Beth Orton Takes the First-Ever HT Questionnaire

The HT Questionnaire is where our favorite artists reveal their true selves by answering a series of searching, thoughtful, and sometimes random questions.

Beth Orton taught me how to be heartbroken. I was 17, with a tendency to fall for girls who didn’t feel the same way. Like so many high school kids learning how to articulate their inner life, I turned to music. The Smashing Pumpkins helped me air out some angst, and U2 turned my little dramas into grand operas of emotion. But it was Orton who gave me some much-needed perspective with her wistful 1999 folk-pop album, Central Reservation. Her voice, craggy and creaky and tender, seemed well-acquainted with a melancholy I could barely fathom. And her lyrics entered my mind as Zen koans from someone who’d been there and cried about that—and came out on the other side better for it. When she lilted, “Everything and nothing is as sacred as we’d want it to be,” the idea rearranged my teenage psyche: Disappointments are inevitable, but I can decide what to do with them.

Ever since then, I’ve looked to Orton’s music for guidance and solace. After some years in the music-industry wilderness, including a spell where she considered quitting music altogether, she made a mighty return with 2022’s Weather Alive, her first self-produced album. A fog of art-rock, jazz, and soul, it felt like the record she had waited her entire life to make. The just-released follow-up, The Ground Above, flows with the same gauzy gorgeousness, as if the whole record were recorded on the edge of a pristine lake during the mistiest morning hours. 

At 55, she’s still doling out wisdom you can use. On “Waiting,” alongside a quietly joyous ’70s soul groove, she sings a line that makes me smile knowingly every time I hear it: “I was going to write a gratitude list/Just got to work out my resentment to it.” Talking about the song via video from her garden shed-turned-home studio in London, she explains how it pokes fun at the way we’re always waiting for the right moment to really live as life keeps passing us by. “You can get stuck in resentment, but you might as well fucking work out what you’re grateful for and get on with it,” she says. 

I ask Orton what she’s grateful for at this point in her life. “My kids and my family, abso-fucking-lutely,” she starts. “I’m grateful for my music too. I did a lot of sabotaging when I was younger, and it was the right thing to do, because I got successful in a way that I was not comfortable with, and I didn’t have the support system in place to handle it. It all went a bit tits up, and I thought I’d messed up forever. But I’m very grateful to have had the desperation that I’ve had in the last 10 years of going through difficulties and using music as a way to make sense of it. It was a very personal... um… I don’t want to use the word ‘journey’ because I hate it—endeavor. I was like, I’m just gonna keep making music, because I love making music.”

For all of the heady gravitas of her music, Orton is a lighthearted, sidewinding conversationalist. She uses silly voices to make fun of her own nerdiness. When circling a bigger point, she sometimes stammers, charmingly. She’s effortlessly wise, spilling out timeless observations like, “Songs are a way of gently holding memories in amber.” She’s also dryly funny. Talking about one happily nostalgic line from the new album—“We laughed so hard we nearly pissed ourselves”—she quips, “It’s quite a difficult lyric to sing when you’re getting on a bit, because it just sounds like you’ve got incontinence.” All of it is part of her ongoing poem of perseverance.

Below, Orton gamely tackles a series of questions, some more irreverent than others, for our new HT Questionnaire feature.

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If you could sit anyone down and make them listen to your new album, who would it be?

Beth Orton: Gosh. I went to see Paul Simon play the other day—I’m a bit obsessed with him, because I wrote this thing [for The New York Times’s Greatest Living American Songwriters list], and then his son wrote to me and said, ‘Paul Simon wants you to come to his gig.’ So I went, and it was beautiful. And then I briefly met him; he didn’t have a clue who I was, it’s fine. And I didn’t say, [cartoonishly goofy voice] ‘Hi! I’m Beth Orton!’ because that’s embarrassing. So he basically just thought I was a complete rando, which I am. When I stand in the light of people like that, I’m like, How dare I call myself a songwriter? These people are the songwriters. So maybe I would get him to listen to my album and tell me I’m a great songwriter, too. [laughs]

There was someone else I was gonna say—briefly, yesterday, I met Kate Bush, and I just didn’t know what to say to her. I should have just said, “How are you? I hope you’re good,” and talked to her like any other human. But instead I was like, [cartoonishly dopey voice] “I’m such a huge fan!” And she’s just like, “Yeah, OK. Whatever.” I suppose it’s more like I’d love to sit down with these people and have a real conversation.

How did you come in contact with Kate Bush? She’s pretty elusive.

I know. So that’s why I shouldn’t really tell the story, because I can’t follow through on it. I just have to leave it there.

What is your personal relationship with AI?

I’ve never used AI. I refuse to. I don’t want its sweaty little hands all over creative work. Humans make really beautiful music, and art is an expression of being human that’s transcendent and complex, and the dumbification of that is the last straw for me. That and robot dogs.

What is the most crucial hotel amenity?

Good fucking pillows. I like a hotel that understands different types of pillows—soft, medium, hard. I like a smorgasbord of pillows, basically. It’s make-or-break.

Which song on the new album are you most proud of?

“The Ground Above.” I started writing that in 2017 and tried to record it the following year, but it just wasn’t right. It didn’t have the seriousness or the weight or the depth. The melody was there, but the poetry of it took ages. I tried to do a really gentle version on my last record, and then while we were making this one, Tom Skinner came and played these crazy free-jazz drums all the way through it. I was like, That’s fucking awesome, and I love it, but the song is completely lost. It still wasn’t the right arrangement, but he opened the roof on the expectations of what the song could handle. I realized it can afford energy. 

