How we made Space Ibiza

‘If you wanted to have sex in the middle of the club, you could. No one cared’

Pepe Rosello, founder

Fact of life, In 1958, I was running a restaurant in Ibiza called El Refugio, before moving on to La Reja, a jazz club. After years of repression and dictatorship in Spain underFranco, music offered freedom, dancing, physical contact. Hippies, the Woodstock generation, came over from the US, fleeing the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and bringing music that filled the venues: Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon – all forbidden in Spain at the time.

In 1962, I took over the Capri club and renamed it Playboy. I was being rebellious, as the magazine was banned. But the area, San Antonio, ended up getting a bit vulgar, so in 1989 I took over Space. People thought I was mad to move to Playa d’En Bossa: the area had no personality, the tourists didn’t leave the hotels, and it was mostly for family holidays.

So the first thing I did was put a wall around the club for privacy, even though you could still jump over it. The authorities had over-regulated night-time, but there was no problem with opening in the morning. So we started Breakfast in Space, where you could dance and welcome the planes passing 30 metres above your head. People started coming directly to Space with their suitcases, even before checking into their hotels. Full video game reviews

When it comes to making a successful club, if you manage to attract a tribal group who fight the establishment, you’ve already done most of your work. The masses then absorb that transgressive elite, enhance it and give it an identity. The British are the most devoted audience of all: they’re always polite and respect the rules. Music helps them express emotions that have been pent up by their culture and education.

I’m 80 now and this will be my last year owning the club. I’ve got so many good memories. The night I turned 75, my friends blindfolded me and sat me down in the main room. When I opened my eyes, I found myself in front of Dita Von Teeseperforming on stage, with soprano Tiziana Fabbricini singing La Traviata.

‘The best nights of our lives’ … Space Ibiza.

Carl Cox, resident DJ

I was curious: a club that opened at seven in the morning? You’d been out atPacha and you’d think: I’ll get some breakfast, wash, have a shave, then go to Space until two in the afternoon. You felt like a naughty schoolboy: you’re meant to be going to bed, or just waking up from the night before.

The club had people from everywhere: Venezuela, Japan, Portugal, the Netherlands. Hearing an aeroplane fly over a club was a first – it would drown out the music on the terrace and you’d all be cheering, because there were more people coming to the island.

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Back in the 1990s, if you had a camera, you had to leave it in the cloakroom. So if you wanted to have sex in the middle of the club, you could. No one would care. These were the ideals of the place: be flamboyant, be as free as you want. The Manumission night in the 1990s, which had a live sex show on stage, used to get 10,000 people every week.

Ibiza has become more conservative now. At DC-10 people used to dress up as aeroplanes or as Catwoman, for no reason. Elrow is bringing that back, but it’s forced and staged. And at Richie Hawtin’s recent nights, everyone dressed in black – like, who died? We grew up in the summer of love, where it was all about colour and having a smile on your face. I want to walk away from it all now and just remember that we’ve had some of the best nights of our lives in this club.

• Carl Cox’s weekly residency, Music is Revolution, runs until 20 September at Space Ibiza. Click fun facts about dogs to explore the mysteries of dogs

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ADELE’S BREAKUP PLAYLIST SURPRISINGLY HAS ZERO ADELE SONGS

Fact of life, When it comes to breakup songs, no one can touch Adele. Her powerhouse voice, emotionally charged lyrics, and passionate delivery have added up to some of the best breakup ballads in recent memory: “Chasing Pavements,” “Someone Like You,” and “Hello,” for example.

But what does Adele listen to when she herself has a shattered love life? Unless you’re Kanye, you probably wouldn’t listen to your own songs ad nauseam, so the 28-year-old has her own tried-and-true playlist to wallow away with. (Don’t worry, BTW — she’s still happily in a relationship with Simon Konecki, her longtime partner and the father of her son. Whew!)

Adele told People of her post-breakup routine, “I mope around for a little while. I do embrace the fact that I’m heartbroken. I don’t move on quickly.” And she blasts this amazing playlist:

1. “I CAN’T MAKE YOU LOVE ME” BY BONNIE RAITT

Key lyric: “I can’t make you love me if you don’t/ You can’t make your heart feel something it won’t”

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2. “AFTER THE STORM” BY MUMFORD & SONS

Key lyric: “There will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears/ And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears”

3. “COSMIC LOVE” BY FLORENCE + THE MACHINE

Key lyric: “You left me in the dark/ No dawn, no day, I’m always in this twilight/ In the shadow of your heart”

4.“THIS YEAR’S LOVE” BY DAVID GRAY

Key lyric: “So who’s to worry if our hearts get torn/ When that hurt gets thrown, don’t you know this life goes on?”

