Part 15: POST FROM THE BLOG “SWEET TEA, SIX STRINGS & SATURDAYS” BY SWEETTEAMADDIE (MADDIE PURITT)

KV3 IS HAPPENING!!! Also, I Have Some Thoughts About Last Night. A LOT of Thoughts.

Posted Sunday, January 12, 2014

Okay, everybody calm down.

Actually, no.

DO NOT CALM DOWN.

KAYLA VALENTINE IS MAKING HER THIRD ALBUM.

I repeat: KAYLA. VALENTINE. IS. MAKING. ALBUM. THREE.

Yesterday afternoon Kayla tweeted this:

And she attached a picture containing enough information to completely destroy any plans I had for a productive Saturday.

She is staying in England!

Not just for another television appearance or another interview or another couple of days of promotion.

Staying.

She is moving temporarily to a town on the south coast, and she is going to make her third album there with Harry Taylor and Ellie Greenwood, the writing and production team behind A Woman’s Work.

I have thoughts.

Obviously.

So many thoughts.

But first:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

There, that’s better.

Okay, serious music journalist time.

This is much bigger news than ‘Kayla is recording another album.’ We knew there would be a third album eventually. Three Weeks in Nashville did too well for there not to be. Heartbreak Road did too well for there not to be. And whatever else you think about A Woman’s Work, I don’t think anybody can listen to that record and conclude that Kayla Valentine has suddenly run out of things to say.

But I wasn’t expecting this.

Not England. Not Harry Taylor and Ellie Greenwood. And definitely not an entire album with them.

That last part matters.

A Woman’s Work isn’t merely a very good song. It’s unlike anything else Kayla Valentine has recorded before. The first time I heard it, I remember thinking that somebody had taken everything we already knew Kayla could do, the storytelling, that voice, the way she can make one very specific emotion feel enormous, and put it in a completely different musical room.

There are strings. Lots of strings. There is a whole orchestra. And there is space around both the orchestra and Kayla’s voice. There are moments when it feels less like a country record and more like somebody scoring the inside of another person’s heart.

And it works.

Boy, does it work.

So when Kayla says she wants Harry and Ellie to push her somewhere “a little different,” I am very interested. But the most important sentence in that whole announcement might actually be the next one. She doesn’t want to make A Woman’s Work: The Album.

Good.

I adore that song, but I do not want twelve copies of it. Apparently, Kayla doesn’t either. She says that song belonged to the movie, while this album needs to belong to her.

That is exactly what I wanted to hear.

Because the thing that has always made Kayla’s music work isn’t whether there’s a banjo or a steel guitar or a string section behind her.

It’s Kayla.

It’s the writing. It’s the voice. It’s the fact that when she sings something, you believe she means it.

So, please ... experiment. Go nuts.

Put a cello on something. Use brass and woodwind. Use a dirty electric guitar. Strip one song down to just Kayla and an acoustic. Get a whole orchestra back if a song needs it. Hell, bang two trash-can lids together if somebody in that studio thinks it sounds good.

Just don’t make decisions because somebody somewhere has a checklist marked THINGS A COUNTRY RECORD IS ALLOWED TO DO.

And judging by Kayla’s replies yesterday, she doesn’t intend to. She actually told somebody that she wants Harry and Ellie to take her out of her comfort zone.

That makes me more excited, not less.

Because comfortable artists make comfortable records. Artists who are a little scared sometimes make great ones.

Also: she already has songs!

THIS PART.

Everybody keeps talking about Harry and Ellie, but can we discuss the sentence where Kayla casually says she has half-finished songs, lots of ideas and one very untidy folder?

Excuse me?

How many songs? What are they called? When did she write them? Are any left over from Heartbreak Road? Did she write anything while making A Woman’s Work? Has she been writing since she got to Britain? What is in the folder? Why are we not allowed to see the folder?

I realise Kayla has already responded to somebody asking for the folder with what was basically an emphatic NO, but I would nevertheless like to formally submit my application to inspect it.

For journalistic purposes, obviously. I am a professional.

Stop laughing.

What interests me most is that they’re apparently half-finished. That suggests Harry and Ellie aren’t simply going to hand her a collection of songs to sing. This sounds collaborative. Kayla is arriving with pieces of herself, and they’re going to help her work out what those pieces become. That could produce something fascinating.

And judging from one of her replies, they start Monday.

Which means somewhere on the south coast of England, approximately twenty-four hours from now, Kayla Valentine is going to walk into a studio carrying that ridiculous mystery folder. KV3 begins tomorrow.

That sentence makes me ridiculously happy.

Now. About Westmouth.

Oh, honey, we need to talk.

Because album news apparently wasn’t enough excitement for one Saturday.

A few hours later, Kayla put on a little black dress and her cowboy boots and announced that she was going out to make some friends in her new temporary home. And then she proceeded to document enough of the evening to send approximately half of Twitter into detective mode.

She went to an English pub. She discovered a table containing more drinks than people.

She met some local girls. Chloë Goodman joined them later. There was dancing. There were enormous cocktails.

And then—

HE APPEARED.

Yes!

Him!

Mr London. Mr Thursday. Mr Mysterious Handsome English Tour Guide.

And before anybody says it: Yes, I was one of the people yelling about this on Twitter.

I regret nothing.

Because LOOK AT THAT PHOTOGRAPH.

Actually, don’t merely look at him, look at her.

That’s the bit that got me.

Thursday’s photographs looked like something was happening between them. Attraction, certainly. Maybe a very fast holiday romance. We saw them hug. We saw them kiss.

Saturday’s photograph feels different. They look comfortable.

That’s the word I keep coming back to.

Comfortable.

And that is why several of us started asking the question that I’m sure has now occurred to anyone who has spent far too much of the past two years listening to Kayla Valentine’s albums: Is he the Nashville Ghost?

You know who I mean.

The unnamed man all over those first two records. The person at the centre of Three Weeks in Nashville. The person whose absence hangs over Heartbreak Road. The person Kayla has somehow told us everything about while never actually telling us who he is.

We know there was a man. We know she loved him. We know it ended. We know there was an ocean between them.

And now Kayla Valentine comes to Britain and immediately appears extraordinarily comfortable beside one very handsome Englishman.

I AM JUST SAYING.

No, I don’t know. None of us knows.

And I’m not going to start announcing as fact that some poor guy whose name we don’t even know inspired two albums because of one photograph in a pub.

Maybe she really did only meet him this week. Maybe they’re just having fun. Maybe he’s an old friend who has absolutely nothing to do with those songs. Maybe I am going to look extremely stupid when we eventually learn the truth.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

Won’t be the last.

But am I intrigued? YES.

Am I going back through Three Weeks in Nashville looking for clues? I decline to answer on the grounds that the evidence may incriminate me.

And before somebody asks: no, I do not think she’s staying in England because of him. Harry Taylor and Ellie Greenwood’s studio is in Westmouth. I know. I looked it up. It’s called River Bank Studios because, and this is very clever, it’s on the bank of a river.