![]() ![]() ![]() “I was on my own a lot… I had a weird childhood,” she told Melody Maker, “and that’s probably been the strongest influence on my character.” Learning young that to be a loner does not necessarily mean being lonely, that in some cases being separate from a crowd brings you closer to yourself and then to everything, Armatrading became a keen observer of others. She would hide at the library, reading Shakespeare and Dickens. As one of six kids being raised in a small flat, she spent much of her time in the Midlands of England seeking solitude. “I intend to go on trying.”īorn on the Caribbean island of Saint Kitts, Armatrading was 7 years old when she boarded a plane alone from the West Indies to Birmingham, England, to reunite with her parents and two older brothers, from whom she’d been separated for four years. “I think it is possible to be yourself and get on in pop music,” she told The Guardian in 1976. ![]() She said no to critics who argued that her lyrics must be drawn from personal experience (they were composites) and no to the male-prescribed dictum that women ought to “sing pretty.” With every “no,” Armatrading went with herself, and invited others to do the same. She had said no to men who suggested she change her androgynous look, no to men who told her to be nicer on stage, no to male producers who tried to control her sound. Speaking with the UK women’s liberation magazine Spare Rib in 1974, the singer-songwriter made this irrefutably clear. In an industry inhospitable to opinionated women, Armatrading mastered the art of saying no. ![]()
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