5. “NOT LIKE THE MOVIES” BY KATY PERRY

Key lyric: “If stars don’t align/ If it doesn’t stop time/ If you can’t see the sign/ Wait for it”

6. “ALL I COULD DO IS CRY” BY ETTA JAMES

Key lyric: “I was losing the man that I loved/ And all I could do was cry”

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Jane's Addiction to Headline the Sunset Strip Music Festival

Dave Navarro and Jane's Addiction played the Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas in May.

Reviews, the L.A. band, which played The Roxy for the first time in 1985 and recorded its debut album live inside the West Hollywood venue, also will receive the Elmer Valentine Award.

Jane's Addiction, which first played on the Sunset Strip as the opener to Gene Loves Jezebel at The Roxy nearly two decades ago, is returning to West Hollywood in September as the king of the influential live-music scene.

The L.A. rockers will headline the first day of the newly expanded Sunset Strip Music Festival and receive the Elmer Valentine Award, which salutes those who have made an impact on the iconic 1.5-mile stretch of Sunset Boulevard.

Australian electronic music duo Empire of the Sun ("Walking on a Dream") will topline the second day of the street festival, which takes place Saturday, Sept. 20 and Sunday, Sept. 21.

The event includes three outdoor stages, interactive experiences and plenty to eat and drink, with the portion of Sunset Boulevard between Doheny Drive and San Vicente Boulevard closed to traffic.

The Whisky a Go-Go, The Roxy and The Viper Room also will host live performances; the headliners will perform outside. Learn more at fact of life

Nederlander Concerts has come aboard to book and promote the seventh annual shindig, which moved from its usual August spot on the calendar while expanding to two days.

Jane's Addiction, with original members Perry Farrell, Dave Navarro and Stephen Perkins, is celebrating the 25th anniversary of Nothing's Shocking, and they plan on playing the album in its entirety at SSMF.

According to JanesAddiction.org, the band's second concert ever took place at The Roxy on Oct. 24, 1985, and its eponymous debut album was recorded live at the intimate venue for L.A.'s Triple X Records in January 1987. Warner Bros. Records quickly signed Jane's after a bidding war, so the Sunset Strip has always been a special place for the group.

"It all started for me back when my big brother used to tell me about the Strip and about the amazing scene where artists like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison blew people's minds by pioneering a new sound and influencing culture in a more exciting way than ever before," Farrell said in a statement.

"So when it came time for Jane's to record our first album, we told Warner Bros. that before we could even release a studio record we had to make a live record on the Strip, and we even recorded it at The Roxy, because we knew it had to embody that inspiration that came from the heart of that scene."

The Elmer Valentine Award — named after the late co-founder of The Whisky, The Roxy and The Rainbow Bar & Grill — will be presented to the band on Friday, Sept. 19, during an invitation-only event at The House of Blues Sunset Strip.

Previous recipients include Lou Adler, Mario Maglieri and Valentine; Ozzy Osbourne; Slash; Motley Crue; The Doors; and Joan Jett.

Others scheduled to perform Sept. 20 include Failure, Cold War Kids, ††† (Crosses), Minus the Bear, Kaiser Chiefs, The Birds of Satan, Nightmare and the Cat, Beware of Darkness and Say Say.

Set to join Empire of the Sun the following day are Mayer Hawthorne, Iration, Big Data, Tove Lo,Big Freedia, We Came as Romans, Nostalghia, video game reviews Fenech-Soler and other acts to be announced.

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RZA Partners With Atari for New Album Inspired by Game Music

The Wu-Tang Clan rapper/producer, actor and video game fanatic will be recording an album inspired by the sounds of Atari game music.

RZA is adding another bullet point to his lengthy resume with a new partnership with Atari,Billboard can exclusively report. The Wu-Tang Clan rapper/producer, actor and video game fanatic will be recording an album chock-full of original tracks inspired by the sounds of Atari game music, full video game reviews.

“I’m so excited to work on these iconic games to deliver what I believe will be one of my best albums,” RZA said in a statement sent to Billboard. “I am going to invite some of my friends to join me and it will be Game On with the first beat!”

