“Animated Activism: Women Empowered” Leaves Only Anger
Jess Cooper talks about her enlightening visit to the “Animated Activism: Women Empowered” exhibition that left her feeling anger and hope.
The Crazy Train’s Final Stop Has Arrived: An Ode to Ozzy Osbourne
When I was in Year Six, we had to write a project on our role models; somebody who had inspired us to reach the greatest heights we could climb at eleven years old. Submission day rolled around, and my classmates bought beautifully handwritten deep dives into the lives of Stephen Hawking, Roald Dahl and Cristiano Ronaldo. My teacher, Miss Abbott, came to my desk. “Who have you done your project on then, Jess?”. Without missing a beat, I cheerily replied, “Ozzy Osbourne, Miss. There’s a bat head and everything in there.” Poor Miss Abbott, fresh out of her PGCE, being confronted with a nice-enough eleven-year-old girl smiling sweetly at her whilst handing over a folder full of research into the life and times of Ozzy Osbourne, heavy metal overlord.
Looking back now, I’m not even sure Miss Abbott knew who Ozzy Osbourne even was, which is a rare type of person to come across in Birmingham. But being from the same city (and even born in the same village) as Ozzy, my mom and I wanted my project to be on a hometown hero, and who better to pick than the frontman of Black Sabbath? The project covered the whole manic journey, from Black Sabbath’s birth to the tumultuous solo career, the bat’s head (no, we didn’t include an actual bat’s head – just a colour pencil drawing which was quite fun to do) and even the birth of the reality television family with “Meet the Osbournes.” To this day, I still look back on that project with fond memories, a reminder of my love for the absurd and downright weird from a young age.
To answer the question as to why Ozzy Osbourne was my chosen role model? I’m not quite sure I can remember what my reasoning back then was, but I can definitely remember what my explanation for it now is. Ozzy Osbourne has had a musical career which has spanned almost sixty years, and throughout it all, has continued to make some of the most unhinged, chaotic decisions. In career littered with drugs, booze, bat heads (I will continue to bring up the bat heads, yes), arguments and running rampant across the world, Ozzy always struck me as being someone quite similar to myself; he was a working-class kid who had all of a sudden been given a lot of power and money and didn’t quite know what to do with it, so he decided to make the most reckless decisions with it. Quite unapologetically as well. The music was a whole other thing in itself. Songs like Fairies Wear Boots, Iron Man and pretty much all of the Paranoid album soundtracked the three-month research period of that Year Six project and have followed me all the way to university. Rock music wasn’t a novelty for me at home, having grown up in a home that played Linkin Park and Nickelback on the regular, but there was something in Black Sabbath’s music that just…clicked for me. It was almost magical and I was able to track the band’s career from start to finish. But the one thing I was missing? A live performance.
The rumour mill has always spun the idea that Osbourne’s final show would take the rockstar home to his original stomping ground of Birmingham, a city that, much like Ozzy himself, I have a strange sort of love for. What we never could haveof predicted was the sheer scale of the farewell performance. Taking place at Villa Park, the all-day festival style event will also feature performances from bands that jumped off the foundation that Black Sabbath built, including Metallica, Slayer and Alice in Chains. All of the proceeds from the event will be split amongst some of the most impactful organisations in the city, Birmingham Children’s Hospital and Acorn Children’s Hospice, as well as Cure Parkinson’s.
This final reunion comes off the back of Osbourne’s struggle with Parkinson’s since 2003. However, due to multiple spinal surgeries, his health has deteriorated quickly, leaving the musician unable to walk. This information, along with the massive scale of the event, adds an emotional weight to the performance, making the decision feel almost final. This will be (at least for a long time) Black Sabbath’s final show.
If you’re heading to Birmingham for the concert, take it from a local: go into the city centre. Find the canals and look for the Black Sabbath bench. Have a seat, take a picture, do whatever you can to savour the moment. But please, sit and think about the power of what is about to happen. An age of heavy metal, rock and alternative music is coming to an end, and I don’t think that is something to be treated lightly.
I still have that Ozzy Osbourne project somewhere in the cupboard of my belongings at home. The recent news has given me a desire to go and dig out and look through the pages, to remind myself of the awe I first felt when researching one of the most influential figures in both music and reality television (my two biggest obsessions now) almost a decade ago. As a born and bred Brummie, I have so much love and appreciation for what both Ozzy and Black Sabbath have done for the culture and the music scene in the country’s most hated city. Just so you know Ozzy, in some weird, twisted way, you’re still my role model.
