Beth Gibbons
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox musical artist
Beth Gibbons (born 4 January 1965) is an English singer and songwriter. She is the singer and lyricist for the band Portishead, who have released three albums. She released an album with fellow English musician Rustin Man, Out of Season, in 2002, and a recording of contemporary Polish composer Górecki's Symphony No. 3 in 2019 with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra. In 2024, she released her first solo album without collaboration, Lives Outgrown.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> The album received critical acclaim and was nominated for the 2024 Mercury Prize.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
On 28 June 2025, Gibbons appeared on stage at Glastonbury.
Early life
Gibbons was born in Exeter, Devon, England<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=AllMusic/> and raised on a farm with three sisters. Her parents divorced when she was young.<ref name=":0">"Solo album bio" Biography previously published on a Finnish site (archived), Retrieved 15 August 2014.</ref> She attended St Katherine's School in Pill, Somerset.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
At 22, she moved to Bath. To pursue her singing career, she then moved to Bristol, where she met Geoff Barrow, her future collaborator in Portishead, on an Enterprise Allowance course in 1991.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Career
With Adrian Utley, Gibbons and Barrow released the first Portishead album Dummy in 1994 and have produced two other studio albums, a live album, and various singles since.
She has also collaborated on a separate project with former Talk Talk bassist Paul Webb (Rustin Man). Before she joined Geoff Barrow in Portishead, she had auditioned for the singer's slot in .O.rang, the group formed by Webb and Harris after Talk Talk's late-Eighties departure from EMI, but Portishead's sudden success pre-empted matters. In October 2002, they released the album Out of Season in the United Kingdom under the name Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man. The album peaked at number 28 in the UK Albums Chart.<ref name="British Hit Singles & Albums">Template:Cite book</ref> It was released in the United States a year later: while touring in North America, Variety favourably described her performance with Rustin as "Billie Holiday fronting Siouxsie and the Banshees".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
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Gibbons was also a judge for the 10th annual Independent Music Awards to support independent artists' careers.
In June 2013, Gibbons announced plans for a new solo album with Domino Records.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> She contributed vocals to a cover of the song "Black Sabbath" with the British metal band Gonga, released on 24 April 2014.<ref>"Sabbath cover" Jeremy Gordon, 'Portishead's Beth Gibbons Covers Black Sabbath's "Black Sabbath" With Metal Band Gonga', Pitchfork, 24 April 2014.</ref>
In 2018, Gibbons contributed vocal performances, along with Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins, to the Spill Festival held in Ipswich in an audio installation entitled 'Clarion Calls', which uses the voices of 100 women to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
In 2014, Gibbons performed Symphony No. 3 by Henryk Górecki with the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Krzysztof Penderecki. Gibbons sang in Polish. The performance was released in 2019; reviewing the album for Pitchfork, Jayson Greene wrote: "Part of the tension comes from hearing her untrained voice scale these rocky heights. Her vibrato, tight and trilling and barely controlled, sounds an awful lot like someone fighting off a panic attack. This would get her dismissed from a traditional opera audition, probably, but it is magnificently effective at sending raw shudders through what can be a pretty well-worn work."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2022, Gibbons featured on the track "Mother I Sober" from Kendrick Lamar's album Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers.<ref name="P4K">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Variety">Template:Cite web</ref> For her collaboration in the album she received a nomination for Album of the Year at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards as a featured artist and songwriter.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
On 7 February 2024, Gibbons announced the release of her first solo studio album in over 20 years. The album, titled Lives Outgrown, was released 17 May 2024. It was announced alongside a single titled "Floating on a Moment",<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> with its second single "Reaching Out" being released later that year on 10 April.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Style and inspiration
She has cited Edith Piaf, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Bono of U2 for his performance on The Joshua Tree, Otis Redding and Jimmy Cliff as inspirations.<ref name=":0" /><ref>"Oor Interview 1995" Erik van den Berg, There's not only emotion in the way you sing but also in what you sing, Oor Magazine (no. .6), 8 April 1995, (translated from Dutch). Retrieved 15 August 2014.</ref> She has covered Janis Joplin songs and enjoys the music of Janis Ian.<ref name="Fitzpatrick">Template:Cite web</ref>
Discography
| Year | Album | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1994 | Dummy | Portishead |
| 1997 | Portishead | |
| 1998 | Roseland NYC Live | |
| 2002 | Out of Season | With Rustin Man |
| 2008 | Third | Portishead |
| 2019 | Henryk Górecki: Symphony No. 3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs) | With Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> |
| 2024 | Lives Outgrown | Solo album |
Other works
| Year | Song | Album | Artist |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1994 | "Orang" | Herd of Instinct | .O.rang |
| 1996 | "Jalap" | Fields and Waves | |
| 2004 | "Lonely Carousel" | Cinema | Rodrigo Leão |
| "Strange Melody" | Rendez-Vous | Jane Birkin | |
| "Killing Time" | Mind Body & Soul | Joss Stone | |
| "Love Is a Stranger" | Fried | Fried | |
| 2005 | "Mysteries" | The Russian Dolls | Rustin Man |
| L'Annulaire | Diane Bertrand | ||
| 2006 | My Secret | Fictions | Jane Birkin |
| Requiem for Anna | Monsieur Gainsbourg Revisited | Portishead | |
| 2007 | "Sing" | Songs of Mass Destruction | Annie Lennox |
| 2008 | Diane Bertrand (director) | Baby Blues soundtrack | |
| 2010 | "Prospera's Coda" | Elliot Goldenthal | The Tempest soundtrack |
| 2012 | "GMO" | Key to the Kuffs | JJ Doom |
| 2014 | "Black Sabbath"<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> | Gonga | |
| 2017 | Mandela Effect<ref name="AM">Template:Cite web</ref> | Gonjasufi | |
| 2022 | "Mother I Sober"<ref name="P4K" /><ref name="Variety" /> | Kendrick Lamar |
References
External links
- Pages with broken file links
- 1965 births
- Living people
- 20th-century English women singers
- 21st-century English women singers
- British women singers
- British trip hop musicians
- English folk singers
- English women in electronic music
- English women singer-songwriters
- Go! Beat artists
- English contraltos
- Musicians from Bristol
- Musicians from Exeter
- Portishead (band) members
- English women rock singers
- British women pop singers
- Culture in Bristol
- British music history
- 1990s in British music
- Domino Recording Company artists