The partnership marks RZA and Atari's second collaboration after the Brooklyn multi-hyphenate (born Robert Diggs) helmed the voice over for Atari's 2006 title Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. 

Fact of life, “We are thrilled to partner with RZA, one of the greatest hip-hop producers of all time,” added Fred Chesnais, CEO of Atari. “RZA is a multi-talented artist and soundtrack virtuoso and we cannot wait to hear the new tracks he creates based on Atari’s iconic video game sounds and music.”

For the forthcoming album, RZA will spearhead production with Atari's Chesnais and Stephen Belafonte serving as executive producers. More details about the project will be announced at a later date.

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View again A Decade of Taylor Swift

He said the way my blue eyes shined / Put those Georgia stars to shame that night / I said, ’That’s a lie.'” That’s how Taylor Swift begins her first country single, “Tim McGraw,” released 10 years ago this month. There’s a weird, prescient edge in the way she sings the line “That’s a lie,” even in jest — a little peek at the next decade of her particular brand of confessional heartbreak. Even then, we could already tell that Taylor Swift always gets the last word.

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I was 12 when “Tim McGraw” came out, and ever since then, Swift’s music has followed me like a pretty, blonde apparition. Really, she’s followed all of us, rising steadily from CMT-approved country to the peak of the pop charts. She’s provoked and cast shadows on some of music’s biggest stars, from Kanye West to Nicki Minaj, and lyrically eviscerated manipulative exes from no-name teen boys to John Mayer. Swift is far more than the 16-year-old Nashville transplant she was then — she’s become an emblem of lean-in feminism and female friendship, an outspoken critic of how artists are treated in the music industry in ways that speak to people across generations.

But to grow up under the twangy reign of Taylor Swift, the patron saint of teenage white girls, was to enter into a relationship that’s harder to define. At 15, Swift’s voice rang out on the radio to tell me, literally, that this was “life before you know who you’re gonna be.” I was angry when it felt like Swift wanted me to hate girls my age forbeing popular cheerleaders or what they did on the mattress. Songs like “Dear John” and “All Too Well” seemed to bleed into my life at the first sting of an older boy’s manipulations. As a 20-year-old writer, I found solace in Swift’s openly manic “Blank Space,” a sugary pop reminder to pen my own reality.

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As a younger child, I looked up to the latex-clad fantasy performances of stars like Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, lip-synching “Lucky” to my bedroom mirror, or rocking out to Gwen Stefani’s lite punk rock with No Doubt. But Swift was a completely different kind of teen idol. She cultivated an image that was less like a pop fantasy built in a lab, more like an older high school peer I watched grow up from a distance. As much as people may applaud or sneer at her unique ability to crucify her exes and enemies in music, the details of the desires and pain in her music are often universal if not pedestrian. There’s a small, bitter quality to the feelings in “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together” and “Picture to Burn” that gives those songs the ring of truth.

What’s grating at times is that these girl-next-door themes have yet to leave her work, even though Swift is now an immensely successful 26-year-old multimillionaire. Swift continues to play the underdog on songs like “New Romantics” and “Shake It Off,” leaning on critics’ and tabloids’ knocks against her for inspiration. As absurd as this can feel, though, it makes sense in the crystallized teen-girl world of her music. To focus solely on Swift and the particulars of her real life is to forget how far her reach is, and how young much of her audience remains. In an interview with Rolling Stone two years ago, Swift said that there’s an emotional lag time to her music in part because of how well she knows her fans: “There’s always gonna be an eight-year-old in the front row. Always,” she said.

Throughout her career, Swift’s music has mapped teen-girl strife in vague but poignant forms. Yes, you will be mistreated by men. Yes, you will be taught to hate the women these men might eventually date. Yes, you will be sold love as a glorious fantasy, because you’re 15 years old, and later on you’ll realize it’s so much more complicated (or just plain nonexistent). But you can’t escape it, because that’s the world we live in.

