Over here there is an attitude that it's another female artist and you get lumped in with all the rest while in the States
Over here, there is an attitude that it's another female artist and you get lumped in with all the rest, while in the States they take the music on individual terms, so you get sectioned off into musical genres."Also, Gilmore met what she calls "real revolutionaries", especially in Texas, which came as a surprise. It looked like a flag had fallen off and that was the only colour they had to replace it. It's a far cry from the scruffy St George flags hanging from windows near the home she shares with Nigel in Nantwich, Cheshire.Just to balance the books, there was much Gilmore enjoyed about the USA, mainly how she was treated as a musician "They understand women songwriters in a different way. You have to celebrate your country but to change the stuff you don't like, while for other people it is a bit more black and white.""Black" in the song was inspired by bunting hanging across a street in Charlottesville, Virginia, that ran red, white, and blue, apart from one section that was red, white and black. "You see the Stars and Stripes in everyone's gardens and you think that's quite alien, then you come home and see loads of Union Flags It's not something that I'd noticed before I got to thinking about why flags are always those colours.
I consider myself to be patriotic, but you have to take in the rainbow, the mauves and pinks. Is that the way people see their patriotism? Does it always have to be in such regimented form? Because it's not my sort. "I'm not anti-US, but there are certain aspects that intrigued me."Most startling for her was the American attitude to patriotism, hinted at in the mournful "Red, White And Black", where she sings of "The last tequila sunrise/ The last pink Cadillac" as if the country had lost its innocent exuberance. Instead, it contains what she describes as a more global outlook. Part of the reason for this is her ongoing attempt to make an impression Stateside, touring five times in the past three years.
"I'd never been to the States and setting foot there you're going to apply what you see to your life back home," she says among pauses that suggest she is choosing her words carefully. I didn't realise at the time because I'm quite a volatile character anyway with extremes of mood. It destroyed my relationship, because I would disappear into myself for days on end, but realising there was something I could do about it meant I could be more proactive."Given her personal problems, you could be forgiven for thinking the album would be an introspective affair, something Gilmore expected herself. "It was really fucking my life up, but now I've finally realised that I'm not totally on my own. Luckily, this was not a problem in Gilmore's case, as she avoided therapy.
