While swimming through the ambiguities and anxieties of the pre-vaccine pandemic — which involved "shielding" his partner while she underwent breast cancer treatment — Billy Bragg got into online ancestry. He soon learned he and his progenitors aren't so different.

"My ancestors seemed to be a bunch of nonconformists," the English singer/songwriter, who has been nominated for two GRAMMYs, tells GRAMMY.com. "They were Baptists, so they were refusing to sit in the church behind the squire. They were those kinds of people, preaching out in the fields in that kind of congregation. I feel that sort of connection with them."

No matter which way his candle is flickering religiously, Bragg feels akin to those evangelizers of yore because he values pure communication — a thought beamed from one's brain to another with minimal distortion. "I'm not really a musician; I'm a guitar player at best," he admits. "My bottom line is communicating, whether I'm writing a song or a book or an article or a long Sunday-afternoon post for social media."

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Bragg's newest album, The Million Things That Never Happened, which will be released Oct. 29, does an awful lot of direct interfacing — about social movements, about the weirdness of lockdown, about staying afloat in a changing world, about why true liberty is impossible without accountability. (He also expresses himself through books like 2017's Roots, Radicals and Rockers – How Skiffle Changed the World and 2019's The Three Dimensions of Freedom.)

Tunes like "Good Days and Bad Days," "The Buck Doesn't Stop Here No More" and "Freedom Doesn't Come For Free" are direct, unvarnished representations of how he sees the world. This is true to his hero, Woody Guthrie, whose public perception Bragg did a lot to correct with Mermaid Avenue, an acclaimed pair of albums with Wilco that turned Guthrie's stray lyrics into songs.

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"It's always been true that if you've got an idea and you put a good beat on it or a great hook, people will listen," Bragg says — and that rings true when it comes to The Million Things That Never Happened. By interweaving new textures, like mellotron, and collaborating with his son Jack (who, he says, is miles more musically advanced than him), Bragg ensures his message will be received loud and clear.

Bragg sat down with GRAMMY.com to discuss the artistic essence of The Million Things That Never Happened, why the internet is a boon to an aging activist and why Guthrie would be "a devil on social media" today.

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This interview has been edited for clarity.

"Mid-Century Modern" is themed around feeling like a man out of time. How do you counteract that in daily life and align yourself with the now?

Well, the internet's a great mirror into other people's mindsets. If you go on a platform like Twitter and follow a younger activist in their thirties or twenties, you're able to look over their shoulder and get their perspective of the way the world is. 

Things have moved on a long way since I learned my politics. We lived in a much more ideological political atmosphere here in Europe in the 1980s. In the 1990s, gay rights were in the front line. Now, it's trans rights. Politics doesn't have any ideology anymore, and the big challenge is how to deal with politicians who act with impunity. 

How do we deal with the likes of Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán and Boris Johnson and Xi Jinping? The list goes on. It seems to me that the idea of the strongman with no responsibilities, no accountability, is the real challenge that we have to face in a democratic world. 

So, I try to update my worldview as regularly as I can, while, at the same time, staying focused on the ideals I've always held. I talk about things like empathy and accountability, but they've always been at the core of my politics — whether you call them socialism or progressivism or whatever you want to call them. 

The basic principles are the same, but the way I articulate them has had to change because the world changes. Margaret Thatcher's dead. There's no point in me talking in those terms anymore. I need to be able to talk in the way people are currently articulating their ideas. I try to do that. I do my best to live up to that.

Had you spent some time off from how young people are thinking politically?

I wouldn't say I've been on top of it the whole time, but obviously, with the things that have happened in the last few years — #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion — these are all ostensibly single-issue movements.

What I've tried to find is, "What's the essence that links them together, and how do I feel about that?" My analysis is [that] what links them together is accountability.

There are people who define freedom as being purely about the right to express your opinion — that free speech is the definition of liberty. I don't agree with that. I think, while free speech is absolutely crucial to a free society — unless you also have equality, the right of everyone else to express their views, the most important [value] of all is accountability.

[Unless we have] the right to hold those in power — whether that's political power, economic power, social power — to account for the things they do that are wrong, then we're really not free. We're not free at all.

That's where my red line has come to: Accountability. Over the last few years, I've tried to apply that and look at the world in those terms. In the 20th century, we had an ideology that gave you parameters with which to engage in the world through discussion and reflection. You bring your ideology to bear on what's happening and see if you can make sense of it.

Well, we don't have that anymore, so we need other things. The framework I've constructed is liberty, equality and accountability, and I try to bring that to each issue and make a decision on it in those terms.

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You mentioned #MeToo. That isn't just holding people upstairs accountable; it's eye-to-eye, social accountability.

That's the other side to liberty, equality and accountability: It also applies to our social media discourse. It's an absolutely essential part of how we debate with one another in the world.

First, to respect the other person's right to their opinion, and then to expect that to be reciprocated. And you, as an individual, to reciprocate yourself to other people's points of view, but fundamentally to be accountable for what you say — and to expect those you are talking to to equally be accountable. 

Even just down to the point of answering the question rather than trying to come back with something that deflects away from the question. There's a hell of a lot of that kind of stuff out there. 

All these terms that are bandied about, whether it's virtue-signaling or political correctness or wokeness, whatever that is — these are deflections in which people who are being held to account seek to turn themselves into the victim of some kind of conspiracy rather than, possibly, the perpetrator of bigotry, of divisiveness.

You've got to deal with these cultural spasms from time to time by holding on to some very firm ideas. And, as I say, my firm ideas are liberty, equality and — most importantly of all — accountability.

Some who are opposed to canceling might point to some extreme examples. A professor in Michigan was just fired for showing the film Othello.

Ultimately, students have to have some way of holding their professors to account. That's the best way to expect it of people nowadays. Because, really, it seems to me, cancel culture is just a form of accountability and the people who are calling it cancel culture just don't want to be held to account.

