After this year’s Mercury Prize ceremony had wrapped up, Laura Mvula found herself in tears in a hotel room. Nominated for a rare third time – she has never released an album that hasn’t been shortlisted – the pressure had built up.
While Mvulanever really went away, the ’80s pop-inspired Pink Noise was a return of sorts, released through Atlantic in July after she was unexpectedly dropped by former record label Sony early in 2017. A difficult period was followed by yet another when the pandemic hit, and suddenly an accolade that previously would simply have been the cherry on top of an exceptional career had become all-consuming.
On the night, the prestigious Mercury Prize went to Arlo Parks, for her debut album Collapsed In Sunbeams. “I get robbed. A lot,” Mvula tweeted afterwards, following it up with: “Mercury Prize can lose my number.” The next day, she shared a longer message on Instagram: “I really thought Pink Noise might’ve won last night… I needed it for several reasons too complex to dive into here. I don’t expect to be understood fully by the British public but try not to judge my pain… I’m just tired. Please buy the album if you can and come to a show. Many thanks. Love you.”
Image: Mvula released her third album, Pink Noise, earlier in 2021. Pic: Danny Kasirye
A few weeks later, Mvula is feeling a lot more positive, her energy and infectious laugh lighting up a Zoom call. We are here to talk about National Album Day, for which she is an ambassador this year, and she is keen to praise the artists who have inspired her – everyone from Erykah Badu, Jill Scott and Des’ree to contemporaries such as Lianne La Havas, Little Simz and Nao, as well as the late Amy Winehouse and composer Errolyn Wallen.
She is also candid about how strongly she feels about her own record and the Mercury Prize. There is “no malice” towards Parks but she is honest about how missing out made her feel.
Advertisement
“I was so exhausted,” she begins. “I don’t just mean from the day, I mean from the moment I even thought about making a third record… I’d had two previous nominations so there was a sense of ‘third time round’. I allowed myself to get caught up in the noise, pardon the pun, of it all. That’s what I regret the most, is that for the first time I really started to make so many things matter to me that ordinarily have nothing to do with what I really care about.”
Mvula chuckles as she adds that she’s “mid-30s, still trying to make a living”, but it matters. It’s not often an artist is so candid about their own personal situation, but the way the industry treats female artists as they get older is no secret.
“It’s a weird thing to get used to high critical acclaim,” Mvula goes on. “There’s something bittersweet because it’s wonderful to be acknowledged as an artist who makes things people respect. That’s something I consider to be a high privilege and something I’m proud of. But at the same time, when it doesn’t necessarily translate to something tangible, that can be where it gets complicated. And [there’s a] need or desire to be visible and to have a growing audience, to not want to just have a legacy that is, ‘yes, we know of her, but oh, she never broke through’, or whatever the narratives are in my mind.”
Image: Laura Mvula is an ambassador for National Album Day 2021. Pic: Danny Kasirye
Of the handful of artists who have been nominated three times or more, the classically trained musician is not in bad company when it comes to those who have not won: David Bowie, Coldplay, Laura Marling, Florence And The Machine, to name a few; Radiohead have a record five nominations, but no win. So clearly it speaks nothing of her talent; she won the equally prestigious Ivor Novello award for best album in 2017 – just months after being dropped by Sony – for the previous year’s The Dreaming Room, on which she collaborated with Nile Rodgers and reportedly had to turn down Prince.
But still, in that moment, it hurt. “I really yearned for it in a way that I wasn’t even ready for. When it went to Arlo, it was almost nothing to do with Arlo Parks and her music and Laura Mvula and her music, and all the other artists and the music, it became about something else.”
Image: Pictured at the Mercury Music Prize shortlist launch earlier in 2021
She refers to recent comments made by Ed Sheeran about awards shows, which he described as “filled with resentment and hatred”. “There’s something really draining about the whole experience, and the win and the lose aspect,” Mvula admits. Her tweets after the Mercury Prize were tongue in cheek, she says, but came from a place of truth. “I guess, that was the real, unfiltered Laura. It was my rejection of all the pressure and all the nonsense and all the being pitted against one another… Here we are all desperately trying not to care. But somehow you end up caring so much.”
