message to those who dream of becoming singers.

On Tuesday, the second live show of Red Velvet was aired on Naver V app.

(Photo : Photo Courtesy of Naver V App)

One fan asked Red Velvet members, "Can you send a message to aspiring singers?"

Joy then said, "Singers should genuinely sing with all of their hearts" and Wendy said, "Have courage and never give up."

Red Velvet will be releasing their first album The Red and its title song "Dumb Dumb" on Wednesday.

From launch to burnout in five years: One Direction's withdrawal was inevitable

One Direction … On The X Factor in 2010. Photograph: TalkbackThames/Rex Shutterstock

The writing had, as they say, been on the wall for One Direction. Quite possibly adorned with emojis and then posted to an obscure social network that nobody over the age of 15 can fathom, but on the wall nevertheless.

In November last year, an Instagram video emerged of Liam Payne meeting fans and posing for what looked to be like his 9,264,754th and 9,263,755th selfies. The rapid, mechanical way in which he worked his way down the line of fans, combined with the dead-eyed stare he relaxed into between each forced grin, told the whole story: here was a man who had long stopped enjoying this kind of fame.

Earlier that month, the Guardian had gone to interview the band, intrigued by stories of a group who – band in crisis cliche alert! – travelled even tiny distances in separate cars. The writer, Tom Lamont, found five young men who – despite the grinding schedule of world tours, awards shows and promo – furiously denied any hint of exhaustion. “It’s not a question of burnout,” insisted Payne. Four months later, Zayn Malik quit the band, saying he just wanted to “be a normal 22-year-old”.

But life could hardly be normal. One Direction were a group who formed in the public eye, as part of the 2010 series of The X Factor, in which they finished third – the oldest of them, Louis Tomlinson, was only 18. They found themselves catapulted to instant fame in the UK, which rapidly spread worldwide, and their success made them the darlings of the UK music industry – they won five Brit awards, four MTV video music awards, 11 MTV Europe music awards and 19 Teen Choice Awards. Their four albums and series of tours have made them rich – last year, Forbes named them the second-highest earning celebrities under 30 – and made others rich, too. They’re more a list of notable stats than a group – more than 50m record sales, 91 worldwide No 1s, more than 7.5m concert tickets sold.

Now One Direction seem to be calling it a day, even if their rumoured split has been reported as a “break” rather than “break up”. Should we be surprised? Five years is a decent stint for any boyband to remain at the very peak of commercial success – it’s roughly the same lifespan as Take That achieved, and though the likes of New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys lasted longer, their careers were bookended by slow rises and rapid falls. In fact, anyone who has seen the script laid down by countless other teen pop sensations will not be treating the news as a shock.

The Spice Girls and Take That had both lost a member by this stage of their lifespans. The 1D boys have already been on as many tours (five) as the Backstreet Boys and N-Sync had before serious cracks appeared, and put out at least as many albums (four) – or more than – all the aforementioned groups.

The truth is, a boyband can’t expect to last much longer than this. On a basic level, life in one can be unrelentingly tough. This statement might not go down especially well with anyone currently manning a cash-strapped NHS ward or riding out the daily lottery of a zero-hours Sports Direct contract, but it’s true. Payne and Malik, along with Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan, have spent half a decade having all their financial, sexual and egotistical needs looked after several times over. But the work-rate required to keep a pop group’s wheels turning, and the global fanbase sated, should not be underestimated.

Scott Robinson of 5ive once recalled a life in which he rarely had time to eat, and would often use the 10-minute periods he spent in a make-up artist’s chair to catch up on his shut-eye: “I’d wake up looking like a pop star. But I promise you I didn’t look like a pop star before I sat in the chair,” he told the BBC.

The four members of Little Mix once told me of a schedule so packed that they had to book advance slots into their timetable just to be able to wash their hair. “If we do Daybreak we have to get up at, like, 2am. It’s ridiculous,” said Jesy Nelson. At the time, the girls were still in their early days, when even the most gruelling aspects can seem exciting, but anyone working under this kind of routine for a sustained period of time will inevitably start to go a little loopy, no matter what the rewards.