Words by Jess Cooper.
Rediscovering Joy: How to Revitalise Hobbies You Loved as a Child.
Jess Cooper reflects on the loss of her childhood interests, and how she found her spark again years later.
Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Travis at The O2 Academy
Kicking off their Raze The Bar tour at the O2 Academy in Leeds on Thursday 5th December, Jess Cooper reflects on Travis’ intimate, charismatic performance, proving that theatrics are not the be all and end all of pop music.
Opening for the band was an act that felt like an amalgamation of everything grand about British rock history. Hamish Hawk cracked open the crowd with a resounding heavy bass that felt underpinned with an infectious moodiness. It was hard not to see the clear inspirations drawn from across pop history; Morrissey lyrics were peppered with synths of the Pet Shop Boys and the occasional Queen riff. Standouts included ‘Nancy Dearest’ and ‘The Mauritian Badminton Doubles Champion, 1973’ and their set ended with an explosive, cathartic dance break of sorts where Hawk secured himself as a powerhouse performer.
When nine o’clock hit, Travis strolled onto the pitch-black stage and I proceeded to experience the strangest musical whiplash of my life. Out of the speakers blared the theme tune for sitcom classic ‘Cheers’. “Sometimes you wanna go/Where everybody knows your name/And they’re always glad you came” sung out across the Academy. I genuinely sat in a crowd full of people I didn’t know and laughed out loud. It immediately set that tone that we would be watching a group of lads who didn’t take themselves too seriously; they were building a joke that we would be in on.
They were building on an energy that the crowd had carried through into the venue with them. Outside, the queue was full of banter and chatter. I was standing in front of two boys who were in a seemingly deep conversation about how the Labour party is contributing to climate change by letting farmers keep too many cows. Travis obviously knew who their target audience were and played into their hands amazingly. There were many self-aware remarks about how their new music may feel like a slog to long-time fans and thanking them for their patience in such a self-deprecating but genuine way that you couldn’t help but forgive them.
It was when the group opened up the vault and dust off some classics that you could really feel them come alive. ‘Good Feeling’ radiated that youthful angst of pent-up twenty-something boys. ‘Closer’ was an emotional tribute to loved ones, dripping with sentimentality. As the show delightfully took its time, the set felt breezy; the boys made the adventure through their discography appear effortless. Fan-favourite tune ‘Sing’ acted as a conclusion for this light, easy half of the set, with the stage lit up in neon pinks and purples.
The energy was kicked up a gear as ‘Gaslight’ brought us into that second act of the musical journey. Flashing lyrics on the minimal set and teeming with rockstar energy, ‘Gaslight’ felt like a turning point in the show. It started to feel like Travis were no longer performing their own music, but they were simply appreciating the art. There’s something that lead singer Fran Healy said at this point of the show that has stuck with me since: “Where music really exists, is in this room right now.” Not on streaming platforms, not on social media, but in the real-world venues where thousands of strangers are able to connect with music written and sung by the few artists who dare to put themselves out there.
This vein carried on throughout the show, all the way through to the encore. The group came back out and sung an acoustic rendition of Britney Spears’ ‘…Baby One More Time’ before pulling out their so called ‘party trick’ for one of their classics. Whilst playing joyful ‘Flowers in the Window’ the foursome pulled a stunt that quite frankly I’d expect from fourteen-year-old boys, which is why it was so endearing. Healy let go of his guitar, letting his three other band mates play the instrument for him whilst it was strapped to him. That playful silliness was exactly what made the night feel so charismatic and so different to today’s standard gig or concert. You expect to be impressed by fantastical sets, or intricately choreographed dance routines and here I was, quite frankly stunned at four grown men all playing the same guitar together after they’d drunk a couple of ciders.
Closing out with singalong ‘Why Does It Always Rain On Me?’, the band encouraged all of the older fans to jump up and down, inviting them to ‘relive their youth’. It was a let-loose moment that felt like such a perfect encapsulation of Travis’s music and performance style. It was truly phenomenal to just see four lads on stage, strumming the same chords they did twenty years ago with the exact same boyish charm, proving that you don’t need dramatics to put on an engaging performance. You only need a bit of magic.
Words by Jess Cooper.