Back in the hotel room, Mvula’s friend and sister suggested she take her online posts down. “I just went to bed crying. I ignored them and I felt sort of more alone in that moment.” In the morning, they discussed a “pain” that many women will identify with. “We’re not supposed to say things that make us look not elegant and put together and demure and softly spoken, because anything else is just ugly,” says Mvula.
“I’m not going to lie: there was something very liberating about saying what I felt, knowing that I hold no malice in my heart at all towards Arlo or any other artists, but knowing I feel so passionately about what I do, and that me and the people who work so hard around me deserve some kind of break.” She shrugs. “That was it, really.”
Image: The star says she has become more comfortable being ‘loud and noticed’. Pic: Danny Kasirye
She is sanguine about it all now. The reason the Mercury Prize matters is because it celebrates the album as an art-form, something Mvula feels passionately about. Pink Noise and its ’80s shoulder-padded aesthetic is a fun record, a shift from the more experimental, baroque soul of her first two albums. But making it did not come easily. “In the beginning… even making one song would have felt impossible at one stage,” she says, because she has to “really believe” in everything she puts out. But now it’s here, vibrant, unsubtle and a statement of intent, she couldn’t be more proud.
“I wasn’t always the most confident person, I didn’t always want to feel loud and be noticed or be seen or heard. In fact, the idea of being on a stage as a solo artist was something that used to freak me out. Pink Noise was my celebration of my life in its loud, bombastic, romantic, fragile glory.”
While the colour pink held lazy connotations and once felt “imposed” upon young girls growing up, now Mvula embraces it. “I wasn’t interested in wearing pink clothes and fluffy dresses because that supposedly fit some ideal or that meant I was beautiful and whatever,” she says. “And weirdly, I feel more beautiful [now] than ever.”
National Album Day 2021
National Album Day takes place on 16 November and this year celebrates women in music
Laura Mvula is an ambassador, alongside Kylie Minogue, Sharleen Spiteri, Ray BLK and Joy Crookes
Tim Burgess, who launched Twitter listening parties in 2020, will host events with artists including Spiteri and Minogue as part of the celebrations
Fans will be able to buy limited edition versions of new albums, boxsets and classic reissues by artists including Stevie Nicks, Donna Summer, HAIM, Eva Cassidy, Dido, Garbage, Roisin Murphy, Patti Smith, Solange, Lykkie Li, Amy Winehouse and more
Various events will be taking place at local music shops throughout the UK
Along with artists including Kylie Minogue, Ray BLK and Sharleen Spiteri, Mvula is an ambassador for National Album Day 2021, which is this year shining a spotlight on female performers. “I think it’s so important to lift women up, and specifically in the arts and making albums because for decades there’s so many unsung heroines.”
When it comes to black, female artists especially there is “always so much work to be done” she says, in terms of making the opportunities available and visible. “But I’m encouraged because I do feel like we’re now living in a time where there’s much more awareness, much more dialogue, and there seems to be a widespread acknowledgement.
“My story began in music because I was taught I could do anything; there wasn’t a room I felt uncomfortable in, whether that was learning to play the violin and piano or putting a neo-soul band together when I was in my teens, or singing in an a cappella group with my auntie. At the time as a kid, I was not aware of how rich that plethora of different experiences was.”
Mvula is positive. “I think we’re living in exciting times,” she says. And that also applies to being able to perform live again after more than a year of venues being shut. So far this year she has performed at the Olympics Homecoming ceremony with Rodgers and played a sold-out show at Islington Assembly Hall, as well as at the Edinburgh Festival. A tour is planned and as well as Pink Noise, she also features on the soundtrack to “new-school Western” The Harder They Fall, starring Idris Elba.
“I now feel sort of ready to refocus on the next thing, which for me is performing and getting back on the road,” she says. “Trying to get that good feeling back that I think the pandemic stole from a lot of us who made lockdown albums. I think there’s a weird exhaustion that comes from that as well.”