Life in a pop group is one in which you get little control, from the minute you’re formed. Kevin Yee from failed 90s boyband Youth Asylum recently told a Reddit AMA that he had to surrender virtually every aspect of his life to higher powers, from his hairstyles to his opinions. Scared that the teenage girls they were being marketed at might be put off if they found out Yee was gay, his management allegedly took him to a grocery store and taught him how to “walk ‘straight’, up and down the aisles”.

Such a life might have felt suffocating two decades ago, but nowadays there is the added glare of social media to contend with, in which every aspect of your behaviour will be analysed for potential “scandal”. Payne will know all about this from his selfie lapse. Likewise Malik, whose engagement to Little Mix’s Perrie Edwards was called off shortly after a relatively innocent Instagram photo emerged of him with his arm around the midriff of a blonde fan.

Malik has recently re-emerged, of course, having seemingly decided against the idea of living like a normal 22-year-old (maybe he listened to Noel Gallagher, who said: “Pfft! Who wants to be a normal 22-year-old?! They’re fucking shit-for-brains!”) and decided to sign a solo deal with RCA. On Twitter, he declared his desire to make #realmusic – a genre of music so authentic that it can only be described using a hashtag – which brings us to another reason why boybands rarely last forever. They long to be taken seriously as artists, which isn’t easy when you’re required to perform songs called things like Best Song Ever, Kiss You and Summer Love for months on end.

Just ask Charlie Simpson, who, depending on your point of view, either courageously or foolishly turned his back on future pop star millions in Busted in order to devote himself to emo punk project Fightstar. “Every day at work, I was in a fucked-up situation,” he told the Guardian back in 2006. “I was in a music career, which was amazing, and I hated it because it wasn’t fulfilling me in any sense of the word. I kept thinking, imagine if this was a band I really liked, I’d be loving it. It was like torture.”

Signs that One Direction have been craving credibility are certainly there. A recent X Factor performance saw them performing Where the Broken Hearts Go with the Rolling Stones’ Ronnie Wood on guitar. Niall Horan has declared himself a massive fan of the Who – which must have made it all the more galling when Roger Daltrey blasted the group, saying: “Here we are with the world in the state it is in, and we’ve got One Direction.” Malik, meanwhile, has been hanging out with Malay, producer of Frank Ocean’s Channel Orange, and there have been hints too of a possible hook-up with Odd Future’s Tyler the Creator.

The notion of packing it all in to show the world your real talent might seem deluded, yet there’s enough evidence of it paying off: Robbie Williams, Justin Timberlake, Beyoncé Knowles all turned boy band or girl group member fame into stratospheric solo success.

Whatever happens to 1D during their period “focussing on solo projects”, though, there’s no escaping the fact that this news was always inevitable. The clue is in the name: boyband. As the members develop chest hair and stubble and permanent hangovers they look increasingly awkward and out of place serving their original audience. They’re just not designed for the long haul. In effect, the writing was on the wall for One Direction from the very moment they formed One Direction.

The playlist: African pop – Wizkid, R2Bees, Petite Noir and more

Fun minimalism … Yannick Ilunga, AKA Petite Noir

Kwamz and Flava – Go Mad ft Mista Silva

For a long time, the Azonto dance craze has been Afrobeats’ most visible cultural signifier. Alkayida, which also originates from Ghana, is following its nifty footsteps, slowly raising its profile, thanks in part to dynamic producer and recording artist duo Kwamz and Flava. They follow their breakout hit Wo Onane No with this, which features previous collaborator Mista Silva, and has summer banger written all over it.

Wizkid – Ojuelegba remix ft Drake and Skepta

Wizkid fans have been keeping a watchful eye out for the Naija (Nigerian) pop star who, since signing to Disturbing London (home of Jessie J, Tinie Tempah), will be expected to make moves towards international acclaim. They never anticipated what happened this past weekend, though. Grime’s man-of-the-moment Skepta allegedly put Drake on to Wizkid’s Ojuelegba, a heartfelt rags-to-riches song. Soon after hearing it, both Drizzy and Skepta put their own verses on to a new version, which Drake dropped on his debut OVO Sound Radio show for Apple Music, setting the internet alight and the hopes of Wizkids fans ever higher.

