National Album Day will return for its third edition on Saturday 10 October and today reveals a second wave of artist ambassadors who will be championing their love for the album between now and the day itself.
Joining the already announced Billy Ocean, Blossoms, La Roux, Psychedelic Furs and Toyah Willcox are T’Pau vocalist and musician Carol Decker, DJ, producer and founder of Soul II Soul Jazzie B, ABC founder and frontman Martin Fry, iconic pop father and daughter Kim and Marty Wilde, and country-pop twin sisters Ward Thomas.
Carol Decker said: ‘I know that streaming is really easy & convenient, and I too like to quickly dip into a single I just heard on the radio, but when an artist puts an album together they are creating a narrative for their work. In my songs I am often curating my personal thoughts & dreams and laying them out for you to inspect. I labour over the track listing, making sure one song hands over smoothly to the next. I take you on a journey of different tempos and emotions. It is a very raw feeling to let your baby go after months in the studio and see if it makes any friends. I am proud to have been a small part of the most diversely creative era in music and hear its influence on emerging artists. I am honoured to support National Album Day.’
Jazzie B said: ‘I’ve always loved albums. A good album tells an entire story instead of just giving you a chapter, taking the listener through a series of emotions. To me, getting an album’s track sequencing right to make that story as smooth as possible was one of the most exciting parts of the recording process – similar to when I'm playing (DJ-ing) the Soul2Soul sound system and spinning tunes in a certain order to take the crowd up and down almost without them realising it.’
Martin Fry, an English music icon of the 1980s and lead singer of ABC, said: ‘Growing up listening to everything from Bowie to the Buzzcocks there were albums released that, hand on heart, saved my life.’
Ward Thomas said: ‘Albums are so important to us because they are a perfect time capsule showing where a specific artist is at a specific time. By listening to an album in full you can really get to know an artist. There really isn’t anything else that can do that.’
National Album Day is organised jointly by record labels body the BPI (The BRIT Awards and Hyundai Mercury Prize) and the Entertainment Retailers Association (Record Store Day), and is supported across the BBC with highlights available to listen to on BBC Sounds, along with the UK’s recorded music industry including AIM and other trade associations, retailers and digital/streaming platforms, and partners including Classic Albums Sunday – who this October celebrate their tenth anniversary.
In the past two years, National Album Day has been supported by a diverse range of artists and musicians including Lewis Capaldi, Mark Ronson, Elbow, Paloma Faith, Alice Cooper, Novelist, Tom Odell, Mahalia and Orbital among many others, and has hosted a variety of events and activities including Classic Album Sunday and Tape Notes events, in-store artist appearances, record store promotions, and two Network Rail exhibitions in major cities across the UK.
