A selection of Beth Ditto’s favourite albums

Posted On December 26, 2024December 26, 2024

The early 2000s might have been a period that a lot of people saw as being a cultural low point, with very few new musical trends emerging other than an increase in tired indie and garage rock, but standing in the shadows was a reemergence of dance-punk that had a decidedly electronic influence behind it. With acts like LCD Soundsystem, the Rapture and Liars being some of the most prominent to have broken through from the period, these groups harked back to the likes of Talking Heads, Gang of Four and Au Pairs as their main points of reference, and often had spoken word vocals spewing self-deprecating and satirical slogans at the listener.

While on the surface it might have seemed like an unfortunately male-dominated crowd, there were a handful of acts that broke through into the spotlight that provided an antidote to the often hypermasculine and fratty groups that were mimicking the aforementioned bands that did a decent job of revitalising the genre. Sitting among those were Gossip, a queer-positive and powerful force of nature that provided far more vitality than most of their peers.

Gossip were a completely different prospect, and with the melodic and soulful growls of vocalist Beth Ditto and the mutated funk grooves underpinning each of their songs, they offered a much more inviting and inclusive alternative to the rest of the scene that surrounded them. Their breakthrough hit, ‘Standing in the Way of Control’ was unavoidable for a period of time when it was released in 2005, and still packs a nostalgic punch within the opening few seconds almost 20 years later.

Considering the alternative angle that the group were coming from in their approach to dance-punk, it’s understandable that the band might have had slightly different and further reaching influences to some of their peers. From Le Tigre to Liquid Liquid, and Janis Joplin to Tina Turner, there are all sorts of places you could begin to trace the identity that makes up Gossip’s style, and in an interview with Tidal, vocalist Beth Ditto revealed the five records that impacted her personal taste the most.

Beginning with the “solid and effortless” The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Ditto praised the neo-soul pioneer and former Fugees singer for how she “followed zero paths” in order to create the sole solo record of her career. Given the soulfulness that runs through Ditto’s vocals and her band’s output, it’s understandable that she would highlight artists like Hill, and these also lend themselves to her choice of Roberta Flack’s First Take later in the feature, an artist whose song ‘Killing Me Softly’ was covered by the Fugees. Describing her as “just such a special talent”, Ditto said that songs from the album such as ‘Hey, That’s No Way To Say Goodbye’ have the ability to bring her to tears.

Ditto notes that Flack’s cover of the Leonard Cohen song was also sampled in a few ‘90s hip-hop tracks, most notably Lil’ Kim’s ‘Queen Bitch’, and this isn’t the only reference to a female rapper that Ditto chose to make a nod to. Her selection of Missy Elliott’s Da Real World is one she calls her favourite of all time, and she claims that “music never sounded the same before or since,” before praising it in particular for how it managed to be “badass, unapologetic and redefined the word ‘bitch’”.

The final two records that Ditto selected for the feature come from two distinctly different backgrounds, but both make sense as having been influential to her artistry. Speaking about Germfree Adolescents by X-Ray Spex, she noted how, as an adolescent herself, she was “listening to riot grrrl bands and queercore bands” without realising that this effort from the British punk act predated both movements. Referring to how timeless it manages to sound even now, she notes that X-Ray Spex, for her, were the sort of band that “stop you in your tracks and make you rethink everything you thought you knew.”

Capping off the list on a classic from a different scene, Ditto also acknowledged how she feels nostalgic every time she hears Paul Simon’s 1986 masterpiece Graceland, saying that “it was just there for me when I needed it.” While there are fewer noticeable traces of its influence on Gossip’s music, its omnipresence in Ditto’s life is more of a comforting listen, and it’s hard to argue its inclusion for that reason.

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