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Beth Gibbons

From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist

Beth Gibbons was born in 1965 in Exeter and grew up with her sisters on a farm in the south-west of England. At twenty-two she left for Bath and then Bristol to become a singer. There in 1991 she met Geoff Barrow on a course for would-be entrepreneurs. With Barrow and the jazz guitarist Adrian Utley she formed Portishead, for which she wrote the lyrics and sang.

Music and breakthrough

The debut album Dummy appeared in 1994, with Sour Times as one of the first tracks. Portishead's music was called trip hop: slow hip hop beats, crackling samples of old film music and jazz records, and above them the fragile, melancholy voice of Gibbons. Portishead (1997) followed and, after a long pause, Third (2008). Gibbons names Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone and Otis Redding as models, and you can hear that in the emotion of her singing.

Influence

Alongside Portishead she made, in 2002, the album Out of Season with Paul Webb, former bassist of Talk Talk, who called himself Rustin Man. In 2014 she sang Henryk Górecki's Third Symphony in Polish with a Polish symphony orchestra. She sang on a track by Kendrick Lamar and in 2024 released her first real solo album, Lives Outgrown. Gibbons gave the electronic music of the 1990s a human, vulnerable voice.

Listening

Listening tip. Listen to Sour Times by Portishead. Notice the slow beat with the crackle of an old record, the tense, cinematic atmosphere of the samples and the plaintive voice of Beth Gibbons floating on top.

Discography

Studio albums

In School of Rock

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Categories: Artists