99K – Kasa ft Fimfim and Wanlov the Kubolor

Probably one of the most imaginative videos out of Africa right now comes from newcomer 99K, who takes on the current state of Ghana, casting Wanlov Kubolor as its suave satirical president. Seen fielding questions from the public in a television interview, you almost wish the outspoken rapper would run for office.

R2Bees – Gboza ft Davido

Here’s another surefire hit from Ghana’s most prolific producer, Killbeatz, who’s currently part of Fuse ODG’s production camp and is reunited here with long-time associates R2Bees. The video for Gboza was shot in Texas after their SXSW showcase earlier this year, and follows Davido’s recent collaboration with US rapper Meek Mill.

Petite Noir – Down

South Africa-raised Yannick Ilunga, aka Petite Noir, makes his way to Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo for this fun minimalist video, which accompanied the announcement of his forthcoming album La Vie Est Belle/Life Is Beautiful. The young Congolese/Angolan spoke to the Guardian in January this year. The interview touches on his inspirations, working with Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) and dealing with racism.

Sean 'Diddy' Combs not charged with assault over kettlebell encounter

Sean ‘Diddy’ Coombs performs at the BET Awards in Los Angeles in June. Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Reuters

The rapper Sean “Diddy” Combs will not be charged with felony assault stemming from an incident involving a kettlebell weight at the University of California, Los Angeles, city officials said on Thursday, but he still may face a lesser penalty.

Combs, 45, was arrested on charges of assault with a deadly weapon last month by campus police, and held in jail.

Media reports said Combs was involved in an altercation with UCLA’s football coach at the campus athletic facility. The rapper’s son, Justin Combs, is on the college football team.

The case was being referred to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office to determine if Combs will face a misdemeanour charge, a spokesman for the Los Angeles county district attorney’s office said.

UCLA’s football coach, Jim Mora, called the encounter “an unfortunate incident for all parties involved” in a statement following Combs’s arrest.

Grammy-winning Combs, also known as Puff Daddy and Diddy, is also an actor, entrepreneur and the founder of Bad Boy Records. Forbes estimated his earnings at $60m last year.

The playlist: African pop – Olamide, AKA, Youssoupha and more

Sarkodie – New Guy ft Acehood
Sarkodie is in the running to pick up the best male gong at the MTV Africa Music awards ceremony in Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa in July, buoyed by his standing as arguably the most prolific current Ghanaian rapper. In 2012, he won the BET (Black Entertainment Television) award for the best international act from Africa, giving an unforgettable performance among of some of hip-hop’s most renowned lyricists. Twice nominated since, the rapid-fire MC is especially remarkable when rhyming in his native Twi dialect, as on this braggadocio cut featuring US rapper Ace Hood.
Following the success of his 2013 album Black Desire, certified platinum in France, there are signs that Negritude, Youssoupha’s latest, will follow suit. Negritude, often stylised as NGRTD, is the second instalment in his “black trilogy”. On the single Entourage, the French-speaking son of Congolese music legend Tabu Ley Rochereau raps about black life in France, symbolically identifying with the anti-police brutality movement in the US.
Olamide, up for best hip-hop artist, was also named second in a list of the top 10 Nigerian rappers of 2014 by Nigerian music tastemaker site NotjustOK. He has managed to find the happy medium between street grit and popular dance-ready Afrobeats rhythms and melodies. His 2010 debut, and that of his contemporary Phyno, signalled the arrival of a new generation of MCs rhyming in Yoruba (in his case) and other native languages, expanding the appeal of the genre to an Afropop-dominated market.
For a snapshot of modern Cameroonian music, one need look no further than the trap-inspired bass, snares, makossa guitar and bikutsi-flavoured styles blended into rapper Jovi’s March 2015 album, Kankwe Vol 2. His second album, Mboko God, released in May, is just as multi-layered and makes a strong case for the French/Pidgin-rapping contender for best hip-hop.
Be on the lookout for a forthcoming appearance by AKA on Tim Westwood’s YouTube series Crib Sessions. The South African artist is wrapping up a series of promo dates in the UK before he heads home, hopeful that he will collect one of two possible gongs – he’s up for best collaboration and best male.

This charming woman: why Morrissey and the Smiths loved Viv Nicholson

The earliest pictures show her in London in 1961, fresh off the train from West Yorkshire, high-kicking in a bowler hat and cane. Beside her – gleeful, bright-eyed, full of wonder – the newspapers printed her legendary quote, announcing her intention to: “Spend, spend, spend!”