What was your aural vision for The Million Things That Never Happened? What did you want it to sound like?

Well, frankly, when I went to the studio to meet [producers] Dave Izumi and Romeo Stodart, they had just gotten an old-school, original mellotron. It's a 1960s thing which runs on tape loops and has this wonderful kind of woozy, dreamlike sound. 

They put it on one of the first tracks because, unfortunately, I couldn't be there in the studio. We went back into lockdown after we set the date. We got to December, and I wasn't able to go. So I sent him my demos — which are very basic, guitar/vocal demos — and he came back with this mellotron sound. 

To me, it spoke to the ambiguity of lockdown. The ambiguity of not knowing what the future holds — not knowing when we'll go back to what we used to refer to as "normal." So, I kind of liked that sound. I said to Dave, "We should use a little bit more of that to try and evoke that weird feeling, that space where we're not sure if we're going forward or backward."

I don't know where you are in this whole thing, but I have an Australian tour coming up — hopefully — in January. It's already been postponed twice, and there are so many ambiguities around it. In Australia, in the UK, and then in the g****mn flight! The flight changes every day!

I think this is a lot of people's experience — those people trying to work, trying to get back to school. Nobody's really sure where they are, and I wanted that ambiguity to run through the album. So, we added a little more mellotron than usual.

As a musician myself, I declare the mellotron to be the most underrated instrument.

We found, also, that the mellotron doesn't switch off. It kind of dies. It goes [Makes exhaling, deflating sound]. And I said, "Let's leave that in!" If you listen to the ends of some of the tracks, it's the same sort of exhausted kind of falling away that seemed to me [to mirror] the times we're in.

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In the press release, you note that ancestry is the second-most-Googled term — the first being pornography. What's your relationship with your familial history?

Well, weirdly, I did a project at school when I was 12 or 13. It was actually calligraphy! I don't know what they were doing teaching 13-year-olds calligraphy at a state school in East London in the 1970s, but they taught us this lovely calligraphy.

My project was to draw a lovely family tree. So I asked everyone who was alive then — which was fortunate, because within five years, most of them had passed away — and got a basic idea of our family tree. I ended up being the only person who knows who anybody is in the photos anymore.

To pass it on, I put together — you know how, online, you can make a photobook of your kid's christening or engagement party or something, with lots of lovely, glossy photos? You can also put a lot of text in there as well.

So, I just wrote everything I knew — all the details — spun it into a narrative and came up with something I could pass along to my son and nephews who ask me about family history, because I'm kind of the oldest person in that branch of our family now, which is a very strange feeling.

Passing it on is a quite important thing to me. And during lockdown, I tried to do the same thing with my partner's family, which is so much more complicated than my family. I'm from Essex; my dad was from Essex; his dad was from Essex; his dad was from Essex. It's my mom's side that came in from Italy at the turn of the 19th and 20th century.

But my partner's family, they're all over the shop. They're very cosmopolitan. So, drawing that together during the lockdown, I kept talking to her siblings to get more information. And I kept saying the same thing: "I wish Mom knew this. We should have asked Mom this when she was alive." My mom had this information.

I started to think there's something really important about getting a sense, an idea of belonging. Where you fit into the world, what you learn from hearing family stories and stuff like that. It's quite an important thing.

I don't know much about my family a few generations back, but you never know what impact they had on those around them.

The interesting thing is that now, online, you can find out some aspects of those people's lives and join the dots a little bit — particularly, if they had experience in the armed forces during the First World War or Second World War. You can actually draw a lot of stuff from that.

I was fortunate in that my mother-in-law — whose photos I was working on, who has passed away — wrote a lot of autobiographical poetry. It's really interesting to glean stuff from reading reams of poetry that we inherited. We have the biggest house, so we got all their stuff.

Billy Bragg. Photo: Jill Furmanovsky​

So, I got a real feel for that — how a poem or song can play a really important role in passing it on.

When studying your ancestors, did you find any common threads between your personality and values and theirs?

Yeah, some. Maybe you see it because you're looking for it. I always wondered about that. It wouldn't bother me if my ancestors were a bunch of Tories or anything.

But, certainly, my ancestors seemed to be a bunch of nonconformists in terms of their religious outlook. They were Baptists, so they were refusing to sit in the church behind the squire. They were those kinds of people, preaching out in the fields in that kind of congregation. I feel that sort of connection with them.

Tell me about working with your son on this album.

Yeah, that was nice. He's quite a songwriter himself. He's been writing songs for 10 years or more, and he had a band that went to South by Southwest a couple of years ago. They've broken up now and he's doing open-mic stuff around Brighton. But he's been playing these songs forever and we've never really collaborated.

He was here on Christmas and I was playing him the tracks and singing the lyrics so he could hear. He really liked this particular song, "Ten Mysterious Photos That Can't Be Explained."  But he was adamant that what I was using as a B part on the verse should be the chorus.

So, he was trying to get me to take it apart and put it back together again in a different way, and I was like, "Ah, come on. Give me a break. What can we do with all these other lyrics? I've got some great lyrics that I love! I coined a new term — cyberchondriac! I'm not going to throw that away, am I?"

He said, "Well, write a middle eight." I was like, "Use the words, go and write a middle eight, and come back and play it to me if you reckon it's there, because I don't see it." So, he did. Half an hour later, he came back, and it was indeed there — and it did sound cool. I thought, "OK, that makes sense. I'll go with that." 

So, that's how we recorded it. And where we recorded it was just up the road from Brighton, where he lives, so he came along and played on it. It was lovely. It was nice to collaborate with him. It's nice to have something in common with your kids that you can get into. He's never been interested in football, so it has to be that.

What do you appreciate about his musical thinking, or the way he bounces off your songwriting process?

