Katy j. pearson

In defence of Mick Hucknall

Before Simply Red came on stage at the Greenwich peninsula’s enormodome, the screens showed a clip of a very young Mick Hucknall being interviewed. What he wanted, he said, was to be a great singer. Usually, that’s the cue for a gag about fate having other plans. Not this time. He’s 65 now, and he truly is a great singer as he showed for the best part of two hours. He knows it, too. A couple of songs in, he benignly told his audience at the first of two nights at the O2 that he liked it when they sang along with the choruses, but maybe leave the verses to

The joys of musical comfort food

I’ve given up comfort food. I’m trying to shift lockdown pounds that have left me with the physique of the kind of ageing second-string wrestler you used to see on World of Sport early on a Saturday afternoon in the 1980s. It’s all eschewing oils and measuring portions round these parts, and so I have been seeking my comforts in music. Enough with your Lithuanian drone and your polyrhythmic technical metal from Indonesia! Bring me verses and choruses and melodies and vocal harmonies! Katy J. Pearson — a young woman from the West Country who perhaps wishes she were, instead, from the American west coast — was true comfort food.