So in the studio in New York, I had another drummer, Ben [Sloan], play on it, and it didn’t quite happen there either. Then Vishal [Nayak], who was the recording engineer on the session, was like, “Can I try? I think I know what it is you want to hear.” And he fucking nailed it. The fact that it sounds so live is a testament to the playing and the feel, because it wasn’t just a live kind of thing. I went on a journey to find that feeling—how to loosen up and reinvigorate this song that took a long time to hone.

If you weren’t a musician, what would you want to be?

A criminologist, because that’s where you can study Freud, Jung, attachment theory—all the psychoanalysis—in real terms. The psychology of people fascinates me, and they really get to study the cause and effect of your early years. Criminologists can study serial killers and psychopaths, but I’m not so interested in that. I’m more interested in human nature and what makes good people do bad things. It’s basically a way of studying psychotherapy, but I feel like, with criminology, you’d get to the bottom of people a little more interestingly.

What is the most radicalizing experience of your life?

Having children radicalized me. I was suddenly opened up to a world in which I was like, Hang on a minute, are you fucking kidding me? because of how the dad’s treated compared to the mom. Like if I go away, everyone’s like, “Oh, what can we do to help?” and if he goes away, everyone’s like... nothing. It’s tumbleweeds. 

I also experienced profound judgment when I had children—suddenly there’s all these opinions on how you do it—and that was very painful for me. It wasn’t an easy radicalization, because there’s nowhere you can put it, because it permeates everything. It changed my life, and I couldn’t quite see anything the same again. It can be quite a radicalizing experience, and not always one you necessarily grow from in this really graceful way. But once I had children, I got much more aware of politics. I was such an ignoramus before, and then suddenly you’re like, This isn’t just my life, this is my children’s future. What the hell?

How would you articulate your politics at this point?

My politics are the politics my mum taught me: Do unto others as you’d have done unto yourself. I look at a world where we’re faced with a complete lack of morality and accountability, it’s just off the charts. There’s a lot of  dumbstruckness. How do we compute? A lot of people don’t quite know how to take action, or how to do the right thing, like, Am I of any use to anyone? 

When I was making this record, I was a bit like, How can I exist in a world that’s this fucked up? Just the stuff we’re seeing on our phones, and the direct contact we have with barbaric acts in so many corners of the world that I was never tuned into in the way I am now. I was like, Is there a place to make art in that? What the fuck is the point? Just hoping that music actually does change energy. It probably sounds a bit stupid, but maybe that’s what I can do at this point. I can stay aware and stay educated, and make music that I believe will impact positively in some way. Those are my politics.

What are some recent experiences you’ve had with art that gave you hope for the future? 

Right now it’s gigs. I saw Aldous Harding last night, and that was absolutely beautiful. I saw Big Thief recently, who were incredible, and energetically speaking, that was particularly special. Seeing Paul Simon so late in his cycle of work, and hearing those songs in that light, was really profound, and I got a sense of the beauty of humanity in that moment.

What is a physical activity you think you’d be really good at, even though you’ve never done it?

That’s a good question for me, because I’m not very sporty. I’d love to be a good runner—can you imagine? I’m long, so I should be able to run and bounce around, but it just never happened. If I ever see anyone enjoying jogging, I’ll take it up, but I haven’t seen that yet—on the street everyone’s grimacing their way through it.

What was the first song you remember consciously loving?

Marianne Faithfull’s “As Tears Go By,” when I was around 10. The house was full of music, but that was the first time I heard something that was mine. Her voice encapsulated another world—a life. The humor and the sadness in her voice spoke to me really directly.

What are the albums you’ve listened to the most throughout your life?

It would be Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, Hejira, and Blue. Every single Nick Drake record. Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks, but also Moondance. Leonard Cohen’s Songs From a Room. Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush. When I was a kid there was Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the Dark and Kate Bush’s The Kick Inside. I’m a real listener, and I’ve listened deeply to a lot of records over many years.

Was there any music that you were embarrassed to like as a teenager?

I definitely had a Judds phase at some point. I knew it was kind of terrible, but I just enjoyed something about the storytelling and how they were so jolly.

What is a recurring dream that’s stuck with you?

The ones I had during the making of this record were all these crazy, lucid flying dreams where I could control my flying. I’ve never had that in my life, and it’s been the best feeling ever. I had one the other day where I was literally propelled backwards, and even that was enjoyable; I have insomnia, so I think it’s something about staying asleep. 

Thinking about ghosts and spirits, there’s this idea that when people make music, they channel, and there’s channeling that goes on in dreams too. You hear a lot of songwriters talk about this—again, Paul Simon had some pretty good channeling. He would just wake up with crazy classic songs. I don’t know if I’m that kind of channeler, but I do think, if you’re lucky, things come from places that you don’t have much control over sometimes. But then you have to work as well. There are lines that come to me, but then it’s like, What the fuck? How do I finish this? It’s like I was left with these bits and bobs, and then I have to have the experience in my life that teaches me what the rest of the song means, like a treasure hunt.

What is a piece of physical media that you hold particularly close?

I have an original pressing of Terry Callier’s What Color Is Love that he signed for me. I was a huge fan of his. In the ’90s, this friend of mine was like, “Do you want to come and see a Terry Callier gig?” I didn’t even know he was still alive. I walked into the venue, and it was the surprise of my life. Then I met him afterwards, and I played him my song “Pass in Time,” and he loved it. So we ended up recording and touring together. We became really dear friends. And he gave me that record.