I think he grasps the emotional side of it a bit better than me. He's a better musician than I am as well. He's more of a technical player. And he's out there beyond G minor, C and D, which is where I'm often found enjoying myself — running around those chords. I would probably have trouble keeping up with him on stage if we did a gig together.

Where do you stand with protest songs? On one hand, they're some of the most enduring works of art; on another, they can be instantly dated if you use too many proper nouns.

It's a strange one, isn't it? You say that, and then you listen to the stuff Woody Guthrie wrote in the 1930s, and it still resonates. If you're writing a song that tries to connect with people rather than an event, you have a better chance of having longevity in it.

I find myself, as I get older, talking about empathy — where empathy fits into what we do. Music can't actually change the world, per se. It has no agency, but it can change how you feel about the world. It can change how you perceive what's going on in the world.

That's always something worth trying to do — challenging people's perceptions and trying to use your music to make them feel some empathy for an individual or something they have no experience of. It's a form of allyship, I suppose would be a good way to explain it.

You can generate that through music, and then it comes down to the individual to make the change — not the artist. I think that's how it works. If it does work, that's likely how.

You've mentioned empathy several times. How do we restore it to online discourse, which has mostly degenerated to ad hominem slings?

It's more than a lack of empathy; it's almost like there's a war on empathy. Anybody who expresses any compassion for anyone outside of their perceived group immediately gets attacked and accused of virtue-signaling or all those other things.

There seems to be a sense that empathy is somehow feminine — somehow anti-American or anti-British. It's not just happening in your country; it's happening all around the world. And I think, ultimately, we have to rely on those people who are showing empathy.

I live in coastal Dorset. When I go to my local mega-supermarket, I would say 85% of the people in that supermarket are wearing masks. We've had no mask mandate since July. Those people in the supermarket are thinking of themselves, obviously, but they're thinking about other people as well. They're thinking, "I need to take responsibility for this situation we're in."

So, my faith in human nature is restored, in that sense. I've always been a person who believes in the notion of the common good. The idea that there are things you do that you might not want to do, but ultimately, are for the good of everybody.

It's as trivial as sorting out your garbage — putting your bottles here and your cardboard over there, putting your bins out. You don't get any benefit from it, but you know, long-term, that there will be.

Billy Bragg. Photo: Jill Furmanovsky​

The people who are resisting efforts to get people to wear masks and get vaccinated, those people are relying on notions of individual liberty: We have to say to them, "Look, individual liberty is fine. We have plenty of license in that direction, generally, and I'm totally in favor of that. But there are times we have to lean more toward the common good, and these are those times.”

And it's only by doing that — by leaning toward the common good — that we're going to get out of this. It's only when we've got the high numbers vaccinated that we're able to live with the virus. I don't think we're going to totally eradicate it, but we can get back to not having to worry about these things.

Until we get there, we need to deal with this. I think we need to do it in a way that's not accusatory or necessarily belligerent, but it's also clear to me that reason alone isn't going to convince these people. They've taken almost an ideological view on wearing a mask, and that's a real problem. 

Because if you can't reason with someone, you start to wonder how you'll be able to get through that divide. That's the real challenge in the years ahead: Will democracy survive? Will the people who come together to express an opinion be respected by other people?

A bunch of contemporary artists just did a tribute to Guthrie called Home in This World. Is that part of why his music endures — that it speaks to a universal human experience?

That has definitely been my experience working on the Mermaid Avenue project. He was writing about so many different things; there were so many lyrics in there that reflected where he was in the world and what he was thinking about.

I think he was a very forward-thinking guy as well. He would have been a devil on social media. He would have been the first one banned by Twitter, I think. He was so gregarious.

Bottom line is, he was a communicator. That's how I've always thought of myself, really. I'm not really a musician; I'm a guitar player at best. But really, my bottom line is communicating, whether I'm writing a song or a book or an article or a long Sunday-afternoon post for social media.

Read More: Woody Guthrie In The 21st Century: What Does The Folk Hero Mean To Contemporary Musicians?

It just so happened that when I was 19, the only medium available to me was to learn to play guitar, write songs and play gigs. That's different now. The younger generation now has a number of media through which they can express their views. Consequently, music no longer has that central place in political protest, because there are other ways to do it.

But there are still some people who are utilizing music — people who are marginalized in mainstream culture who are still using music to get their voice heard above the day-to-day clamor of social media. It's always been true that if you've got an idea and you put a good beat on it or a great hook, people will listen.

Billy Bragg in 2000. Photo: Michael Uhll/Redferns​

You mentioned Mermaid Avenue. Can you share any memories of making those albums?

Going to the Woody Guthrie archive and being given the files, the boxes with the lyrics in there. I imagined there would be a box, and there were a dozen boxes.

At the end of the first day, having pulled out the songs I thought were good, I suddenly realized I had to go back, and that these actually weren't good songs compared to the rest of the stuff. They were just the first ones I'd seen. I thought there were even better ones and that I should put them back in the box, as I wouldn't need a hundred songs — I only needed 20 or 30.

The breadth of the material was just phenomenal as well. Obviously, there were Dust Bowl kinds of songs, but to discover that Woody Guthrie wrote songs about having sex with Ingrid Bergman on an Italian volcano, we're talking about another Woody Guthrie altogether.

That was really Nora Guthrie's [entreaty] to us: To expand the idea of who her father was. I think she felt he'd been captured by academics and was in danger of becoming a bit of a two-dimensional character in the Dust Bowl.

Whereas, so much of the material we were working from was written in New York City in the 1940s, when New York was perhaps the most exciting city in the world — where bebop was being invented, where what we know of as teen culture was emerging.

Woody was in that milieu. He was there. It's not right to just think of him in the Dust Bowl. He lived in Brooklyn for half his life.