Viv Nicholson, who died last weekend aged 79 after a long struggle with dementia, was often held up as a cautionary tale of how vast wealth can soon be frittered. Her image and that headline summed up the story of how she won the Littlewoods football pools with her husband Keith – £152,300, 18 shillings and eight pence – and ran through it all in just four years.

But for many music fans, Nicholson’s image meant something more. In 1984, long after the money had all gone, she appeared on the cover of the Smiths’ single Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now, standing in a deserted terraced street, grim-faced in a pale coat, her hair wildly backcombed.

The picture, and Nicholson’s associations, echoed the sentiments of the song – the misery of the working life, the valuable time wasted on those we dislike, the brief, happy haze of a drunken hour – but it was soon reinterpreted and swept up in tabloid scandal.

Keith and Viv Nicholson with their winning cheque in 1961. Photograph: Alamy

The Smiths had chosen as the single’s B-side Suffer Little Children, a song about the Moors murders. Upon its release several newspapers whipped themselves into a fury, suggesting that the song glorified the murderers, even positing that Nicholson had been cast as the record’s cover star because, with her bleach-blond hair and early 60s style, she bore some resemblance to Myra Hindley. Woolworths and Boots duly withdrew the single from sale.

It was not in fact Morrissey’s first tribute to Nicholson – on the Smiths’ debut album he had borrowed the line “Under the iron bridge we kissed, and although I ended up with sore lips …” from her autobiography for the lyrics of the song Still Ill. There was more to come: the following year, the Smiths featured Nicholson on a record sleeve again – this time the German release of Barbarism Begins at Home. The picture had appeared in her autobiography and was titled Viv at the Pithead. It showed her in a crocheted minidress and knee-high boots, standing beside Castleford pit with a suitcase at her feet, and was taken just before she relocated, briefly, to Malta.

The same image would be used on the Meat is Murder tour programme, and it was on that tour, in Blackpool, that Nicholson first met Morrissey. Several years ago she recounted in the Observer the oddity of that first meeting – how surreal it was to walk up to the venue, surrounded by huge promotional pictures of herself. “I was quite astounded,” she said

Viv Nicholson on the cover of Barbarism Begins at Home by the Smiths.

“I was asked to go up on stage,” she recalled. “There was this young man wearing a hearing aid and thick-rimmed spectacles with a tree hanging out of his backside, and I thought: ‘My goodness, who is that?’ It was Morrissey. Wow, I thought, here’s two weirdos together.” There are still pictures of them together, both short-haired and bespectacled, a strange distorted echo of one another.

In 1987, the Smiths cast Nicholson again for a reissue of The Headmaster Ritual, but this time Nicholson objected to the use of her image – a black and white picture showing her painting at an easel. The problem, apparently, was that as a Jehovah’s Witness, she took issue with the expletive in the line: “Belligerent ghouls/Run Manchester schools/Spineless bastards all …” Nicholson’s friendship with Morrissey promptly soured.

You can place Nicholson beside many other female stars of the Smiths’ record sleeves, among them Rita Tushingham in A Taste of Honey, Patricia Phoenix as Elsie Tanner, Yootha Joyce in a still from Catch Us if You Can, Billie Whitelaw in Charlie Bubbles, the screenwriter Shelagh Delaney, Avril Angers in The Family Way, Alexandra Bastedo, Sandie Shaw, Diana Dors in Yield to the Night, and see the thread that draws them together. They are strong women, working-class sirens, women whose lives have often been touched by tragedy or dragged down by feckless men. Many of them appear to have been trapped in some way, but they have dreamed of escape, and all of them, no matter their circumstance, have clung to their dignity.

Viv Nicholson on the cover of What She Said by the Smiths.

Dignity was not something that was often afforded to Nicholson. Even that early picture had the lick of mockery about it – here is the daft northern factory girl, about to blow her fortune. And ever since, the story of her life seems to have been told merely as a series of numbers and objects: the winning ticket found in Keith’s trouser pocket, the £7 a week she earned at a cake factory, the borrowed tights she wore to collect her winnings, how the first thing she bought was a watch, followed by furs, fancy hats and a fleet of cars in which she unfailingly knocked over the neighbours’ plant pots. There were the three children, the four husbands, the failed boutique and the job in a perfume shop, and above them all, the sense that all of these things added up to nought.