It has been a challenging time, “dire for everyone”, she admits, but good things are on the horizon. “I was chatting with my accountant on text, and he was like, ‘yeah, man, it’s rough’, but he said we’re going to get back on the road and, you know, it’s not going to be so troublesome,” she laughs.
“We’re on the up and up, it’s just gradual. And I think that’s good because my God, am I now savouring everything. I do not miss a moment, you know, I really just drink it in. There is beauty in suffering, I think. That’s what I’ve been taking from this very trying time.”
Laura Mvula’s latest album, Pink Noise, is out now. National Album Day, celebrating women in music, takes place on Saturday 16 October with new albums, boxsets and classic reissues including: Amy Winehouse, Stevie Nicks, Solange, Donna Summer, HAIM, Eva Cassidy, Dido, Garbage, Roisin Murphy, Patti Smith and more
“It’s a cliché,” says Bruce Springsteen, “but he is a rock star – and you can’t fake that.”
The Boss is talking about Jeremy Allen White, star of The Bear, who is now playing him in the upcoming film Deliver Me From Nowhere.
It comes after a flurry of biopics on musical greats in recent years, from Bohemian Rhapsody and Elvis to A Complete Unknown and Back To Black, but rather than an all-encompassing look at his epic career, this one focuses on a very specific period of its subject’s life; a raw portrayal of the young Springsteen, on the cusp of even greater success following the release of The River album, but struggling with inner demons and childhood trauma while writing the stark follow-up Nebraska, released in 1982.
Image: Bruce Springsteen on stage in LA in 1985. Pic: AP/ Lennox McLendon
Speaking at a Q&A held at Spotify’s London headquarters ahead of the film’s release, Springsteen, 76, said he had watched The Bear and “knew that was the kind of actor” needed – someone who could convey his inner turmoil, as well as play a convincing rock star.
“You either got that or you don’t have it, and he just had the swagger.”
Directed and co-written by Scott Cooper, the film is based on the book of the same name by Warren Zanes, and is the first time Springsteen’s life has been depicted on the big screen.
The star was on board straight away. “I figured, I’m 76 years old, I don’t really care what the f*** I do anymore. As you get older, certainly at my age, you take more risks in your work and in life in general.”
Image: Jeremy Allen White stars as Bruce Springsteen in Deliver Me From Nowhere. Pic: Disney/ 20th Century Studios
He and White first met at one of his gigs at Wembley Stadium, where Springsteen prepared himself for lots of questions. “I figured this guy is going to be tremendously interested in me.” But White had done his homework, arriving “so prepared that he really asked me very few questions”.
Springsteen was on set regularly, “which I always apologise to [White] for because… it’s gotta be really weird playing the guy with the guy’s stupid ass sitting there.”
Learning five Bruce songs
And White also had to take on the music. When told he would need to sing and play guitar, his jokey response was: “I don’t do those things. Are you sure?” He had about six months and learned on a 1955 Gibson J-200, sent to him by Springsteen, as the closest model to his Nebraska guitar.
“I was getting together with [teacher JD Simo] on Zoom, four or five, six times a week to prepare. And the first time we hopped on, I said, ‘hey, I’m so excited to learn how to play guitar with you’. And he said, ‘we don’t have time to learn how to play the guitar, we have time to learn these five Bruce songs’. So I learned the guitar in a very strange way.”
Springsteen says it “took me a moment” to get used to seeing his story being dramatised, to White playing him. But he was happy.
“I always go, damn, when did I get that good looking?” he jokes. But he says White’s performance was impressive, that he was able to sing songs “that are hard for me to sing, some of them”.
Keeping the sweat going
Mastering the big hits, Born To Run, Born In The USA, was tough, says White. Thinking he would need to keep his heart rate high for his performance scenes, White says he took a weighted rope on set, to skip and “keep my sweat going”. Turns out, it wasn’t necessary. “When you perform Born To Run or Born In The USA, that sweat comes naturally… I did not need to use that rope.”
Part of the film goes back to Springsteen’s childhood, to the house he grew up in. “They did a very, very good job of putting that house back together,” he says. It is the home he visits “in my dreams to this day, at least a couple of times year… so being able to physically walk into what felt like that living space, my grandmother’s house, my grandfather’s house with my parents, we all lived there together. It was quite a miracle and quite wonderful”.