That's what I feel Mermaid Avenue did: Open up the public's understanding of him so he wasn't just this polemical folk singer from the distant past. He's talking about disease and sex and baseball.

Flying saucers, yeah. He was on a pedestal, which was wrong, because if anything, he was an iconoclast. He was a knocker-down of statues: "Don't make a statue of me, for chrissakes."

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Updated Friday Oct. 13, 2023 to include info about Kendrick Lamar's most recent GRAMMY wins, as of the 2023 GRAMMYs.

A GRAMMY veteran these days, Kendrick Lamar has won 17 GRAMMYs and has received 47 GRAMMY nominations overall. A sizable chunk of his trophies came from the 58th annual GRAMMY Awards in 2016, when he walked away with five — including his first-ever win in the Best Rap Album category.

This installment of GRAMMY Rewind turns back the clock to 2016, revisiting Lamar's acceptance speech upon winning Best Rap Album for To Pimp A Butterfly. Though Lamar was alone on stage, he made it clear that he wouldn't be at the top of his game without the help of a broad support system. 

"First off, all glory to God, that's for sure," he said, kicking off a speech that went on to thank his parents, who he described as his "those who gave me the responsibility of knowing, of accepting the good with the bad."

Looking for more GRAMMYs news? The 2024 GRAMMY nominations are here!

He also extended his love and gratitude to his fiancée, Whitney Alford, and shouted out his Top Dawg Entertainment labelmates. Lamar specifically praised Top Dawg's CEO, Anthony Tiffith, for finding and developing raw talent that might not otherwise get the chance to pursue their musical dreams.

"We'd never forget that: Taking these kids out of the projects, out of Compton, and putting them right here on this stage, to be the best that they can be," Lamar — a Compton native himself — continued, leading into an impassioned conclusion spotlighting some of the cornerstone rap albums that came before To Pimp a Butterfly.

"Hip-hop. Ice Cube. This is for hip-hop," he said. "This is for Snoop Dogg, Doggystyle. This is for Illmatic, this is for Nas. We will live forever. Believe that."

To Pimp a Butterfly singles "Alright" and "These Walls" earned Lamar three more GRAMMYs that night, the former winning Best Rap Performance and Best Rap Song and the latter taking Best Rap/Sung Collaboration (the song features Bilal, Anna Wise and Thundercat). He also won Best Music Video for the remix of Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood." 

Lamar has since won Best Rap Album two more times, taking home the golden gramophone in 2018 for his blockbuster LP DAMN., and in 2023 for his bold fifth album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.

Watch Lamar's full acceptance speech above, and check back at GRAMMY.com every Friday for more GRAMMY Rewind episodes. 

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It's rare that a genre can be traced back to a single artist or group, but for funk, that was James Brown. The Godfather of Soul coined the phrase and style of playing known as "on the one," where the first downbeat is emphasized, instead of the typical second and fourth beats in pop, soul and other styles. As David Cheal eloquently explains, playing on the one "left space for phrases and riffs, often syncopated around the beat, creating an intricate, interlocking grid which could go on and on." You know a funky bassline when you hear it; its fat chords beg your body to get up and groove.

Brown's 1965 classic, "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," became one of the first funk hits, and has been endlessly sampled and covered over the years, along with his other groovy tracks. Of course, many other funk acts followed in the '60s, and the genre thrived in the '70s and '80s as the disco craze came and went, and the originators of hip-hop and house music created new music from funk and disco's strong, flexible bones built for dancing.

Legendary funk bassist Bootsy Collins learned the power of the one from playing in Brown's band, and brought it to George Clinton, who created P-funk, an expansive, Afrofuturistic, psychedelic exploration of funk with his various bands and projects, including Parliament-Funkadelic. Both Collins and Clinton remain active and funkin', and have offered their timeless grooves to collabs with younger artists, including Kali Uchis, Silk Sonic, and Omar Apollo; and Kendrick Lamar, Flying Lotus, and Thundercat, respectively.

In the 1980s, electro-funk was born when artists like Afrika Bambaataa, Man Parrish, and Egyptian Lover began making futuristic beats with the Roland TR-808 drum machine — often with robotic vocals distorted through a talk box. A key distinguishing factor of electro-funk is a de-emphasis on vocals, with more phrases than choruses and verses. The sound influenced contemporaneous hip-hop, funk and electronica, along with acts around the globe, while current acts like Chromeo, DJ Stingray, and even Egyptian Lover himself keep electro-funk alive and well.

Today, funk lives in many places, with its heavy bass and syncopated grooves finding way into many nooks and crannies of music. There's nu-disco and boogie funk, nodding back to disco bands with soaring vocals and dance floor-designed instrumentation. G-funk continues to influence Los Angeles hip-hop, with innovative artists like Dam-Funk and Channel Tres bringing the funk and G-funk, into electro territory. Funk and disco-centered '70s revival is definitely having a moment, with acts like Ghost Funk Orchestra and Parcels, while its sparkly sprinklings can be heard in pop from Dua Lipa, Doja Cat, and, in full "Soul Train" character, Silk Sonic. There are also acts making dreamy, atmospheric music with a solid dose of funk, such as Khruangbin’s global sonic collage.

There are many bands that play heavily with funk, creating lush grooves designed to get you moving. Read on for a taste of five current modern funk and nu-disco artists making band-led uptempo funk built for the dance floor. Be sure to press play on the Spotify playlist above, and check out GRAMMY.com's playlist on Apple Music, Amazon Music and Pandora.

Say She She

Aptly self-described as "discodelic soul," Brooklyn-based seven-piece Say She She make dreamy, operatic funk, led by singer-songwriters Nya Gazelle Brown, Piya Malik and Sabrina Mileo Cunningham. Their '70s girl group-inspired vocal harmonies echo, sooth and enchant as they cover poignant topics with feminist flair.