If there is a story that sums up the way the world has regarded Nicholson, it might perhaps be the tale of her failed stint as a stripper in a Manchester nightclub, paid £50 a night to undress to the tune of Big Spender. The job ended abruptly when she dropped her dress but failed to remove her bra and knickers. “I couldn’t do it,” she said. “I just wasn’t a stripper.”

What I like about this story is the fact that Nicholson refused to be reduced to nothing, and in its telling lies a gleam of the woman we see on those Smiths covers: jaw set, steady-gazed and dignified.

Facing the music: Nico Muhly

How do you listen to music?

In general, I listen at home on my big speakers. When in transit, iPhone with headphones. On the road, via satellite radio tuned almost entirely to 90’s on 9. Radio 3 until once they played Hindemith saxophone music and I had to take a month off.

What was the last piece of music you bought?

Via iTunes, Tallis: Ave, rosa sine spinis & Other Sacred Music, recorded by the Cardinall’s Musick & Andrew Carwood.

What’s your musical guilty pleasure?

No music should be associated with guilt; it is all pure pleasure. (Real answer: The Indigo Girls)

If you found yourself with six months free to learn a new instrument, what would you choose?

The oboe! Although one gathers it takes somewhat longer than half a year to get past the painful parts.

Is applauding between movements acceptable?

Sure, why not? Or maybe you should be tried at The Hague for it. I don’t know. The press have decided to invent some great crisis about applauding and I’m not entirely sure why. You know what’s scary? Going to the jazzzzzz clubbbbb. I have no idea what to do, when to applaud, how to grow my facial hair, when to stroke it etc. Go bother them about elitism and audience participation for a few years and let us get on with our work here, then let’s check in.

Nicky Spence as Brian and Joseph Beesley as Boy/real Jake in Nico Muhly’s Two Boys at the London Coliseum, 2011. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/Tristram Kenton

What single thing would improve the format of the classical concert?

I’ve always thought that in England particularly, it would be great to have a free programme, particularly at the opera. It’s never struck me as being a £5 question to know who that lovely tenor was, or, indeed, to remind me of the basic plot of something fussy like La Forza del Destino. Even a simply printed thing would be, I think, useful; it doesn’t need to be glossy or have commissioned essays.

What’s been your most memorable live music experience as an audience member?

It hasn’t happened yet in the concert hall — for me, the sublime is attained on a random Tuesday, at a sparsely-attended evensong somewhere, with an Orlando Gibbons verse anthem being sung almost perfectly.

What was the first ever record you bought?

Lol, “record”. I think it would have been Different Trains, by Steve Reich, in 1992. It was a CD.

Do you enjoy musicals? Do you have a favourite?

I have a particular obsession with Sondheim. Into the Woods is a triumph in every way, and I live for Merrily We Roll Along.

How many recordings of the Goldberg Variations do you own? Do you have a favourite?

I own the world’s most fantastic collection of Goldberg Variations played not on the keyboard. Violas da gamba, reeds, accordions, harp, you name it. One of the things about Bach is that once you start ignoring the performance practice crazy people, with their orthodoxies and internecine cattiness, you realise that Bach works despite a saxophone arrangement. That having been said, I put on Slow Late Gould when I am feeling self-indulgent and Fast Early Gould in moments of controlled mania. If Wendy Carlos got her act together and made a recording I would buy it in one second.

Which conductor of yester-year do you most wish you could have worked with?

I think I would have to say Pierre Boulez, even though he is still, at the time of this writing, quick. I’m obsessed by his Stravinsky recordings: how he teases out the brittleness and brightness of the woodwinds. I have a recording of the Symphony in Three Movements with Chicago that gives me chills to this day.

Which non-classical musician would you love to work with?

James Blake. I keep on telling English papers to tell him to call me and nobody is making it happen. Also those boys from Disclosure. I’m leaving this in your hands now.

Beyonce - lacking only a Tom Adès-style gong and piccolo. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Imagine you’re a festival director here in London with unlimited resources. What would you programme - or commission - for your opening event?