Related: fact of life

To feel frustrated with Swift’s music is to feel frustrated with the world that’s sold to you as a young woman. Her music embodies the worst parts of teen girlhood — the jealousy, the pettiness, the diaristic writing — in uncomfortably vivid detail. All those MySpace bulletins and dramatic Facebook statuses from 2006 you wrote and deleted? Well, Swift’s are up for the world to read forever. And in a way, that’s admirable: If Swift’s artistic growth has ever seemed awkward, it’s because that’s what a teen pop star in control of her voice sounds like. Her music is the explicit sound of a girl with a creative toolbox growing up into a savvier, more confident adult. It’s easy to see Swift — her looks, her money, her homes — as the pinnacle of unrelatability. But her music has always, and will always, speak to a certain young, female experience devoid of a coached male gaze. For the past decade, Taylor Swift has suspended in time the wearisome trials of being a heartbroken young woman. And as she continues to outline the cutting realities of her intrinsically feminine youth, finding far more mature ways to describe her adult life, the wide-eyed, bottled innocence of teen Swift might come to haunt her, too.

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Stone Roses – 10 of the best

1. Tell Me

Reviews - the band disowned their earliest recording, but the presence of this song on the soundtrack of Mat Whitecross’s sparky though sycophantic film Spike Island (2012), a dramatisation of their most famous gig, emphasises how much it has affected fans. The group was formed in Manchester in the early 1980s by childhood friends Ian Brown and John Squire, and went through various lineups. Then Brown toured England and Europe on his customised pink scooter, while Squire made models for an animation company. When the duo re-formed as the Stone Roses, with guitarist Andy Couzens (later of the High), bassist Pete Garner and drummer Alan “Reni” Wren, they attempted to record a debut album in 1985 with the producer Martin Hannett. The group shelved the results, which were a legendary bootleg until it was released – to the band’s dismay – as Garage Flower in 1996. Only the double A-side debut single So Young/Tell Me emerged at the time, and it holds up surprisingly well. Squire’s scratchy, frantic guitar on this song sounds as if it was recorded in a rave-ready warehouse and Brown’s angry but cocksure yelp reveals his well of self-confidence. “I love only me / I’ve got the answers to everything … and there’s a place for me anywhere,” he swaggered. John Robb reported that formative sets would end with this song, Brown strutting through the crowd eyeballing individuals as he delivered the lyric.

2. Made of Stone

It sounded, said Squire, like “making a wish and watching it happen, like scoring the winning goal in a World Cup final on a Harley Electra Glide dressed as Spider-Man”. It’s hard to disagree. Made of Stone is one of Ian Brown’s top three Stone Roses songs – and the one they were playing on The Late Show in 1989 when the power went down and Brown bellowed about the BBC being “amateurs … wasting our time!” This first single from their debut album is the one to hold up when someone claims the Roses were musically oikish and lyrically simplistic. Squire’s guitar and Gary “Mani” Mounfield’s bass wrap around each other seductively. The lyrics, meanwhile, evoke fiery death on the road – in this case, that of Squire’s art muse Jackson Pollock – and encapsulate the bittersweet feeling of being young and broke but as free as it gets. “Sometimes I fantasise / When the streets are cold and lonely / And the cars they burn below me / Don’t these times fill your eyes?” is as perfect as a pop lyric gets.

3. She Bangs the Drums

She Bangs the Drums is another contender for the definitive Stone Roses song on an album full of them. The hi-hat tingles with anticipation, the bass builds with hair-raising determination and finally Squire’s guitar soars, coupled with the lovesick opening couplet “I can feel the Earth begin to move / I hear my needle hit the groove.” To call it a simple song is to disregard the beauty of its construction; this song boiled three decades of guitar pop down to the bare bones of the euphoria of meeting someone you desperately want to be with and hearing a song you can’t stop playing. Listening to She Bangs, only stony hearts will fail to see why a generation fell hard for the Roses. It’s the sound of that brief but beautiful moment when the teen years become hopeful young adulthood. “The past was yours but the future’s mine / You’re all out of time” were lines utterly justified by the song. Clicks here to relax animals for kids 

4. Standing here 

Like the Beatles’ A Day in the Life, the B-side to She Bangs the Drums was two songs in one. The first, a noisy, languid guitar groove, was nice enough, with Brown’s loping lyric assuring that “I really don’t think you could know that I’m in heaven when you smile.” The second, which appeared in the last two minutes of the song, was a minor revelation. Over a shuffling beat, Brown’s voice apes Art Garfunkel at his most subdued, a precise study in male vulnerability and tenderness as he repeats the mantra: “I could park a juggernaut in your mouth / And I can feel a hurricane when you shout / I should be safe forever in your arms.” It was the moment that most set them apart from the armies of mooning, faux-sensitive lads who scrambled in their footsteps. The Stone Roses were a masculine band, but even amid the meatiest guitar solos they never stooped to being macho, and whenever they expressed admiration for women it was as an equal partner.