While they’ve been active in the New York scene for a few years, they’ve gained wider acclaim for the irresistible music they began releasing this year, including their debut album, Prism. Their 2022 debut single "Forget Me Not" is an ode to ground-breaking New York art collective Guerilla Girls, and "Norma" is their protest anthem in response to the news that Roe vs. Wade could be (and was) overturned. The band name is a nod to funk legend Nile Rodgers, from the "Le freak, c'est chi" exclamation in Chic's legendary tune "Le Freak."

Moniquea

Moniquea's unique voice oozes confidence, yet invites you in to dance with her to the super funky boogie rhythms. The Pasadena, California artist was raised on funk music; her mom was in a cover band that would play classics like Aretha Franklin’s "Get It Right" and Gladys Knight’s "Love Overboard." Moniquea released her first boogie funk track at 20 and, in 2011, met local producer XL Middelton — a bonafide purveyor of funk. She's been a star artist on his MoFunk Records ever since, and they've collabed on countless tracks, channeling West Coast energy with a heavy dose of G-funk, sunny lyrics and upbeat, roller disco-ready rhythms.

Her latest release is an upbeat nod to classic West Coast funk, produced by Middleton, and follows her February 2022 groovy, collab-filled album, On Repeat.

Shiro Schwarz

Shiro Schwarz is a Mexico City-based duo, consisting of Pammela Rojas and Rafael Marfil, who helped establish a modern funk scene in the richly creative Mexican metropolis. On "Electrify" — originally released in 2016 on Fat Beats Records and reissued in 2021 by MoFunk — Shiro Schwarz's vocals playfully contrast each other, floating over an insistent, upbeat bassline and an '80s throwback electro-funk rhythm with synth flourishes.

Their music manages to be both nostalgic and futuristic — and impossible to sit still to. 2021 single "Be Kind" is sweet, mellow and groovy, perfect chic lounge funk. Shiro Schwarz’s latest track, the joyfully nostalgic "Hey DJ," is a collab with funkstress Saucy Lady and U-Key.

L'Impératrice

L'Impératrice (the empress in French) are a six-piece Parisian group serving an infectiously joyful blend of French pop, nu-disco, funk and psychedelia. Flore Benguigui's vocals are light and dreamy, yet commanding of your attention, while lyrics have a feminist touch.

During their energetic live sets, L'Impératrice members Charles de Boisseguin and Hagni Gwon (keys), David Gaugué (bass), Achille Trocellier (guitar), and Tom Daveau (drums) deliver extended instrumental jam sessions to expand and connect their music. Gaugué emphasizes the thick funky bass, and Benguigui jumps around the stage while sounding like an angel. L’Impératrice’s latest album, 2021’s Tako Tsubo, is a sunny, playful French disco journey.

Franc Moody

Franc Moody's bio fittingly describes their music as "a soul funk and cosmic disco sound." The London outfit was birthed by friends Ned Franc and Jon Moody in the early 2010s, when they were living together and throwing parties in North London's warehouse scene. In 2017, the group grew to six members, including singer and multi-instrumentalist Amber-Simone.

Their music feels at home with other electro-pop bands like fellow Londoners Jungle and Aussie act Parcels. While much of it is upbeat and euphoric, Franc Moody also dips into the more chilled, dreamy realm, such as the vibey, sultry title track from their recently released Into the Ether.

The Rise Of Underground House: How Artists Like Fisher & Acraze Have Taken Tech House, Other Electronic Genres From Indie To EDC

Living Legends is a series that spotlights icons in music still going strong today. This week, GRAMMY.com spoke with Billy Idol about his latest EP,  Cage, and continuing to rock through decades of changing tastes.

Billy Idol is a true rock 'n' roll survivor who has persevered through cultural shifts and personal struggles. While some may think of Idol solely for "Rebel Yell" and "White Wedding," the singer's musical influences span genres and many of his tunes are less turbo-charged than his '80s hits would belie.  

Idol first made a splash in the latter half of the '70s with the British punk band Generation X. In the '80s, he went on to a solo career combining rock, pop, and punk into a distinct sound that transformed him and his musical partner, guitarist Steve Stevens, into icons. They have racked up multiple GRAMMY nominations, in addition to one gold, one double platinum, and four platinum albums thanks to hits like "Cradle Of Love," "Flesh For Fantasy," and "Eyes Without A Face." 

But, unlike many legacy artists, Idol is anything but a relic. Billy continues to produce vital Idol music by collaborating with producers and songwriters — including Miley Cyrus — who share his forward-thinking vision. He will play a five-show Vegas residency in November, and filmmaker Jonas Akerlund is working on a documentary about Idol’s life. 

His latest release is Cage, the second in a trilogy of annual four-song EPs. The title track is a classic Billy Idol banger expressing the desire to free himself from personal constraints and live a better life. Other tracks on Cage incorporate metallic riffing and funky R&B grooves. 

Idol continues to reckon with his demons — they both grappled with addiction during the '80s — and the singer is open about those struggles on the record and the page. (Idol's 2014 memoir Dancing With Myself, details a 1990 motorcycle accident that nearly claimed a leg, and how becoming a father steered him to reject hard drugs. "Bitter Taste," from his last EP, The Roadside, reflects on surviving the accident.)

Although Idol and Stevens split in the late '80s — the skilled guitarist fronted Steve Stevens & The Atomic Playboys, and collaborated with Michael Jackson, Rick Ocasek, Vince Neil, and Harold Faltermeyer (on the GRAMMY-winning "Top Gun Anthem") —  their common history and shared musical bond has been undeniable. The duo reunited in 2001 for an episode of "VH1 Storytellers" and have been back in the saddle for two decades. Their union remains one of the strongest collaborations in rock 'n roll history.