Image: Springsteen with White and Stephen Graham at the Deliver Me From Nowhere London Film Festival premiere. Pic: Scott A Garfitt/Invision/AP
British actor and recent Emmy winner Stephen Graham plays Springsteen’s late father, and the drama delves into their difficult relationship.
Remembering the family struggles
Reliving those experiences was “powerful”, the star says. He watched an early screening with his younger sister, who held his hand throughout. “And at the end she says, isn’t it wonderful that we have this… it honours our family, it honours the memory of the struggles that we went through… To have it on film in the way that it was portrayed, meant a great deal to my sister and myself.”
Springsteen says he hopes people will connect with the film, with this part of his story, the same as the crowds in front of him do every time he walks on stage.
“The E Street Band will be good every night because that’s what we do,” he says. “But how great we’re going to be is up to you… Hopefully there’s an element of transcendence… and hopefully it stays with [the audience] for as long as they need.”
At West London Film Studios – where major productions from Bridget Jones’s Baby to Killing Eve have all filmed – while Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso is currently being shot in one of their 10 sound stages (across two sites), it pains owner Frank Khalid that one of his biggest stages is empty.
“Prior to [Trump] posting that we had quite some big major features come to us looking for space,” he says, “and it’s just gone very quiet since he posted… maybe it’s a coincidence, I don’t know, but I believe it has affected us.”
Image: Frank Khalid, owner of West London Film Studios
In September, on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump wrote that America’s “movie making business has been stolen….by other countries…like…’candy from a baby’.”
Repeating a threat he’d first made last May, he claimed he’d authorised his government departments to put a “100% tariff on any and all movies that are made outside of the United States”.
For bigger studios, like Pinewood and Elstree, block-booked years in advance by the major movie producers, his words haven’t had any immediate effect.
But, at smaller studios, like Khalid’s, he certainly feels like there’s been a ripple effect.
More on Donald Trump
Related Topics:
“We had a letter from one major big American production saying [the tariff] is not possible, [Trump] legally can’t do it… but at the end of the day, he doesn’t have to do it, the damage is done, isn’t it? By him just posting that… the confidence in the market goes down.”
As Jon Wardle, director of the National Film and Television School, explains, the industry has “always been a bit feast or famine, and we’re in a slight lull… it’s not quite the boom of what it was in 2022 after COVID, but probably at that point we were making a few too many projects.”
Image: Jon Wardle says the UK ‘needs to be more committed to homegrown talent’
Wardle says, Trump’s threatened tariffs are certainly likely to make film companies “slightly more nervous” and “dither a bit more” when it comes to signing off on projects a few years down the line.
But he says it’s important to remember that US studios have “invested hugely” in the UK.
“Disney has a 10-year lease at Pinewood, Amazon has a 10-year lease at Shepperton, the investment for those companies is massive. And the other part of this is that it’s not going to be cheaper to make those films in America. In fact, it’ll be more expensive.”
Image: West London Studios has 194,000 square feet of production space and is one of the UK’s leading independent studios
While the UK industry appears to be finding its feet after the knock-on effects of COVID shutdowns and the US writer’s strike, some smaller studios say Trump’s tariff threats are certainly on their radar.
Farnborough International Studios told us that while it has “recently hosted major TV series for companies such as Paramount and Amazon”, it has “seen film bookings and enquiries slowing down since the first sign of imposed tariffs”.
While West Yorkshire’s Production Park said they’d “not seen any slowdown”, a spokesperson for their studios said they are “tracking wider policy changes that could affect us”.
Mr Wardle says: “I think is it’s a good warning to the UK industry. I think the UK needs to take more seriously the commitment to its own homegrown talent. How do you make projects that aren’t funded and paid for by Americans or another nation?”
Image: This year’s London Film Festival
With little detail for now, few working within the industry can fathom how a tariff would deliver the happy ending of shoots returning to Hollywood that Donald Trump might desire without driving up costs and stifling investment.
