JEHNNY BETH AND HER LOVE FOR LIFE
Savages’ singer feeling optimistic about things
Jehnny Beth stares into the camera. Her eyes look as fierce and determined as a prizefighter’s peepers before a big bout.
“I adore life,” she speaks/sings in her French-accented vocals. Adore is one of this year’s most powerful songs and videos, a spine-tingling affirmation of life in a year filled with death, destruction and deception. Which might be why the tune elicits tears whenever Beth and her post-punk band, Savages, perform it.
“I see people crying in the front row,” she says. “It’s pretty emotional and amazing. It’s been something the song’s been doing to us even in the band since we’ve been playing it. The song seems beyond us — I don’t feel a sense of ownership on this song. I feel more like it’s for everybody. It’s a nice feeling. I can’t even remember when I wrote the lyrics for it. My brain blacked out. It just came to me.”
Adore is the centrepiece of the British-French band’s second album, Adore Life. It’s a collection of dark, agitated and noisy songs about love and its many intricacies — such as addiction (Sad Person), conformity (Evil), restlessness (I Need Something New), and the power to change (The Answer).
Beth experienced a metamorphosis of her own as she worked on the lyrics, from a songwriter who tried to avoid the subject of love to one who wholeheartedly embraced it.
"There was a moment where everything I was writing was about love, feelings I was going through, and things that I was thinking about. I felt this was such a basic human feeling — everyone is looking for a connection. That’s what binds us to each other. In the end, I was more trying to write an album about what makes us human, and love is in the centre of all that.
“I’ve always heard people say ‘Love is the answer’ and things like that and it really never meant any- producer Johnny Hostile. (One of their latest releases is a cover of Sort Sol’s classic, Boy- Girl, featuring Beth and Strokes vocalist Julian Casablancas.) Last year, she performed several David Bowie tunes at the Paris opening of a museum exhibition devoted to his art and fashion. She now hosts a weekly show on Beats 1, Apple’s Internet radio station.
Yet long before she formed Savages with guitarist Gemma Thompson, bassist Ayse Hassan and drummer Fay Milton in 2011, Beth admits she suffered from stage fright. “I think it’s natural to be afraid to go onstage because it’s very exposing.”
“You feel very vulnerable. You’re giving a part of yourself and you’re terrified that people are going to use that against you. Once you realize that’s not the case, it becomes a tool, it becomes something you explore yourself with. Once you’ve toured around the world, you realize you have a voice and people are listening. They are optimistic, they are open. It brings out the best of everyone in the room, including us, and you feel very safe. The fear is still there sometimes — for no reason in particular, whether the show is big or small. You never know how it’s going to go.”