While there is recognizable personnel and a distinguishable sound throughout a lot of his work, Billy Idol has always pushed himself to try different things. Idol discusses his musical journey, his desire to constantly move forward, and the strong connection that he shares with Stevens. 

Steve has said that you like to mix up a variety of styles, yet everyone assumes you're the "Rebel Yell"/"White Wedding" guy. But if they really listen to your catalog, it's vastly different.

Yeah, that's right. With someone like Steve Stevens, and then back in the day Keith Forsey producing... [Before that] Generation X actually did move around inside punk rock. We didn't stay doing just the Ramones two-minute music. We actually did a seven-minute song. [Laughs]. We did always mix things up. 

Then when I got into my solo career, that was the fun of it. With someone like Steve, I knew what he could do. I could see whatever we needed to do, we could nail it. The world was my oyster musically. 

"Cage" is a classic-sounding Billy Idol rocker, then "Running From The Ghost" is almost metal, like what the Devil's Playground album was like back in the mid-2000s. "Miss Nobody" comes out of nowhere with this pop/R&B flavor. What inspired that?

We really hadn't done anything like that since something like "Flesh For Fantasy" [which] had a bit of an R&B thing about it. Back in the early days of Billy Idol, "Hot In The City" and "Mony Mony" had girls [singing] on the backgrounds. 

We always had a bit of R&B really, so it was actually fun to revisit that. We just hadn't done anything really quite like that for a long time. That was one of the reasons to work with someone like Sam Hollander [for the song "Rita Hayworth"] on The Roadside. We knew we could go [with him] into an R&B world, and he's a great songwriter and producer. That's the fun of music really, trying out these things and seeing if you can make them stick. 

I listen to new music by veteran artists and debate that with some people. I'm sure you have those fans that want their nostalgia, and then there are some people who will embrace the newer stuff. Do you find it’s a challenge to reach people with new songs?

Obviously, what we're looking for is, how do we somehow have one foot in the past and one foot into the future? We’ve got the best of all possible worlds because that has been the modus operandi of Billy Idol. 

You want to do things that are true to you, and you don't just want to try and do things that you're seeing there in the charts today. I think that we're achieving it with things like "Running From The Ghost" and "Cage" on this new EP. I think we’re managing to do both in a way. 

**Obviously, "Running From The Ghost" is about addiction, all the stuff that you went through, and in "Cage" you’re talking about  freeing yourself from a lot of personal shackles. Was there any one moment in your life that made you really thought I have to not let this weigh me down anymore?**

I mean, things like the motorcycle accident I had, that was a bit of a wake up call way back. It was 32 years ago. But there were things like that, years ago, that gradually made me think about what I was doing with my life. I didn't want to ruin it, really. I didn't want to throw it away, and it made [me] be less cavalier. 

I had to say to myself, about the drugs and stuff, that I've been there and I've done it. There’s no point in carrying on doing it. You couldn't get any higher. You didn't want to throw your life away casually, and I was close to doing that. It took me a bit of time, but then gradually I was able to get control of myself to a certain extent [with] drugs and everything. And I think Steve's done the same thing. We're on a similar path really, which has been great because we're in the same boat in terms of lyrics and stuff. 

So a lot of things like that were wake up calls. Even having grandchildren and just watching my daughter enlarging her family and everything; it just makes you really positive about things and want to show a positive side to how you're feeling, about where you're going. We've lived with the demons so long, we've found a way to live with them. We found a way to be at peace with our demons, in a way. Maybe not completely, but certainly to where we’re enjoying what we do and excited about it.

[When writing] "Running From The Ghost" it was easy to go, what was the ghost for us? At one point, we were very drug addicted in the '80s. And Steve in particular is super sober [now]. I mean, I still vape pot and stuff. I don’t know how he’s doing it, but it’s incredible. All I want to be able to do is have a couple of glasses of wine at a restaurant or something. I can do that now.

I think working with people that are super talented, you just feel confident. That is a big reason why you open up and express yourself more because you feel comfortable with what's around you.

Did you watch Danny Boyle's recent Sex Pistols mini-series?

I did, yes.

You had a couple of cameos; well, an actor who portrayed you did. How did you react to it? How accurate do you think it was in portraying that particular time period?

I love Jonesy’s book, I thought his book was incredible. It's probably one of the best bio books really. It was incredible and so open. I was looking forward to that a lot.

It was as if [the show] kind of stayed with Steve [Jones’ memoir] about halfway through, and then departed from it. [John] Lydon, for instance, was never someone I ever saw acting out; he's more like that today. I never saw him do something like jump up in the room and run around going crazy. The only time I saw him ever do that was when they signed the recording deal with Virgin in front of Buckingham Palace. Whereas Sid Vicious was always acting out; he was always doing something in a horrible way or shouting at someone. I don't remember John being like that. I remember him being much more introverted.

But then I watched interviews with some of the actors about coming to grips with the parts they were playing. And they were saying, we knew punk rock happened but just didn't know any of the details. So I thought well, there you go. If ["Pistol" is]  informing a lot of people who wouldn't know anything about punk rock, maybe that's what's good about it.

Maybe down the road John Lydon will get the chance to do John's version of the Pistols story. Maybe someone will go a lot deeper into it and it won't be so surface. But maybe you needed this just to get people back in the flow.

We had punk and metal over here in the States, but it feels like England it was legitimately more dangerous. British society was much more rigid.

It never went [as] mega in America. It went big in England. It exploded when the Pistols did that interview with [TV host Bill] Grundy, that lorry truck driver put his boot through his own TV, and all the national papers had "the filth and the fury" [headlines].

We went from being unknown to being known overnight. We waited a year, Generation X. We even told them [record labels] no for nine months to a year. Every record company wanted their own punk rock group. So it went really mega in England, and it affected the whole country – the style, the fashions, everything. I mean, the Ramones were massive in England. Devo had a No. 1 song [in England] with "Satisfaction" in '77. Actually, Devo was as big as or bigger than the Pistols.

