Always a bridesmaid...

The kind of dogged, and very closely fought, battle for the UK #1 single that has been played out over the last six weeks has not been seen since the mid-1980s so, in other words, it simply hasn't been done by any artist in her lifetime!

Two weeks at #2 in the UK charts, a week at #3, and now another three weeks at #2; last week just sixteen sales kept her from the #1 spot and she missed out again today. It is something of a theme: naturally more at home on keyboards, she started writing songs on guitar when laid-up after she broke her foot on a trip to the cinema, which was to distract from/commiserate the fact that she had just been rejected by the 'Bristol Old Vic' stage school.

One faceless (female) exec. for a major label was heard to say, little more than a month ago, "She is so utterly irrelevant... I just don't see the point." and this was the finalé to a rather incomprehensible diatribe on the rise of new female artists. Clearly she felt threatened in some strange way; I can only hope that a 'P45' will provides her with some kind of closure because she deserves nothing less. On the other hand acting's loss is very much music's gain and these bitchy comments were aimed at someone for whom such petty feuds quite simply don't matter any more.
If she does anything at all it will be to write them into a future song and that is certainly not what the villain, now the victim, would wish to hear! She's already playing to far larger audiences and on her own terms - her Autumn 2007 headline tour sold out within hours of the tickets being released - and all that in advance of the release of her début album. Maybe that was part of the problem...

In just six weeks Kate Nash has almost single-handedly demolished a key tenet of the modern (for which read 'late 20th century' if you will) recording industry with her first single to be widely released - 'Foundations'!
I'm sure she didn't plan it this way but the lyric "holding on to the cracks in our foundation" has never seemed more apposite and nothing before it has done more to undermine the industry dinosaurs. It's fun, but also quite serious, and it grew to such prominence largely of its own accord - it virtually sold itself - and a did a very good job of it.

Nash is made of stern stuff and her album "Made Of Bricks" is released tomorrow; distributed by Polydor in the UK. It is incredibly good by the way and if anyone knows of a vinyl release of this album - I can't find one - could you please contact me here asap!