Obviously Tom Adès arrangements of Beyoncé’s entire catalogue - including Destiny’s Child-era best-of. Then you get a huge orchestra together, fly Bey over, and get a graphic designer to make a big deal about accents aigu and grave with perhaps a commissioned sculpture and boudoir photographs. I’m shocked nobody has done this already. Can you imagine his version of “Nasty put some clothes on [gong] I told you [bell + muted trumpet] don’t walk out the house without your clothes on [piccolo filigree]”?

What do you sing in the shower?

See above.

Nico Muhly performs his Twitchy Organs at the Union Chapel, London on 20 February, (details here); the world premiere of his dramatic monologue Sentences is the Barbican, London, on 6 June. (details here). Follow him on twitter @nicomuhly

John Legend boycotts Hollywood event over venue owner's anti-LGBT stance

The magazibn LA Confidential had planned to honour R&B musician John Legend at a pre-Grammys party at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Thursday night, but it will have to do so without him present. The Oscar- and Grammy-nominated singer and pianist has cancelled his appearance at the annual awards-season party in protest at the misogyny and homophobia of the venue’s owner
“John Legend will not be attending the LA Confidential party … in light of the horrific anti-women and anti-LGBT policies approved by the hotel’s owner, the Sultan of Brunei,” Legend’s publicity representative Amanda Silverman told the Hollywood Reporter. “These policies, which among other things could permit women and LGBT Bruneians to be stoned to death, are heinous and certainly don’t represent John’s values or the spirit of the event.” Legend often voices his opinions on social justice and civil rights on Twitter, commenting passionately and engaging with other users.
“Los Angeles Confidential Magazine is an avid supporter of equal rights for all people,” LA Confidential publicist Alison Miller said to the Hollywood Reporter, in response to Legend’s statement. “Our decision to hold our event at the hotel in no way suggests that we support any anti-human rights policies.”
On top of Legend’s decision to back out of the event, LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign sent a letter to Miller, asking her and the magazine to consider an alternative venue for the party.
“We feel strongly that those who support the rights of women and the LGBT community should take their business elsewhere,” wrote the group’s global director, Ty Cobb. “I write to ask that you reconsider your decision to host an event at the Beverly Hills Hotel, or any hotel owned by the Sultan of Brunei”.
Legend appears on the cover of LA Confidential this month, and was due to attend with his wife Chrissy Teigen. Other invited guests include Selma director Ava DuVernay, the rapper Common, with whom Legend is nominated for an Oscar, and producer Diplo.
Critics of the Sultan of Brunei have been boycotting the Beverly Hills hotel since May 2014, when Hollywood reacted to Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah’s implementation of anti-LGBT and anti-adultery laws . In May, Beverly Hills mayor Lili Bosse publicly announced her personal decision to stop frequenting the hotel, and told a council meeting that by doing so “we are standing for human rights, we are standing for dignity and we are standing for those who don’t have a voice.”
Bolkiah has owned the Beverly Hills hotel, one of the 10 luxury hotels in his Dorchester Collection group, since 1992.

The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy on chart success and chicken feed

After their last album debuted at No 1 in the US, Portland’s indie-folk rockers disappeared for four years. Their frontman talks about his bestselling children’s novels, life on a farm and why they needed a break

The Decemberists: ‘We’re going to suck it up.’ Photograph: PR

First he has to feed the chickens – they haven’t been laying many eggs recently. There’s a quick lecture on the barn, which contains the longest single-piece beam in Oregon, apparently, and is home to some llamas that were left by the previous owner. And only then does Colin Meloy of the Decemberists retire to the workroom in an outhouse on his mid-19th-century farm in the hills above Portland, Oregon, to talk.

It’s all very bucolic. In fact, it would be hard to think of a much more stereotypically Pacific north-western liberal setting for someone whose music seems to tick all the stereotypical liberal boxes: wordy, playful, often acoustic-led and based on the folk tradition. When I first met him, a decade ago, Meloy said of his crowd: “I look at the people in the first 10 rows and they all look kind of pale and bespectacled. I honestly look out every night and think, I could be friends with every single one of them.” One might be forgiven for suspecting a certain smug insularity about both the Decemberists and their fans, what with the audience participation in numbers about whales swallowing seafarers and wild enthusiasm for songs about “chimbley sweeps”.