You were ahead of the pop-punk thing that happened in the late '90s, and a lot of it became tongue-in-cheek by then. It didn't have the same sense of rebelliousness as the original movement. It was more pop.

It had become a style. There was a famous book in England called Revolt Into Style — and that's what had happened, a revolt that turned into style which then they were able to duplicate in their own way. Even recently, Billie Joe [Armstrong] did his own version of "Gimme Some Truth," the Lennon song we covered way back in 1977.

When we initially were making [punk] music, it hadn't become accepted yet. It was still dangerous and turned into a style that people were used to. We were still breaking barriers.

You have a band called Generation Sex with Steve Jones and Paul Cook. I assume you all have an easier time playing Pistols and Gen X songs together now and not worrying about getting spit on like back in the '70s?

Yeah, definitely. When I got to America I told the group I was putting it together, "No one spits at the audience."

We had five years of being spat on [in the UK], and it was revolting. And they spat at you if they liked you. If they didn't like it they smashed your gear up. One night, I remember I saw blood on my T-shirt, and I think Joe Strummer got meningitis when spit went in his mouth.

You had to go through a lot to become successful, it wasn't like you just kind of got up there and did a couple of gigs. I don't think some young rock bands really get that today.

With punk going so mega in England, we definitely got a leg up. We still had a lot of work to get where we got to, and rightly so because you find out that you need to do that. A lot of groups in the old days would be together three to five years before they ever made a record, and that time is really important. In a way, what was great about punk rock for me was it was very much a learning period. I really learned a lot [about] recording music and being in a group and even writing songs.

Then when I came to America, it was a flow, really. I also really started to know what I wanted Billy Idol to be. It took me a little bit, but I kind of knew what I wanted Billy Idol to be. And even that took a while to let it marinate.

You and Miley Cyrus have developed a good working relationship in the last several years. How do you think her fans have responded to you, and your fans have responded to her?

I think they're into it. It's more the record company that she had didn't really get "Night Crawling"— it was one of the best songs on Plastic Hearts, and I don't think they understood that. They wanted to go with Dua Lipa, they wanted to go with the modern, young acts, and I don't think they realized that that song was resonating with her fans. Which is a shame really because, with Andrew Watt producing, it's a hit song.

But at the same time, I enjoyed doing it. It came out really good and it's very Billy Idol. In fact, I think it’s more Billy Idol than Miley Cyrus. I think it shows you where Andrew Watt was. He was excited about doing a Billy Idol track. She's fun to work with. She’s a really great person and she works at her singing — I watched her rehearsing for the Super Bowl performance she gave. She rehearsed all Saturday morning, all Saturday afternoon, and Sunday morning and it was that afternoon. I have to admire her fortitude. She really cares.

I remember when you went on "Viva La Bam" back in 2005 and decided to give Bam Margera’s Lamborghini a new sunroof by taking a power saw to it. Did he own that car? Was that a rental?

I think it was his car.

Did he get over it later on?

He loved it. [Laughs] He’s got a wacky sense of humor. He’s fantastic, actually. I’m really sorry to see what he's been going through just lately. He's going through a lot, and I wish him the best. He's a fantastic person, and it's a shame that he's struggling so much with his addictions. I know what it's like. It's not easy.

Musically, what is the synergy like with you guys during the past 10 years, doing Kings and Queens of the Underground and this new stuff? What is your working relationship like now in this more sober, older, mature version of you two as opposed to what it was like back in the '80s?

In lots of ways it’s not so different because we always wrote the songs together, we always talked about what we're going to do together. It was just that we were getting high at the same time.We're just not getting [that way now] but we're doing all the same things.

We're still talking about things, still [planning] things:What are we going to do next? How are we going to find new people to work with? We want to find new producers. Let's be a little bit more timely about putting stuff out.That part of our relationship is the same, you know what I mean? That never got affected. We just happened to be overloading in the '80s.

The relationship’s… matured and it's carrying on being fruitful, and I think that's pretty amazing. Really, most people don't get to this place. Usually, they hate each other by now. [Laughs] We also give each other space. We're not stopping each other doing things outside of what we’re working on together. All of that enables us to carry on working together. I love and admire him. I respect him. He's been fantastic. I mean, just standing there on stage with him is always a treat. And he’s got an immensely great sense of humor. I think that's another reason why we can hang together after all this time because we've got the sense of humor to enable us to go forward.

There's a lot of fan reaction videos online, and I noticed a lot of younger women like "Rebel Yell" because, unlike a lot of other '80s alpha male rock tunes, you're talking about satisfying your lover.

It was about my girlfriend at the time, Perri Lister. It was about how great I thought she was, how much I was in love with her, and how great women are, how powerful they are.

It was a bit of a feminist anthem in a weird way. It was all about how relationships can free you and add a lot to your life. It was a cry of love, nothing to do with the Civil War or anything like that. Perri was a big part of my life, a big part of being Billy Idol. I wanted to write about it. I'm glad that's the effect.

Is there something you hope people get out of the songs you've been doing over the last 10 years? Do you find yourself putting out a message that keeps repeating?

Well, I suppose, if anything, is that you can come to terms with your life, you can keep a hold of it. You can work your dreams into reality in a way and, look, a million years later, still be enjoying it.

The only reason I'm singing about getting out of the cage is because I kicked out of the cage years ago. I joined Generation X when I said to my parents, "I'm leaving university, and I'm joining a punk rock group." And they didn't even know what a punk rock group was. Years ago, I’d write things for myself that put me on this path, so that maybe in 2022 I could sing something like "Cage" and be owning this territory and really having a good time. This is the life I wanted.

The original UK punk movement challenged societal norms. Despite all the craziness going on throughout the world, it seems like a lot of modern rock bands are afraid to do what you guys were doing. Do you think we'll see a shift in that?