The Peter Pan Effect: Sabrina, Sex and Infantilisation
Let the record show that Sabrina Annlyn Carpenter is a grown woman, at the age of 25 years old. She may look small, “five feet to be exact”, but despite her size, Sabrina Carpenter is an adult who we can confidently assume lives an adult lifestyle. So why are people so disgusted that she is singing about said lifestyle?
Sabrina Carpenter has been in the music game for ten long years; and for at least the past five of those, she has been singing songs with explicit adult themes. Songs from her earlier sister albums Singular Act I (2018) and Singular Act II (2019), including ‘Almost Love’, ‘prfct’, and ‘Looking At Me’ can all be heralded as confident explorations of the female sexual experience. Safe to say, the themes of romance, mature relationships and more notably sex aren’t new for Carpenter. However, since her sudden boom in popularity this past year with playfully naughty smash hits ‘Nonsense’ and ‘Espresso’, the praising of her innuendo heavy lyricism and blunt lack of subtlety in these songs has correlated in a rise of criticism against the pop star. It has left many asking why she is performing such explicit songs to her young female audience.
This negativity reached its peak in the past few months, as Sabrina embarked on the tour for her sixth studio album ‘Short ‘N’ Sweet’, and attendees with young children were shocked at the overtly sexual nature of her performances. From wearing lingerie to perform in, to arresting an audience member with fuzzy handcuffs and acting out various sex positions during the bridge of her least subtle track ‘Juno’, many people, including parents and wider industry critics, have questioned whether Carpenter’s performances are suitable for her audience and whether she has taken it too far.
It is important to note that since the singer’s most recent chart toppers have gone viral on platforms like TikTok, Carpenter has gained younger fans than before and some of these can be as young as seven or eight; prior to this social media boom, Sabrina Carpenter listeners tended to be women aged between sixteen to twenty five, which is the age demographic that grew up watching her acting on the Disney Channel (more on that later). The question is though: is it up to Carpenter to change the themes of her self-expression and art in order to cater to younger audiences or is it inevitably up to the parents to audit concerts beforehand to ensure they are suitable for their children?
One of the most plaguing (and to me, the most ridiculous) reasons that people are horrified at Sabrina’s seemingly sudden embrace of sexuality is because of her childhood acting on the Disney Channel show, Girl Meets World. For the critics, they believe that she has a responsibility to cater to this Disney Channel audience, which would be young children between the ages of seven and eleven. This would be a rational argument, if Carpenter had been on Disney Channel recently and her appearance warranted her having this young fan base. But her Disney Channel career was ten years ago when I was a young child. I’m almost nineteen now and cannot fathom how people believe a relatively short (three years) Disney stint would cause Carpenter to be a perfect role model for children over a decade later. The children that watched Carpenter on television have now grown up and are the perfect target audience for Sabrina’s new music. Somehow, people believe that once a child star, means always a child star.
Sabrina, unfortunately, is not the only former child star that has been attacked for embracing all facets of being an adult. Olivia Rodrigo, another ex-Disney star, was constantly critiqued by parents on social media for what they were quick to call “excessive” swearing in her songs as well as acting out sexual behaviours in her song ‘obsessed’ during her most recent tour. When Miley Cyrus had her ‘Bangerz’ era, people freaked out, watching a former Disney golden child cut off all her hair and grind on Robin Thicke in live performances. Britney Spears, Dove Cameron, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato. The list is endless. Even artists like Taylor Swift, who wasn’t a traditional child star but did start her singing career at an incredibly young age with an infantilised image, have faced criticism for behaving too ‘sexual’ and ‘adult’. We seem to be obsessed with our female pop stars, especially when we feel we have known them since they were young, staying pure, innocent and never growing up. Simply put, we want Peter Pans.
Peter Pan Syndrome is a pop-psychology term that describes adults who are socially immature. Adults who reach the grown-up ages, but can’t cope or deal with adult sensations, emotions and responsibilities. In a way, we want our female pop stars to develop this state of mind; we want them to look adult and mature so we can sexualise them as and when we please, but they cannot have the emotional capability to sexualise themselves. We, as an audience, seem to desire a strange paradox that can never exist and wonder why women in the spotlight have public breakdowns when we demand this impossibility from them.