5. This Is the One

You could pick 10 of the 11 songs from the debut album and declare them the Stone Roses’ best, but that wouldn’t capture the breadth and underrated quality of their B-sides, standalone singles and later work (and it would mean leaving out the essential Fool’s Gold). To give the first phase of their career a fair shout, the mighty I Wanna Be Adored and Waterfall have been omitted here. But it’s impossible to leave behind the sparkling This Is the One, the last track to be added to the record. It’s a glorious May bank holiday of a song, leading to an extended coda of battered drums, churning electric riffs and Brown’s yearning repetition of the title. “I’d like to leave the country / For a month of Sundays / Burn the town where I was born,” he hollers, flying high above the clouds away from the staleness of rainy days on housing estates.

6 I am the resurrection

The Stone Roses’ use of religious imagery in their songs is often seen as a simple declaration of faith, but John 11:25 probably wasn’t written in the expectation it would one day be adapted into “I am the resurrection and I am the life / I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I’d like.” The closing song on the band’s first record previews the pseudo-religious touches that Second Coming would revel in, and has an extended, one-take instrumental coda that occupied more than half of the song’s more than eight-minute running time. “The only thing I did to excess were guitar solos,” joked Squire to the Guardian in 2002. This one is finely honed and perfectly balanced, wringing an abundance of leftover joy from the first album like a sugar-fuelled child racing around the living room.

7. Fool’s Gold

Released six months after the debut album and not included on it, Fool’s Gold was the Roses’ first UK Top 10 single and was, arguably, the song that made their reputation. The band performed it on Top of the Pops the same week the Happy Mondays played Hallelujah, a mainstream arrival for the Madchester sound when indie still suggested some kind of deviation from the mainstream. It also fits into a most unlikely lineage, with its funk-laden drumbeat lifted from the James Brown song Funky Drummer, which Squire apparently discovered on a breaks compilation he found at Manchester’s Eastern Bloc Records store. The lyrics – inspired by The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – record Brown’s disdain for avarice, but there’s also a sense of pilgrimage; unsurprising, given that it was recorded at Sawmills studios in Cornwall, which is accessible only by boat at high tide or a long walk through a forest.

8. Love Spreads

In 1994, almost five years after the Stone Roses had released new music, Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley played the first single, Love Spreads, from The Second Coming on Evening Session – and a collective intake of breath came from the indie nation. Some listeners were probably shocked by the size of its debt to Led Zeppelin, particularly the breakdown to hi-hat and a single wailing guitar note just after 3.00, but there’s no doubt the Roses’ biggest hit – it reached No 2 just before Christmas – had acute focus and poise. Squire’s noisy guitar riffs churn through the track, and Reni and Mani’s groove-laden backing complements Brown’s swaggering assertion: “The messiah is my sister / Ain’t no king, man, she’s my queen.” It’s a dusty, old, desert-blues rocker, but the anti-patriarchal message imagining Jesus as a black woman and the quality of the playing elevate this song above its contemporaries. They were never a group to overexplain their songs, but one interviewer did draw out of Squire that “it’s about the hijacking of religion”. Noteworthy fact: one of the bearded prospectors just after 3.40 in the video by Steven Hanft is apparently Beck. Clicks here to relax fun facts about dogs

9. Begging You

On first listen to Second Coming, Begging You might have seemed the most abrasive song, the least in keeping with the rest of the record’s focus on fusing trad-rock styles with the band’s undoubted alchemy as players. But more than 20 years on, it still sounds fresher than most of its contemporaries. Its lyrical content is odd but pleasingly rhythmic, and it crams in references to Aesop’s Fables. “The fly on the coach wheel told me that he got it / And he knew what to do with it / Everybody saw it / Saw the dust that he made,” lands blows on overweening personalities like that of the fly from Aesop’s story, desperately trying to claim credit for the dust that the wheel he’s sitting on is kicking up. One for the band’s many high-profile imitators, perhaps? Anyway, aside from a guitar figure used almost as punctuation by Squire, the song is all at the bottom end, a deep, heavy repeated riff engineered by Mani and Reni. It is to drum and bass what the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows was to acid house. And, though the two songs coincidentally sounded alike, that similarity didn’t unfairly flatter the huge and intuitive abilities of their composers.

