That’s addressed on the track ‘How Cruel’ where for once she finally punches out and seems much more vital for it. More quiet girl than riot girl, her lack of any obvious political defiance ( it barely makes much of an appearance in her songs ) and the fact that as an artist of colour she has been caught in a curious catch-22 of being too black and not black enough for some has forced her into rare explosions lyrically. From her emergence though into long stretches of her later career, Joan Armatrading has for the most part found herself in a curious middle ground not entirely of her own making. The run of her first albums from ‘whatever for us’ to her self-titled album in 1976 were created in turbulent times in Britain, perfect surroundings for pop, rock and folk musicians to re-energise themselves creatively. Maybe her subject of love is a shield of sorts too. If there’s an anti-silver lining to be found in a song, she’s always cloudbusting for it. Happiness might write white on the page for most songwriters but Joan always seems keen for her muses to leap headfirst into a personal nadir. Although she’s on record as stating that none of her lyrics are statements of her own personal situation – it’s hard not to read something into it. A character in an Armatrading song you sense lives most of their life in their own head, shy ears pressed to walls, perpetually dreaming whilst life’s clock runs down unnoticed. ‘Seeing lovers embrace/make you want to find your corner of happiness.’ The rest of the track paints itself as an ode to personal resurrection but there’s a brittleness there. On ‘Goddess of Change’ there’s a more telling refrain. It’s deliberately oblique, troubling, like a wall protecting itself. Take the lyrics for ‘People’: ‘People all around me/ in love/ in pain/ driving me insane.’ Is the songs character yearning for such emotions or rebelling against them. Some have claimed Armatrading’s songs are about the mystery of love or at least the inherent ache of it but actually, there’s a sense of unrequitedness that runs through her work that is hard to ignore. Now collected in a book by Faber, these published lyrics, stripped of their chords and warmth seem surprisingly bleaker without a soundtrack. ‘East or west/ Where’s the best/ For romancing.’ Great prose that basically calls and tells upon itself. Whilst some of her contemporaries have long since waded into more temperament waters, Armatrading still has a glimmer of what novelist Jim Harrison once described as a sense of echo. What has never altered is her love of language. For over fifty years the English/Kittian singer-songwriter has walked a unique path, shimmering between pop stardom and introspective studio albums that have always seemed more of an elegant puzzle than a revelation. Even now to hear it coming from a passing car or as you stride through a modern and faceless shopping centre – it has the ability to stop you dead, a beautiful reminder that the music of the universe will always usurp the latest garish offerings stood idle in a Primark window.įor Joan Armatrading, that sense of sensuality and magic has always been seminal in her canon of work. There are certain lines that if you have any interest in the alchemy of music and the sheer magic of its collective verse, it’s impossible not to shiver when Joan Armatrading sang the sublime lines – I am not in love/ but I’m open to persuasion from Love and Affection it went way beyond the trivial boundaries of most contemporary music.
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