Day Eighteen - You Don't Owe The World Pretty

“You don’t owe anyone perfect”

You can hear an audio version of this post here.

Today’s song is You Don’t Owe the World Pretty written by English folk musician Bella Hardy (hear it here and there is also a video further down this post). This song is on Bella’s 2017 album Hey Sammy and it is like nothing else in her catalogue, I think (that’s one reason I picked it). Bella is a loved and respected folk artist (with voice and fiddle) but like so many musicians I’ve spoken to and read about she is open-minded, adventurous, and tireless in her music making. Bella has answered questions about the song and songwriting and her answers are further down this post. But first, let’s talk a little about this brilliant Derbyshire songwriter.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, traditional music is not an area of any speciality for me but I do particularly enjoy Bella’s versions of trad songs (her Yellow Handkerchief on the 2013 album Battleplan, for example). Since her first album (2007’s Night Visiting) Bella has shown what a talented original songwriter she is too. On that first album her own Three Black Feathers was something very special – a song that gets that great compliment from folk fans “it could be a traditional song”. It was nominated for best original song at the 2008 Folk Awards (that was the year Martin Simpson’s Never Any Good won the award, that song was featured here back on Day 15) and this marked out her songwriting skill right from the start. The album has another original song too (Alone, Jane), an interesting take on the story of Jane Eyre. In 2008 Bella, like Martin Simpson, played in the Folk Prom at the Albert Hall (we saw it on TV – it was amazing!) and in 2012 another original song of Bella’s (The Herring Girl) won the Best Original Song at the Folk Awards (this one from her 2011 album Songs Lost and Stolen). I don’t think I’ve heard an original song of Bella’s that I don’t like (and she seems to put out an album about once every two years, each with at least one original song, if not quite a few more). 

I did know a little about Bella Hardy when I finally saw her perform live up in Montrose in March 2016 and I was pretty excited that she was coming to the town. She came with a trio (Anna Massie who we’d seen a few times before and, I’m guessing from info online, Tom Gibbs was the other player). The usual Montrose Folk Club home of the Links Hotel was out of action so the venue was the Black Abbot pub in Borrowfield on the edge of town (a bit of a change from the Albert Hall but it has done its bit for live music over the years too). It was a brilliant night of beautiful music and so many moods and different approaches (Bella’s fiddle singing is especially lovely). Bella also talks so kindly and gently to the audience that you just love her by the end. I think she tutors choirs (I seem to remember her talking about that at the Proms, about how everyone can sing, given the right encouragement) and I bet she is great at that too. When I saw her in Montrose she was promoting her 2015 album With the Dawn and that features all original songs (mostly just written by Bella, a couple of co-writes, one with Ben Seal, one with Cara Luft, who I mentioned back on Day 8). In 2016 Bella was not long back from being British Council Musician in Residence in Yunnan, China and talked about this amazing experience and the effects of the trip on her music. Her 2017 album Eternal Spring was recorded in China and is a composition based on research and writing she did during the residency.

I enjoyed all the more traditional English folk and traditional-style content in her early albums but I really like the newer Bella work (from With the Dawn onwards). So many musicians when asked about genre (any genre) say something like ‘I just want to be a musician’ and certainly it feels like Bella is spreading her wings and trying more and more new sounds as the years pass by. 

The album that today’s song comes from, Bella’s 2017 album Hey Sammy, was another collection of all new songs (some by Bella, some co-writes with Iain Thomson, Peter Groenwald, Konrad Snyder and Tom Gibbs). If you had to call You Don’t Owe the World Pretty anything I suppose ‘pop’ is the word that comes most to mind (except of course as a mostly folk artist she won’t get much pop airplay … and so pop struggles to be popular, which is a bit daft, isn’t it?). It’s interesting that Pretty was one of the 4 songs* (from this months list of 31) that Lauren Laverne picked to play on her Breakfast Show on BBC 6 Music last week (the 4 songs were chosen to accompany a little Social Recall feature I did on her show talking about this project). Lauren highlighted the producer of Hey Sammy (Paul Savage of the Delgados) and mentioned his work with artists like Mogwai and Arab Strap. 

For me, there are a few songs on Hey Sammy that could be popular (if they got the play, air or otherwise). Learning to Let Go could accompany a good road movie, Queen of Carter’s Bar could totally improve a Sunday night BBC drama, In My Dreams could work for a Netflix series and Heartbreaker is what I suppose you might call Kate Bush territory. However, the one I’ve picked today (You Don’t Owe the World Pretty) is perhaps the one that would have the most chance to actually be pop, if it got the exposure. Equality and feminism are themes running through a lot of Bella’s output and this song is perhaps the loudest and clearest example of that. Every time I listen to it I want to both (a) run through the streets singing and (b) have a really big cry. It’s a big whoosh of a track and I feel there is definitely a documentary about influencers somewhere that needs to hear it. Here’s the video:

And now here’s Bella, answering the questions I have posed to all this month’s songwriters (where possible).

When did you write this song?

The song was in my head for a while in different forms. Two of my friends had baby girls around the same time, about 2012. I got more and more frustrated and worried over the next couple of years about the limited gift options for them, and the messages of ‘how little girls should be’ that seemed to be projected at them from so many corners of society, usually perfectly unknowingly. I wanted to write them a song. So it started for little Martha and Lucy.

