In a beige meeting room in her record label’s London offices, Beth Ditto is smiling through the heartache. “I was sad every day,” she says. Her grin is sunny, but just for a moment her eyes acquire a cloudy, downcast quality.
The Gossip singer is reflecting on the experience of making her band’s fantastic comeback LP, Real Power, in Hawaii – paradise on earth, perhaps, but also the home state of her ex-wife, Kristin Ogata. “It is a bitter-sweet place for me. It just is one of those places where I’ll always have a connection. There’s nothing you can really do about it. At the same time you kind of beat yourself up over it,” she says, because recording an album there “is such a privileged, lucky thing to do. Here I am, just being a dreary, wilted flower about it.”
Ditto might have been downcast, but she wasn’t defeated. Breaking a 12-year recording silence, Real Power is a Valentine to defiance and the quiet victory of putting your life back together – and a worthy follow-up to Gossip’s 2005 queer-rights anthem, Standing in the Way of Control.
The band will celebrate this and other milestones in their 20-year career when they play at Collins Barracks in Dublin this month as part of their European tour. The gig arrives at the end of a heady summer for live music – Ditto is delighted that audiences have flocked to see artists such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. It reminds her of her childhood in Searcy, Arkansas, and the Madonna and Michael Jackson songs that would blast from the radio. “It’s kind of like the 1980s to me. That Michael Jackson stadium [thing]. Like, ‘Let’s go – yeah, pop music.’ We haven’t had that in so long,” she says.
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Ditto tries to see the positives in life. You have to when there’s so much negativity around. These are especially challenging times for the LGBTQ community in the United States. In March, Alabama introduced legislation widely condemned as anti-transgender. Florida has been the battleground in a long-running battle over a “don’t say gay” law that would limit the discussion of gay rights in schools. Then there’s the Donald Trump factor and the still all-too-real possibility of the US Republican Party retaking the White House.
When we speak, before the assassination attempt on Trump and Kamala Harris’s replacement of Joe Biden on the Democratic Party ticket, Ditto is philosophical about the US presidential election in November. Having grown up queer in a conservative part of the United States, she has faced struggles and come through them. She’s a survivor.
“I was talking to my British friend, and he was telling me, ‘Just get ready for Trump to win again.’ You know what? I’m ready for anything. At this point that might as well happen. Not being negative about it. I don’t feel anything. I’m just, like, ‘Well, we’ll see what happens.’ All we can do is what we can do. We only have so much control. Instead of being gutted like last time [Trump was elected], it won’t feel like it did then.”
Standing in the Way of Control was a highlight of the mid-2000s indie-rock revival. The track was a plea for tolerance in the face of opposition in the United States to gay marriage, specifically through the failed federal marriage amendment, which would have outlawed same-sex marriage. Fuelled by Ditto’s powerhouse voice, it was instantly sensational and seemed to catalyse the excitement around American independent music at the time.
It also made Ditto famous. Queer and plus-sized, she was celebrated as an icon for body positivity – culminating in her posing nude on the cover of the NME in 2007. She was in her mid-20s at the time. She remembers that period of her life as a blur. But she has no regrets – certainly not about the NME spread.
“I’m really proud of it. I wanted to represent and reflect the scene I came from and pay it forward to the people who were really cool. So many things were happening so fast. The NME cover with the naked shoot, I was only 25. I look at my niece who is 25 now and I’m, like, ‘Wow’. I feel really happy that I got the chance to do things. [But] I don’t think about that that much – I don’t think of that person being me. I think more about what’s next – not for me, even; in the movement. What have we learned? What did we get right? It’s funny: it’s life, isn’t it?”
The cause of gay marriage has been won, but the trans community continues to face challenges. Ditto’s partner, Teddy Kwo, who is Gossip’s bassist, is a transgender man, and trans rights are a subject the singer is passionate about. But she doesn’t see the point in hate and tries not to invest too much emotional energy thinking about individuals perceived by some as on the opposite side of the debate, such as JK Rowling, the Harry Potter author. The focus should be on being there for trans people.
“Sometimes I’m, like, ‘What cross are you trying to die on?’ I don’t understand,” Ditto says. “Here’s the thing: I think it’s important that people that need uplifting and are looking for a community, and just want to be treated like human beings ... I don’t ever want us to focus on trying to change JK Rowling’s mind. I don’t give a f**k what she thinks about me. I don’t give a f**k what she thinks about anybody. It’s about people who are at risk of losing something – it’s about making them feel empowered to keep fighting for what’s right. And that they have absolute, 100 per cent the right to survive and thrive and live.”
She doesn’t think Rowling is “worth wasting time over”. “What are you going to do? She’s, like, a gadzillionaire. I don’t think about her ever. Harry Potter is awesome. It’s really good. Too bad. What really sucks about it isn’t about JK Rowling. So many queer people – the stories and those books, it really spoke to them in that way. JK Rowling is, like, ‘No’. But, really, who gives a f**k what she thinks? Does she give a s**t what I think about it?”
Gossip recorded Real Power on Maui, with the producer Rick Rubin at his studio on the island. It’s one of those records that a musician can write only after experiencing the sharp edge of life: love, loss – Ditto’s father died in 2011, and a close friend died recently – and the slings and arrows of a long career in music.
Those emotions fuel songs that crackle with joy and a determination to keep going. “Baby, don’t be afraid / You never need to worry,” she tells herself on the dark-disco banger Don’t Be Afraid. Just as striking is Turn the Card Slowly, a break-up ballad that ends with Ditto vowing to be a better custodian of her feelings. “Looking at the future / I won’t play the loser.”
Gossip split in 2016 but re-formed in 2019 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of their Music for Men LP. A number of factors caused the break-up. Ditto had become fed up with the music industry. But there were also tensions between her and Nathan Howdeshell, the band’s guitarist. The two, who had been best friends since school, had grown up united by the alienation they felt in Christian Arkansas before relocating to bohemian Portland with dreams of making it as musicians. But then, out of the blue, Howdeshell moved home and became born again – something Ditto still struggles to process.
“It wasn’t about people in general being religious. It was about him. When I talk about Nathan ... He is the reason we learned about punk music. He’s the reason I know about all these things. And it felt like giving up and a return to what we were running away from. It really hurt me. The God thing was intense. It took me a long time to get over God. It was a deep cut. It wasn’t about people per se, it was about Nathan and me. That said, what does he think about me now? What does he think about feminism? What does he think about people in general? Of course, if I thought he was a piece of shit I wouldn’t be back in the band. I definitely had to have a talk with myself. But I think it helps Nathan. I don’t want to be closed down around that for him.”
Ditto turned 43 in February. So far, she reports, middle age has been a blast. She enjoys the perspective that has come with growing a little older. She enjoyed her youth: it truly was a roller coaster. But 20 years ago she could not have written a record as joyous and wise as Real Power. She’s happy with the trade-off.
“It’s so crazy. It’s nice being older. What’s really cool is to take time and acknowledge how much time has gone by. And be, like, ‘Wow: it’s so wild to be at a point in my life where I can say, 20 years ago, I was a 23-year-old human out in the world.’ Being in the world, doing things. So, no: because of that I have all this perspective. It’s such a cool part of getting older.”
Gossip play Collins Barracks in Dublin, as part of the Wider Than Pictures series, on Tuesday, August 27th
