2. Scott WalkerScott 3
Scott Walker is my favourite artist of all time. Well, Scott Walker and Nina Simone, but it was hard to pick a Nina Simone album because for me there aren’t really albums so much as songs and performances that I love. It was difficult to choose but Scott 3 is my favourite because it has ‘It’s Raining Today’ and it’s the string arrangements on it that are phenomenal. They’re so pioneering and ahead of their time. I know The Beatles get cited for being pioneers, blah blah blah, but I really think that album is underrated even if it’s vastly appreciated by many. The string arrangements by Wally Stott are bonkers. On ‘It’s Raining Today’ the arrangements sound almost like a police siren or an ambulance going past; when you’re walking around listening to something in your headphones, the siren always fits with whatever you’re listening to. That’s what these lush arrangements remind me of – they’re very filmic and very familiar and pretty, and then they go really dark.
There are three Jacques Brel songs on Scott 3 and I was into Brel before Scott Walker because of ‘Ne me quitte pas’. I used to be a jazz singer and Nina Simone covered it. I was learning French years ago and I’d try to listen to Brel to learn the language. I love the story that Scott Walker was on tour and he went back to a Belgian woman’s house, and they sat up and listened to Jacques Brel and he fell in love with it right there and then. He’s a real Anglophile too – obviously he lived here for years. Lyrically he was heavily inspired by kitchen sink drama and his storytelling is beautiful. That’s a very special album to me and one I revisit often. It’s hard to pick an era of Scott I love most but that holds the most nostalgia for me.
