Deborah Ross

What backing singers are really thinking behind the ‘ooh, ooh, oohs’

Twenty Feet from Stardom is the kind of documentary you won’t want to end

[Getty Images/Shutterstock/iStock/Alamy] 
issue 29 March 2014

Have you ever looked at backing singers and thought: what is their story? Do they or have they ever prayed for their time to come? As they are going ‘ooh ooh, ooh ooh’ behind Kylie are they thinking, ‘I want to kill Kylie’? Do they mind that no one knows their name? Do they ever ponder why it’s so often white artists with black backing singers and never the other way round? I have often wondered about all this, and now realise if I’d stopped idling over such questions, got off the sofa and done some digging, I could now...

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