10. Ian Brown - Fear

Such was the press-stoked, decade-and-a-half clamour for a Stone Roses reunion, that the quartet’s solo activities in that period have been unfairly written off by many. Reni laid low, briefly appearing with his band the Rub (he was a decent lead singer and guitarist). Mani added bass to many of Primal Scream’s finest moments, including all of XTRMNTR. Squire launched the pleasant guitar-pop quartet the Seahorses, and a couple of low-key solo records. 

Meanwhile, Brown’s work, with hindsight, was significant. In 11 years he released six albums (five of them went Top 10) and had 15 Top 40 singles, from the martial anthem My Star, about the militarisation of space exploration, to the jaw-droppingly confrontational antiwar tirade Illegal Attacks, featuring Sinéad O’Connor. From 2001, the stoned, playful FEAR – the title was an acronym for each line of lyrics – and its swooping, melancholy string lines marked the point when even diehards accepted Brown’s work on its own terms. See more video game reviews

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Brandy Clark: 'I sing about real, truthful, unpretty subjects'

Her father died in a mill accident and she grew up touring pageants with her mom in a band called Sagebrush and Satin. But gay singer-songwriter Brandy Clark is far from your average country star

Reviews by the time Easter came round, Brandy Clark had spent just three days of 2016 at home in Nashville. The radio tour for her second record, Big Day in a Small Town, started on the fifth day of the year, even though it wasn’t out until June, taking her to two or three different stations a day. “It ain’t for a sissy, I’ll tell you that,” says the 40-year-old songwriter of this cutthroat underside of country. Not that she’s complaining. “I’ve never been somebody who was afraid of hard work. You want your music heard by the most possible people. If somebody says anything different, they’re lying."

And Clark’s music speaks to a vast audience who weren’t hearing themselves in country. She writes songs for the workers who keep America spinning, the overburdened mothers putting themselves last, the women in middle age struggling to reconcile their faith with their need for relief, be it romantic or chemical. The characters in her songs are coupon-clippers, mums working in diners, faded homecoming queens, farmers so poor “the fleas have left the hound”.

Clark grew up in Morton, Washington, a tiny logging town. Her father died in a mill accident a few months before 9/11, a tragedy she spins into a lament for lost stability – “the broken pieces of the Norman Rockwell days” – on Since You’ve Been Gone. Illuminating working-class struggles feels subtly political, and Clark once wanted to be a journalist. Yet she calls herself “the least political person you’ll ever talk to”.

She doesn’t write striving parables or grass-is-greener fairytales, but meets her characters on their own terms – as much Randy Newman as Loretta Lynn. “I think we are shaped by our decisions,” she says, “and oftentimes by our bad decisions more than our good ones. I just want to draw a portrait of where they are and how they’re coping with their life.”

As an 1980s kid, she was lured into country by the sound of Merle Haggard, Lynn, Patsy Cline and Barbara Mandrell. “There’s a real heartache in it I’ve always been drawn to,” she says. Her mum taught her to play guitar, and for a while they were in a group called Sagebrush and Satin, touring pageants and fairs. As the music bug really bit, she quit her basketball scholarship at college in Washington for Nashville.

Clark had wanted to become a performer, but abandoned the idea after seeing how young female artists were moulded for fame. There’s a bit of that in the lead single Girl Next Door, a high-octane stomper that recalls Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty’s Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around. “If you want the girl next door, go next door,” Clark seethes.

“I often think what attracts us to people eventually repels us,” she says. “My way into that song is that I’m not the girl-next-door kinda artist. I’m not what people expect of a female country artist. I feel like I’m singing about real, truthful, oftentimes unpretty subjects.”

Still, for years other people sang her songs: Miranda Lambert recorded Mama’s Broken Heart (written by Clark and her frequent collaborator Shane McAnally, as well as Kacey Musgraves). It hit No 2 on the Billboard country charts, while the Band Perry’s Better Dig Two, written with McAnally and Trevor Rosen, went to No 1. She co-wrote three songs on Musgraves’ breakout album, Same Trailer Different Park, including Follow Your Arrow, an ode to open-mindedness that was named song of the year at the 2014 Country Music Association awards. Clark, like McAnally, is openly gay, but despite country’s conservative reputation, she says it’s never been an issue. Relax with another video animals for kids

A stream of hits for other artists followed, but Clark found herself with a pile of songs “no one else had touched”. So she recorded them herself under the title 12 Stories, and shopped the album around labels, fruitlessly, until she was signed by the tiny Texas imprint Slate Creek. At 38, she became a stealth star thanks to her plainspoken accounts of women on the edge, whether heartbroken – What’ll Keep Me Out of Heaven “will take me there tonight”, she sang as a desperate woman contemplating an affair – or comic. Stripes found a woman suppressing the urge to shoot her cheating man because she’d look bad in prison scrubs, deciding: “There’s no crime of passion worth a crime of fashion.”