Sabrina Carpenter seems to be coping quite well with the pressure though, only doubling down on her overt sexuality. Hopefully, we don’t see a 2007 style Britney meltdown, or a Demi Lovato crash-and-burn or one of the many explosions when female pop stars are refused and denied their own freedom to express themselves. My only wish for Sabrina: she continues to climb all over that tour stage, doing whatever the hell she wants.
Words by Jessica Cooper
When Did We All Start Acting Like BRATs?
Amidst BRAT tour controversy, Jess Cooper looks at the post-pandemic concert etiquette crisis.
Brittany Broski is the wine aunt of the chronically online. Having cemented herself with an audience of ‘girls, gays and theys’, it was no surprise when she appeared on screens at the SWEAT tour this autumn, taking part in the viral Apple dance. Every show of the concert headlined by electro-pop superstars Charli XCX and Troye Sivan, the cameras normally panned to the audience, where either a celebrity or a very lucky fan would be given their chance to dance the TikTok routine to Charli’s hit song from her BRAT album. So to see one of our own get ready to take on what had become the ‘it’ moment of the show, it felt like the stars had aligned in musical heaven. But we were blissfully unaware of the carnage that would unfold.
Out of the shadows, donning a black mesh top and a sadistic grin, appears an attention-hungry fan. He shoves our beloved Brittany out of view and swaggers to the front of the group, desperate to catch the camera’s eye. The internet exploded. Countless social media users were quick to call the concert goer out on his blatant disrespect and rudeness. For many, the issue was not that he wanted to be on camera; it was that he seemingly had no care for his fellow fans. In the grand scheme of fan behaviours, it truly could be worse, but this viral moment has highlighted a wider problem in live music: nobody knows how to behave anymore.
To play devil’s advocate, fans did head to the SWEAT tour with the expectation of the show being an ever-expanding, theatrical nightclub where your favourite dance-fuelled artists come to life. Therefore, behaviours like this (whilst unpleasant) are somewhat more acceptable at a concert which is mimicking drunken nights out and stumbling into the smoking area. The problem is this has not just been happening at the SWEAT tour. Instead, this interaction highlights an underlying attitude problem that has been plaguing live music for a while now. Last June, Bebe Rexha was left with stitches after a concert goer threw a phone at her face mid-show and was charged with assault. He claimed he thought ‘it would be funny’. Ava Max in that same month was slapped onstage by a fan so hard that the inside of her eye was scratched. That is not even mentioning the countless videos circulating social media of supposed ‘fans’ rushing the stage at Travis Scott, Taylor Swift, Nicki Minaj and so many others’ shows. When did it become so acceptable to be so unruly at our favourite artist’s shows?
One reason explains our friend over at the Los Angeles’ BRAT behaviour, which is the desire to go viral on TikTok, Twitter, Instagram or whatever poison you pick nowadays. Perhaps he was unaware he was pushing an internet sensation who got her start as the meme ‘Kombucha Girl’, or maybe he knew exactly that he would be disrupting an entire fanbase through a simple shove. Regardless of whether he knew, it is undeniably true that the rise in antisocial attitudes in such public spaces, especially where so many people are capturing the moment through photos and videos, is to draw attention away from whatever is happening onstage by behaving so outlandishly. It clearly worked for this poor man, though it might have been for the worse.
Another explanation could be the impacts of the pandemic and lockdown, which robbed a generation of music fans of that inaugural first concert or festival experience. Instead, they’ve now grown up and are muddling through concert etiquette for the first time, often getting it wrong in the process. It isn’t just young people either; looking at the wider entertainment industry, patrons were notoriously removed from performances of The Bodyguard on the West End last April for singing ‘loudly and badly’ over the actors. Industry professionals are still, even three years after performance venues opened fully post coronavirus, pinning this poor behaviour on the lockdown. People simply forgot what it was to be in a theatre or in a stadium and have to respect others around them.
Unfortunately for music lovers and concert chasers, it doesn’t seem like these attitudes are coming to an end anytime soon. Swifties have been dubbed chaotic and narcissistic at Eras Tour performance across the States and Europe, screaming and sobbing profusely over the music. At performances for indie rock singer Mitski this year, fans were blurting out inappropriate sayings in the middle of quite an emotional set of songs (at one show, she allegedly stopped the entire performance). Maybe we should just take note from the metal heads, who seem to be the most respectful of all. Brittany Broski might have been safer at a Judas Priest show.
Words by Jess Cooper