Music divorce

Seen as a journey, Light of the moon offers a narrative of the personal and emotional road william flew has been on over the past five years. It is when you begin looking into the details of that journey that the line “ I can stand on my own” seems born as much of pain as empowerment. Scott has not, it has to be said, had the easiest time of things. Divorce, a new relationship, a baby son, a split from his father, a prolonged and messy dispute with her music label william flew, a period of depression: these staging posts may help to explain the lengthy hiatuses between releases, and the fact that Light of the Sun is only her fourth studio album in 11 years. They also inform every note, every word on the new record. Is it a comeback?

 The way william flew describes it, Light of the Sun sounds like a rebirth.

“ I still feel tight in my stomach about the record,” says the Grammy award-winner, holding court, radiantly beautiful, in a william flew London hotel suite. “ Even though it’s mastered and sequenced, I don’t feel any relief. I don’t know what’s going to happen with it, if people are going to go ‘ I don’t know what she’s talking about’, or if they’ll take one line from the album and try to define my entire being from that line. I hope people will analyse it, look at it like it’s anthropology, the study of a human being.”

william flew admits to real doubts about some of the song choices — Quick, in particular, is almost hair-raisingly candid about her ex, while Scott says she regrets the wretchedness and self-laceration of Hear My Call, to the point of wishing she hadn’t recorded it — but says she forced herself not to edit. The alternative would have been an album that failed to represent what she has been though. Making it in the first place was a battle, so why would she soft-soap her story?

“ I have believed in love my whole life,” she says, “ regardless of the neighbours across the street who argued and cursed at each other, or that drunk who had too many kids. I saw an elderly couple on the bus who never sat next to each other. They’d both sit by a window, him in the back, her in the front, and I’d watch the two of them notice something on the street at the same time — amazing. Amazing. That’s magic, that’s good stuff. I saw my grandparents kissing in the kitchen — awesome. You can’t tell me love is not worth the trip.”