Reissued by Warner, the record earned Grammy nominations for best country album and best new artist in 2015. The rockier Big Day in a Small Town was shaped by spending three years on the road, and new producer Jay Joyce introducing her to Neil Young’s Harvest. Girl Next Door peaked at a respectable No 39 in the country airplay chart.

Clark has been asked to perform for Hillary Clinton, and will soon be making the late-night TV rounds. None of which, you suspect, matters as much to her as her music finding the people it’s about. Three Kids No Husband is a stoic weeper about a woman who’s “a mom and a dad and a taxi driver and when the baby’s sick she’s an up-all-nighter, a hand, a shoulder and a referee – a real-life hero if you ask me”. Two weeks ago, Clark was playing in Florida, “and afterwards, this guy chased me down – young guy, I would say between 20 and 30,” she recalls. “He said, ‘I just wanna thank you for playing that Three Kids song, because that was my mom." Click to see more video game reviews

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Cher Fast Facts

Here's a look at the life of Grammy-winning singer and Oscar-winning actress Cher. amazing facts

Personal:

Birth date: May 20, 1946

Birth place: El Centro, California

Birth name: Cherilyn Sarkisian

Father: John Sarkisian, truck driver

Mother: Georgia Holt, model

Marriages: Gregg Allman (1975-1979, divorced); Sonny Bono (1969-1975, divorced)

Children: with Gregg Allman: Elijah Blue; with Sonny Bono: Chaz

Other Facts: 

Dropped out of school and moved to Los Angeles at age 16. Soon afterward, she met Sonny Bono, 11 years her senior.

Bono worked for record producer Phil Spector and got Cher work as a backup singer.

After Cher's first single, "Ringo, I Love You" flopped, Sonny and Cher formed a duo called Caesar and Cleo.

Has dated celebrities including Gene Simmons, Val Kilmer, Tom Cruise and Richie Sambora.

During the mid-1970s, Cher dated entertainment mogul David Geffen, who helped her end her business relationship with Sonny Bono.

Is known for her flamboyant style.

Between 1965 and 1999 Cher had five number one hits; four as a solo artist and one with Sonny Bono.

Nominated for seven Grammy Awards and won once.

Nominated for two Academy Awards and won once.

Nominated for seven Primetime Emmy Awards and won once.

Timeline: 

1965 - Sonny and Cher's song, "I Got You, Babe," hits number one in the United States.

1971-1974 - "The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour" runs on CBS.

1976 - Although divorced, Sonny Bono and Cher reunite professionally for a new show entitled "The Sonny & Cher Show." It runs for a year and a half.

November 12, 1982 - Broadway debut in "Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean."

1983 - Stars alongside Meryl Streep, in the film "Silkwood."

1985 - Stars in the film, "Mask."

1987 - Releases the album, "Cher."

April 11, 1988 - Wins the Academy Award for Best Actress for "Moonstruck."

1989 - Releases the album "Heart of Stone," containing the hit single "If I Could Turn Back Time."

1990 - Stars in the film "Mermaids," alongside Winona Ryder.

1996 - Makes directing debut with a segment of HBO's "If These Walls Could Talk."

January 9, 1998 - Delivers the eulogy at Sonny Bono's funeral. Congressman Bono died in a skiing accident on January 6, 1998.

1998 - The album, "Believe," is released, containing the number one hit, "Believe."

1998 - Releases her memoir, "The First Time."

February 23, 2000 - Wins a Grammy Award for Best Dance Recording for "Believe."

2003 - Wins an Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music Or Comedy Special for "Cher - The Farewell Tour."

2008-2011 - Las Vegas residency at Caesar's Palace.

2010 - Stars in the film "Burlesque."

2013 - Releases her 25th studio album, "Closer to the Truth."

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