In fact, the smug insularity of Portland’s liberal middle class is something he’s increasingly disturbed about (“It’s too in its own bubble, and that scares me,”) and on the Decemberists’ seventh album, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World, there are two songs that take aim, gently, at the band’s fans. The opening track, The Singer Addresses His Audience, mockingly portrays a singer trapped in his creation by the audience, despite his desire to evolve: “We know you threw your arms around us in the hopes we wouldn’t change/But we had to change some.” The second, Anti-Summersong, sees him referring to previous Decemberists songs: “But I’m not going on just to sing another Summersong/So long, farewell/I’m not going on just to sing another singalong suicide song.”

“Those two songs were very self-reflexive,” Meloy says. “It was right after we’d finished touring and I was feeling almost embittered, and wanting to make those kind of statements. It felt therapeutic to me. The songs were about songs, about songwriting. When I brought Anti-Summersong in, Jenny [Conlee, accordion and keyboards] was like: ‘That’s your retirement song, your fuck-you-world song.’ There have been many times I’ve wanted to do that, but I keep getting drawn back in. It was a humorous way of making fun of myself: I’m not going on just to sing another Summersong, but here I am doing it on a record. You’re torn between throwing it all away and never wanting to give it up.”

Therein lies the great tension of the world of a band, from the perspective of fan and musician: on the one hand, every fan wants the artists they love to express themselves creatively and develop artistically, but at the same time they want them to carry on doing the same thing they fell in love with in the first place. “And I’m aware of that,” Meloy says. “There are certain people who figure it out. We just saw Fleetwood Mac and they’re clear: people want us to do the greatest hits, no more, no less. Maybe Lindsey Buckingham’s solo records satisfy [his need to be creative] and Fleetwood Mac is just an expression of the other side. I think about ourselves: do people want us to keep having The Mariner’s Revenge Song to finish every set? And I guess they do. There’s a certain obligation that you have to satisfy, and I think that’s why people continue to come to our shows. We’re mindful that there is a tacit agreement; we’re going to suck it up.”

Meloy escaped from having to suck it up when the Decemberists finished promoting their last album, The King is Dead, by announcing that the band were taking a hiatus from summer 2011. Although the album had topped the US charts, life wasn’t easy for the group. Meloy had always found touring more a chore than a pleasure, Conlee was diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2011 (she is now in remission), and he simply wanted to do other things. One was to write his bestselling Wildwood series of children’s novels, illustrated by his wife Carson Ellis (“I think it eclipses the Decemberists in some places,” he observes), and the other was to be with his family.

Ellis and Meloy’s elder child, Hank, is autistic. A good chunk of the past few years has been taken up with trying to make sure Hank gets the education that best suits him. At first he went to a school in the public system, but that didn’t work for him. “There’s this idea that an inclusive environment is the better one, but we never felt there was a culture of inclusion in the public school system,” Meloy says. “There are people who do make the public system work. You have to be a tireless advocate for your kid, but we got tired of fighting the school, fighting insurance – because if you’re in the public system, you have to augment with private services – and it can be a little taxing.”

He enters into a long and involved explanation of the politics of autism advocacy – he’s on the side of seeing autism as part of neurodiversity, an expression of a non-neurotypical personality, rather than as a condition for which a cure must be sought. “It’s a huge part of his personality, and you can’t remove that piece,” Meloy says. “Some people are like: ‘Autism has robbed my child from me.’ Well, who is your child? Who did you want? Clearly your child was only the expression of what your child would be. With Hank, I wouldn’t trade his autism. It presents challenges to him, but it’s also given him incredible gifts and his personality is so much due to the personality he’s been given because of his autism.”

Taking a break also allowed Meloy to locate what he liked about being in the Decemberists in the first place. After six albums, being in a band becomes a career rather than an act of self-expression, and he wanted to relocate the expressive part of his work. “At some point, you have to step away from it to make sure you’re not just on the sort of conveyor belt where you get into that record-promote-tour cycle and lose track of why you’re doing it,” he says. “Having a family and a mortgage and people who rely on you for an income [Meloy is the only songwriter in the Decemberists] is a weird thing and has affected me personally.”