“There’s a huge number of questions about how you actually make tariffs work,” Mr Wardle explains. “It seems like a silly example, but production accountants: we train production accountants and nowhere else in the world does… we planted those seeds 20 years ago and we’re now reaping the rewards.
“It’s not going to be cheaper to make those films in America… so they’ll just make less.”
While Number 10 awaits full details of the latest US tariffs and their potential impact on the UK, a government spokesperson said: “Our film industry employs millions of people, generates billions for our economy and showcases British culture globally. We are absolutely committed to ensuring it continues to thrive and create good jobs right across the country.”
Listen below to Trump100 from May where we discuss Trump’s tariff threat:
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
The madness of trying to second-guess what the president might mean becomes all too apparent at an event like this year’s London Film Festival.
Mr Wardle explains: “There are films in this festival that were made in Britain and in the US, made physically in terms of the shoot in London, post-produced in Canada, with VFX done in India…. how do you apply tariffs? At what point do you do that?”
On the red carpet, actor Charles Dance – who stars in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein – questioned Trump’s knowledge of filmmaking.
“I don’t think he is generally known for his own understanding of culture,” he said, “this is a man who wants to concrete over the Rose Garden.”
Rian Johnson, director of the Knives Out franchise, said it was “dark times right now in the States, for a lot of reasons”.
“All we can do is keep making movies we believe in, that matter, that say things to audiences… I think we need more of that so we’ll keep forging ahead as long as we’re able,” he said.
A BBC Gaza documentary breached the broadcasting code, an Ofcom investigation has found.
The regulator said the failure to disclose that the 13-year-old boy narrating the programme was the son of a deputy minister in the Hamas-run government broke the rules and that it was “materially misleading” not to mention it.
The documentary was made by independent production company Hoyo Films, and features 13-year-old Abdullah Alyazouri, who speaks about life in Gaza during the war between Israel and Hamas.
It was pulled from BBC iPlayer in February after it emerged that the boy was the son of Ayman Alyazouri, who has worked as Hamas’s deputy minister of agriculture.
A report into the controversial programme said three members of the independent production company knew about the role of the boy’s father – but no one within the BBC was aware.
Ofcom’s investigation into the documentary, which followed 20 complaints, found that the audience was deprived of “critical information” which could have been “highly relevant” to their assessment of the narrator and the information he provided.
More on Bbc
Related Topics:
The report said the failed to disclose a narrator’s links to Hamas “had the potential to erode the significantly high levels of trust that audiences would have placed in a BBC factual programme about the Israel-Gaza war”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:34
Crises within the BBC
Following an internal review into the programme, followed by a full fact-finding review the BBC’s director of Editorial Complaints and Reviews, Peter Johnston, the corporation’s director general, Tim Davie, and Hoyo Films apologised.
Hoyo films said it was “working closely with the BBC” to see if it could find a way to bring back parts of the documentary to iPlayer, adding: “Our team in Gaza risked their lives to document the devastating impact of war on children.
“Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone remains a vital account, and our contributors – who have no say in the conflict – deserve to have their voices heard.”
Israel does not allow international news organisations into Gaza to report independently.
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
Describing it as “a serious breach of our rules,” Ofcom said they were directing the BBC to broadcast a statement of their findings against it on BBC2 at 9pm, with a date yet to be confirmed.
Responding to the findings of Ofcom’s investigation, a BBC spokesperson said: “The Ofcom ruling is in line with the findings of Peter Johnston’s review, that there was a significant failing in the documentary in relation to the BBC’s editorial guidelines on accuracy, which reflects Rule 2.2 of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code.
“We have apologised for this and we accept Ofcom’s decision in full.
“We will comply with the sanction as soon as the date and wording are finalised.”
The BBC has faced numerous controversies in recent months, and just last week, former MasterChef presenter Gregg Wallace filed a High Court claim, suing the broadcaster and its subsidiary BBC Studios Distribution Limited for “distress and harassment” after he was sacked from the cooking show in July.
The 61-year-old ex-greengrocer was dismissed after an investigation into historical allegations of misconduct upheld multiple accusations against him.
The BBC has said Wallace is not “entitled to any damages,” and denies he “suffered any distress or harassment as a result of the responses of the BBC”.