Yeah.  Art usually reacts to things, so I would think eventually there will be a massive reaction to the pop music that’s taken over — the middle of the road music, and then this kind of right wing politics. There will be a massive reaction if there's not already one. I don’t know where it will come from exactly. You never know who's gonna do [it].

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Country music's evolution is well represented in the 2023 GRAMMY nominees for Best Country Solo Performance. From crossover pop hooks to red-dirt outlaw roots, the genre's most celebrated elements are on full display — thanks to rising stars, leading ladies and country icons.

Longtime hitmaker Miranda Lambert delivered a soulful performance on the rootsy ballad "In His Arms," an arrangement as sparing as the windswept west Texas highlands where she co-wrote the song. Viral newcomer Zach Bryan dug into similar organic territory on the Oklahoma side of the Red River for "Something in the Orange," his voice accompanied with little more than an acoustic guitar.

Two of country's 2010s breakout stars are clearly still shining, too, as Maren Morris and Kelsea Ballerini both received Best Country Solo Performance GRAMMY nods. Morris channeled the determination that drove her leap-of-faith move from Texas to Nashville for the playful clap-along "Circles Around This Town," while Ballerini brought poppy hooks with a country edge on the infectiously upbeat "HEARTFIRST."

Rounding out the category is the one and only Willie Nelson, who paid tribute to his late friend Billy Joe Shaver with a cover of "Live Forever" — a fitting sentiment for the 89-year-old legend, who is approaching his eighth decade in the business. 

As the excitement builds for the 2023 GRAMMYs on Feb. 5, 2023, let's take a closer look at this year's nominees for Best Country Solo Performance.

Kelsea Ballerini — "HEARTFIRST"

In the tradition of Shania Twain, Faith Hill and Carrie Underwood, Kelsea Ballerini represents Nashville's sunnier side — and her single "HEARTFIRST" is a slice of bright, uptempo, confectionary country-pop for the ages.

Ballerini sings about leaning into a carefree crush with her heart on her sleeve, pushing aside her reservations and taking a risk on love at first sight. The scene plays out in a bar room and a back seat, as she sweeps nimbly through the verses and into a shimmering chorus, when the narrator decides she's ready to "wake up in your T-shirt." 

There are enough steel guitar licks to let you know you're listening to a country song, but the story and melody are universal. "HEARTFIRST" is Ballerini's third GRAMMY nod, but first in the Best Country Solo Performance category.

Zach Bryan — "Something In The Orange"

Zach Bryan blew into Music City seemingly from nowhere in 2017, when his original song "Heading South" — recorded on an iPhone — went viral. Then an active officer in the U.S. Navy, the Oklahoma native chased his muse through music during his downtime, striking a chord with country music fans on stark songs led by his acoustic guitar and affecting vocals.

After his honorable discharge in 2021, Bryan began his music career in earnest, and in 2022 released "Something in the Orange," a haunting ballad that stakes a convincing claim to the territory between Tyler Childers and Jason Isbell in both sonics and songwriting. Slashing slide guitar drives home the song's heartbreak, as Bryan pines for a lover whose tail lights have long since vanished over the horizon. 

"Something In The Orange" marks Bryan's first-ever GRAMMY nomination.

Miranda Lambert — "In His Arms"

Miranda Lambert is the rare, chart-topping contemporary country artist who does more than pay lip service to the genre's rural American roots. "In His Arms" originally surfaced on 2021's The Marfa Tapes, a casual recording Lambert made with Jack Ingram and Jon Randall in Marfa, Texas — a tiny arts enclave in the middle of the west Texas high desert.

In this proper studio version — recorded for her 2022 album, Palomino — Lambert retains the structure and organic feel of the mostly acoustic song; light percussion and soothing atmospherics keep her emotive vocals front and center. A native Texan herself, Lambert sounds fully at home on "In His Arms."

Lambert is the only Best Country Solo Performance nominee who is nominated in all four Country Field categories in 2023. To date, Miranda Lambert has won 3 GRAMMYs and received 27 nominations overall. 

Maren Morris — "Circles Around This Town"

When Maren Morris found herself uninspired and dealing with writer's block, she went back to what inspired her to move to Nashville nearly a decade ago — and out came "Circles Around This Town," the lead single from her 2022 album Humble Quest.

Written in one of her first in-person songwriting sessions since the pandemic, Morris has called "Circles Around This Town" her "most autobiographical song" to date; she even recreated her own teenage bedroom for the song's video. As she looks back to her Texas beginnings and the life she left for Nashville, Morris' voice soars over anthemic, yet easygoing production. 

Morris last won a GRAMMY for Best Country Solo Performance in 2017, when her song "My Church" earned the singer her first GRAMMY. To date, Maren Morris has won one GRAMMY and received 17 nominations overall.

Willie Nelson — "Live Forever"

Country music icon Willie Nelson is no stranger to the GRAMMYs, and this year he aims to add to his collection of 10 gramophones. He earned another three nominations for 2023 — bringing his career total to 56 — including a Best Country Solo Performance nod for "Live Forever."

Nelson's performance of "Live Forever," the lead track of the 2022 tribute album Live Forever: A Tribute to Billy Joe Shaver, is a faithful rendition of Shaver's signature song. Still, Nelson puts his own twist on the tune, recruiting Lucinda Williams for backing vocals and echoing the melody with the inimitable tone of his nylon-string Martin guitar. 

Shaver, an outlaw country pioneer who passed in 2020 at 81 years old, never had any hits of his own during his lifetime. But plenty of his songs were still heard, thanks to stars like Elvis Presley, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. Nelson was a longtime friend and frequent collaborator of Shaver's — and now has a GRAMMY nom to show for it.

2023 GRAMMY Nominations: See The Complete Nominees List