He says he can still find that mental space he occupied when he was first starting out, when he wrote songs simply to get them out, rather than because he needed to find 12 tracks for an album. This time around – with no deadline from the label – it was a bit easier than it had been. But still, he says, he knows he approaches writing differently than he did 15 years ago. “I’m thinking: ‘OK, I have a fanbase who are expecting things, I have critics who I think about more than I should, I have peers I’m looking at …’”

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is the second Decemberists album in a row to be made up of relatively concise, straightforward pop songs, as opposed to the prog-folk-metal concept album The Hazards of Love, or its predecessor The Crane Wife, which included a couple of 10-minute epics. It was the first time Meloy had not entered the studio to record an album in its entirety – the songs were instead recorded a few at a time. While he was writing his novels, the songs tended to be removed from the narratives he made his name with, “but as I was finishing the books, I could feel the narrative slipping back in. I was so wrapped up in writing about other people for the books that the songs were a kind of respite from that.”

Given that he writes books and songs now, what single noun would he pick to describe himself? “I don’t know under what circumstances other than doing an interview I would have to describe what I do like that,” he answers, not testily, but not helpfully. What about on your passport? It’s a question beloved of bureaucrats, too. “That’s true,” he concedes. “I say musician/writer, which if you don’t space them is one long word. I think writing is the common denominator. That would maybe best encapsulate all the things I’m doing.”

He is aware, too, that being in a rock group at the age of 40 has something of the infantile about it. He identifies that as a strain of privilege: “We’ve gotten to a point where adulthood is no longer decades of terror and stress and making sure you can provide for your family and be a good role model.” Instead, you be selfish: collect Star Wars memorabilia, or worry about getting the most fashionable trainers, or be in a rock band.

That sense of privilege turning people solipsistic is what makes him uneasy about his home town, where people get so consumed about issues they view as moral standpoints that they forget only the wealthy can afford to take those positions. He talks about the successful campaign against the fluoridation of water, and how its supporters said those who wanted fluoride should visit their dentist: “It’s a kind of magical thinking, as if everybody can afford to do that.” He mentions a row over the labelling of GM food, and how opponents of GM said everyone should be able to afford organic food. “Well,” he points out, “people can’t.” Too many people in Portland and other big liberal cities, he says, are “out of touch with the way the rest of the world works. We’re living alongside people who are being forgotten, who aren’t of that privileged class, and it drives me crazy.”

Colin Meloy at the Ottawa Folkfest. Photograph: Mark Horton/WireImage

When we meet, in early December, the issue of the people outside the privileged class is dominating the headlines in the US, in the wake of the Ferguson verdict and police killings elsewhere in the country. Meloy despairs of the attitudes he sees around him in America, that those communities and those men brought those events on themselves. “It’s a totally wrongheaded idea that doesn’t recognised the decades and centuries of systemic, institutional racism at all levels of the government. I’m a pro-government liberal. I think it’s important to have those institutions. But some branches of those institutions, such as law enforcement, are fairly corrupt and support that institutional racism in certain parts of the country. And there’s this idea that we have a black president, so we’re post-racism and no longer need to have accommodation for minorities. But we do. We need them more than ever.”

Meloy is glad he didn’t become famous – well, as famous as he is – any younger, because attention has changed him. He remembers things he did early on that he regrets – such as detailing what he didn’t like about bands he didn’t care for (“These people weren’t humans to me. I was still in the mindset that they were pop culture entities and they could be batted around.”) He’s grateful that, since he was already an adult, he didn’t make worse mistakes when he became known. “I didn’t have to manage that transition when I was 22 – I can’t even imagine what that would do to you. I would have done drastic damage to myself.”

The next phase of the Decemberists’ career will be conducted on strictly adult terms. There’ll be no more album-tour-album treadmill, and the hiatus will be the model. “Over the past four or five years, my perspective has shifted, my priorities have shifted. We’re in a position where we can slow down production a little bit. I’ve also sold another couple of books and that’s a big part of what I want to do. I think this might be the new regime.”

What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World is released on Rough Trade on January 19. The Decemberists tour the UK from 13 February, decemberists.com. Michael Hann’s trip to Portland was paid for by Rough Trade.