Featured Song – Day 18
Like Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, Joan Armatrading was one of those rare one-off talents in British music who never seemed to be part of any scene, who you never saw running to catch whichever fashionable wave was breaking at the time. Instead the chronically retiring singer-songwriter made a series of thoughtful, introspective albums that spanned folk, new wave, pop and jazz, in the process becoming something of a lesbian icon. On ‘Rosie’, she paints a sympathetic portrait of a teenage rent boy, “lipstick and rouge on his face… hair piled high”. It’s great stuff.