Originally the chorus was just the repetition of those words, “You don't owe the world pretty” four times. I first performed that version at a concert at the Durham Gathering in 2015. I think I sang it unaccompanied, and got everyone to join in on those lines. I remember a lot of women talking to me afterwards about the song. Someone I’d known for years, a lady probably in her 50s, said she wouldn’t go to the supermarket without make-up on, actually couldn’t, would never even consider it. The song had really shaken her. And I knew I wanted to record it and share it further. I spent a couple of years reviewing and playing with it, fiddle-plucking it around the house, and recorded it on ‘Hey Sammy’ in 2017. I love the album version, all folk-pop electric, but I sometimes perform it solo fiddle-plucking which I love for its intimacy too.

 

Any other versions of it you know of? 

None that I know of. It’s totally magic when someone covers something you’ve written. You feel ... detached from it, but in a good way. Like you put something out there, but it’s not yours, it belongs to something bigger. So hopefully one day. 

Is it a song you particularly like?

There’s the line “Little one you’re going to need and little one, you’re going to bleed”. Two different men I knew, people I was friends with, had a word with me about rewriting that part. They were uncomfortable with the period reference, and I’m sure they genuinely felt that it would be better for me if I left it out. I wondered; are these the only two who actually have the stomach to talk to me about this, and how many others are going to react in the same way? I had a general sense of people feeling like “isn't that a bit too visceral? Unnecessary?” And yes, at the time, that seed of doubt made me uncomfortable too; I was facing some of my own mental health gremlins at the time. It added to the general life anxieties. It’s ridiculous looking back on it, especially as the next line of the song pretty much exemplifies what those voiced opinions were actively doing to me “...you'll be taught that it’s a shame, to hide the pain and do whatever keeps you most appealing”. Must stay appealing! But of course, it’s not my job to make men or society in general comfortable with being confronted with these issues, that’s the point of the song! And now I have nothing but great feelings about it. I’m proud of myself for sticking with it. And when people tell me they’ve got something from it - that they’ve shared it with friends or their children – that’s hugely satisfying. It makes you feel that your writing has worth, that it’s helped in some small way. 

 

What is the song you’ve written that you are most proud of?

As a rule - the last one! Because you’re never sure you’ve another song in you, and when it happens, it’s magic, and a relief! I’ve a new song called ‘The Navigator's Bride’ which I wrote the weekend before I went to the studio to record my latest record (‘Love Songs’, coming June 2022). It was a proper piece of songwriting work, two solid days of not letting myself leave the notebook, sitting by the piano, pushing and pulling and cajoling it into existence. Not a simple ‘oh there it is’ job, a real wrestling match! And I’m so pleased with it. But in general, I have feelings of pride towards all of my songs for very different reasons. I could tell you where I was and what I was going through for every one of them, each a little memory, little parts of me. And there’s shadows and echoes of the songs scattered and mixed in to each other. ‘Pretty’ always reminds me of another song ‘Broken Mirror’ which I recorded on ‘Songs Lost & Stolen’ in 2011, but started life as a poem I wrote in ... 2004/2005. It has the line “Perfection always comes unstuck; see only what you choose to see, you won’t know love and you won’t know me”.

 

Could you name me one song by someone else that you wish you’d written? 

No, I’m very happy to have written what I’ve written, and not to have written other people’s songs that I love! I wouldn’t enjoy them in the same way, or learn from them, or be moved or informed by them in the same way. I wouldn’t want to lose that inspiration. Some songs that I love and respect ... As an opening line, I’m not sure Joan Baez’ ‘Diamonds and Rust’ can be beaten; “Well I’ll be damned, here comes your ghost again...”. What a start, what a song. I have go-to artists who I fall back to again and again. I think they all write songs that feel very conversational. Anything by Joan Armatrading. Of course Joni Mitchell; the album ‘Blue’ is etched into me deeper than any other music I suspect, but I think that’s the case for a lot of people. I had the Regina Spektor song ‘Samson’ going around my head at 4am last night, that’s some song. And then there’s Kristina Olsen**. I love her. I saw her first at Stainsby Folk Festival as a teenager. As a person, and a crafter, she’s completely inspiring. She’s the only artist I’ve ever covered on one of my records (‘Heart Hill’ on my debut ‘Night Visiting’), and my album ‘Battleplan’ was partly named in homage to her song of the same name. And now I have a great desire to go and listen to her song ‘If I stayed’. “If I stayed here with you, my skin would take your smell, my feet grow roots as well, ‘til I no longer was myself, if I were to stay...”.

Thanks so much to Bella for answering questions about her fabulous song. See you back here tomorrow for Kris Drever Day!

*The 4 songs played on Lauren Lavene’s show on BBC 6 Music on 12 January 2022 were: The Littlest Birds written by Samantha Parton and Jolie Holland (see Day 10), General Grant’s Visit to Dundee written by Michael Marra (see Day 12), Done written by Josienne Clarke (Day 17) and You Don't Owe The World Pretty written by Bella Hardy (today’s song). Obviously I wish they could have played all 31 songs but I was chuffed they played some of the tracks.

**A second mention for Kristina Olsen this month. She popped up on Day 11 as well.

This post is part of my Songs That Stick project for 2022’s Fun A Day Dundee (a community arts project that takes place every January). Anyone can take part (you don’t even have to be local to Dundee) and much of the work can be found on Instagram during January (use #FADD2022). There is usually a real-life exhibition later in the year (though this has been online for the past 2 years). The full list of songs I am writing about this year is here. My first post about why I picked this project this time is here.

If you are interested in my Fun A Day Dundee projects for 2020 and 2021 you can start here and here. They are quite different to this one (a short poem and drawings in 2020 and lots of poems and writing in 2021).