In this week's newsletter:
- I wax poetic about the fan-to-music-industry pipeline
- Track of the week comes from one of Ireland's new greats
- Find out how to watch tonight's Together For Palestine - and about a great women-led festival taking place in London this weekend
When I appeared on the Glastonbury DiSpatch podcast episode in the summer, Sean said he admired my writing for its "fizz of fandom" (words I loved), noting that 'fandom' is "a word we truly need to reclaim from snobby old blokes". If it becomes a cultural habit to deride someone for glowing with joy when they're talking about the music they love, we truly will have failed. The world would be colourless. Surely, of all periods in history, bottling that joy and using it as fuel is exactly what we ought to encourage.
I am a fan. Of course I am. I am here, writing to you now, because I found out there was a way to combine my two great loves, music and writing. I've chased it since I was 13 years old. I counted down the days until my favourite music magazines went on sale, reading and re-reading till the words were half-memorised, learning by osmosis how to write about music. I've carried my teenage self with me, living for and through music, devoted enough to certain records to feel like I was living inside them. If she knew what her adult self would do she'd end up running laps around the village screaming till her leg muscles burned. It's good to have her with me - it keeps me grounded, and feeling like I'm staying lucky.
A friend of mine who's also in journalism once worried about coming across as a fangirl. She wondered if she should keep her band tattoos visible or not. I've had that same anxiety and I fully believe there's a gendered component to it, that our professionalism or skills could be coloured by a perception of being hysterical, girlish, shallow. "That inner fangirl is what brought you here in the first place," I told her. It should be celebrated. It should be seen as stranger if she broke into this peculiar little intersection of journalism and the music industry with no passion for it whatsoever.
You cannot do this job if you don't love it, I believe. When I was talking with someone I know who works at a major UK independent festival, she said: "The second I stop loving this I'm getting an ordinary nine-to-five." A lot is demanded of you. We're underpaid. We're overworked. Work-life balance becomes a flimsy concept. Without the passion for it, what do you have?
That passion is an asset and the pipeline to the music industry it opens up is real. The teenage girls running fan accounts from their bedrooms are, knowingly or not, creating their own work experience for them to be great social media managers. (I interviewed Crawlers last year, who are about my age, and they confirmed this was very much the case for them). I know of two people who went from appearing in magazines as part of fan-led interviews to working in the industry - one is a journalist, the other is a tour production assistant and merch manager.
There's a neurodiversity component to it too. It's not talked about enough but in this line of work, there are neurodivergent people everywhere, on stage and off. An intersection of the aforementioned pipeline is the special interest/hyperfixation pipeline - it's a world that's stimulating and creative, away from the grey, stale corporate world that I know lots of neurodivergent folks have told me they find soul-destroying. A neurodivergent artist I love once told me he worked out I was neurodivergent myself because of my passion for music that he'd seen me vocalise on Twitter. I think about this at least once a week. To me, it's awesome.
I love the idea floating around the internet right now about being 'chalant', i.e. the opposite of nonchalant. Music is for chalant people. And I, for one, am chalant and proud.
I'm in Kerrang!'s new print issue!
I have a surprising number of conversations in pubs and smoking areas about Kerrang!, which is one of the places where my words appear the most. You get talking, you're asked what you do, time to do a lot of journalistic world-building. Much of the time, I end up saying, 'Yes, we still print, once a quarter, with a digital cover story every Wednesday.'
The new print magazine hit shelves last week and I'm in it - I went to Boomtown last month for the first time to hang out with Nova Twins backstage for a feature, and I also spoke to punk newcomer Karen Dio about her story so far, including her upbringing in Brazil and her relocation to the UK four years ago. Biffy Clyro are on the cover and there's a wealth of other brilliant features in there too from the rest of the team.
Idlewild is on the podcast
Speaking of music fandom, Sean would have something cool to tell his inner fanboy this week on the podcast: Much like Emma, I had a big fizz of fandom this week, when I met Rod and Roddy from Scottish art-rock / literate-punk band Idlewild. We chatted about their 10th (yes, tenth!) studio album, which is coming out in October, Patti Smith, and a little bit about national pride.
This episode will be live very soon so make sure you're subscribed to get it when it's fresh. You can get the audio version wherever you get your podcasts or cast us to your TV screen or watch us on the bus, by subscribing to our YouTube.
Track Of The Week
'Better' by Sprints
Remember when everyone fell over themselves thinking they'd heard album of the year just five days into January last year? That was the effect that Sprints' astounding debut album Letter To Self had, but that was only the start. The follow-up All That Is Over is speeding into view, and the latest single is a gorgeous ballad with big, glassy-sounding passages reminiscent of the harder edges of My Bloody Valentine's sound. There's something I love about frontwoman Karla Chubb saying that 'Big Dreams' by Amyl and the Sniffers was a reference point for this song too - a crossover of worlds between two bands I have a huge amount of time for.
All That Is Over is out next Friday and Sprints will be out on tour in November.
Check out and subscribe to our 2025 Favourites playlist on YouTube for more recent tracks of the week.
Community Prompt
Tune in to Together For Palestine
Brian Eno is bringing a "night of music, reflection and hope" to Wembley Arena tonight in the name of raising money for Choose Love, who will support Palestinian-led organisations providing humanitarian relief. With a huge line-up consisting of names like Damon Albarn, Bastille, Jamie xx, James Blake, Paloma Faith, Sampha, Cat Burns and more, it's bound to be an evening of huge importance. If you've got a night in on the sofa planned, you can tune in to the livestream on YouTube above.
Come to FEMMESTIVAL this weekend
If you're in or around London this weekend, FEMMESTIVAL have a brilliant programme of rising stars in the worlds of pop and hyperpop, as well as multi-genre DJs, performing at Signature Brew Blackhorse Road this Sunday (21st September). As the name suggests, it's an all-female line-up, providing not just a valuable platform for emerging women in music, but an antidote to overly blokey line-ups elsewhere in the festival calendar. Give yourself a great day out - and support grassroots music in the process.
Hopeful Story Of The Week
The first full-scale tour with electric trucks
There's a lot of scary news out there relating to the climate crisis, but in an encouraging development for climate justice in live music, Sam Fender has become the first artist to complete a tour with a full fleet of electric trucks. EVs weren't always seen as viable for such large tours, but this has fully proved doubters wrong. In a press statement, he also nodded to Massive Attack for leading the ongoing conversations about sustainable touring.