When their song Seventeen blew up on TikTok in 2021, synth band Ladytron received a request from their record label. Would they consider getting down with the kids and making some TikToks of their own? The response was the fastest “no” in pop history.
“They wanted to capitalise on it. But equally, we didn’t want to do that social thing,” says Helen Marnie, who has fronted the group alongside Mira Aroyo since Ladytron formed in Liverpool in 1999. “It just wasn’t us. It made us feel awkward. We politely said ‘No’. Let it do its own thing – rather than push our faces upon it. We let it grow on its own.”
Seventeen, released in 2002, is pop perfection. It is shiny and throwaway on the surface. However, for those prepared to go down the rabbit hole, there is a deeper, darker side. Much the same can be said of the their new album, the beautifully bittersweet Time’s Arrow, which comes out on January 20th.
In the case of Seventeen, Ladytron were also ahead of their time. “They only want you when you’re seventeen/When you’re 21 you’re no fun,” sing Marnie and Aroyo, against a rush of synths from Daniel Hunt and Reuben Wu. The intertwined voices are locked in a perfect fugue of digital angst – like Taylor Swift fronting Kraftwerk.
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Twenty-one years ago, Seventeen was regarded as a swipe at the fashion industry and its obsession with youth (“They take a Polaroid and let you go/Say they’ll let you know, so come on”). Two decades on, in the context of #MeToo, it feels like something else: a prescient takedown of the patriarchal entertainment industry and a comment on how women are judged for their age in a way men never are.
You’re in a room with all these people that are so talented. They know the business, they know what they are doing. I was new to this, completely new. I had no idea
Marnie (44) is pleased the track speaks to the kids who discovered it on TikTok. There, videos inspired by Seventeen have clocked up tens of millions of views. She also feels it’s a classic Schrodinger’s pop song: simultaneously slight and meaningful.
“It’s a comment on society. Things have changed. But not a lot has changed. There’s that aspect,” she says. “I think there’s a flippant element to it. It’s a dance track. It’s pop. It’s one line that is impactful in different ways [the tune is essentially a chorus repeated over and over]. You can read into it – that #MeToo thing, making a cultural comment. But, along with that, it’s fun.”
Time’s Arrow is both heavier and more optimistic. Recorded during lockdown, it is a rumination on the fraught nature of human engagement – and a celebration of the things that tie us together.
“I am not myself, I am gone,” Marnie coos on Misery Remember Me, her voice carried aloft by a candyfloss swirl of My Bloody Valentine-esque guitars. It is a song about courage and empathy – and about the hunger for connection that makes us human.
“We started something at the end of 2019. We were in the studio briefly in Glasgow in March of 2020. And then all hell broke loose. Danny was in Glasgow with me. He didn’t know whether he was going to make it back to Brazil: he didn’t know if he was going to get back to his wife. All the airlines were dropping like flies,” she says.
Working through those long, lonely months, they were clear about not wanting to create a “lockdown” album.
“Everyone was stuck indoors. In their own little bubbles. And I remember quite a lot of musicians were putting out obvious things related to that. I didn’t like it: I didn’t enjoy that,” she says. “For me it was about the opposite of that: taking yourself somewhere else. Daydreaming, thinking about good things – presenting a vibe that is more uplifting and hopeful.”
Ladytron are named after the 1972 Roxy Music song of the same name. The group was started by DJs Hunt and Reuben on Merseyside. Their first recruit was Marnie, who was studying music at the University of Liverpool. Next came Aroyo, originally from Sofia and, at that time, a postgraduate research geneticist at the University of Oxford.
They quickly built a loyal fan base – including former Roxy Music keyboardist Brian Eno, who adored their mix of pop and pretension. “Ladytron are, for me, the best of English pop music,” he said. “They’re the kind of band that really only appears in England, with this funny mixture of eccentric art-school dicking around and dressing up, with full awareness of what’s happening everywhere musically, which is kind of knitted together and woven into something new.”
But they were regarded with a degree of suspicion too. The early 2000s were the heyday in the UK of guitar-chugging landfill indie. In Ireland things were even worse: this was the high point of the dreary singer-songwriter. With their angular haircuts and Teutonic beats, Ladytron stood out – and were not always welcomed. “Angry, pitiless, evil-sounding,” went a review in Pitchfork; “A distinctive sound in search of a hook,” shrugged the Guardian.
“There were four of us, occasionally in uniform. People were like, ‘right…Kraftwerk…’. We were labelled,” says Marnie. “I never understood it: I always thought there was emotion in what we did. I feel my voice is quite emotive, although I don’t over-sing.”
The criticism was that Ladytron were showroom dummies blagging their way into the Britrock scene. That caricature is thoroughly scotched by a conversation with Marnie. Speaking from her home in Glasgow, she is warm and deadpan, not at all the warbling pop-bot of stereotype. She laughs at the suggestion that Ladytron were trying to sell themselves as chilly to behold and far too cool for school. The idea that they co-ordinated their haircuts and outfits, for instance, receives a wry chuckle.
“I really don’t think we thought about those things at all. When I met Danny, I had a black-bobbed haircut. He had dark hair. Mira had dark hair. Mira cut her own hair for I don’t know how many years. It’s definitely not about cool haircuts. I was cutting my own fringe; she was cutting her own fringe.”
This wasn’t affectation. They were skint.
“We were cheap and didn’t have much money at the time, being students and stuff. It was a bit more DIY than trying too hard… We didn’t have make-up artists. We didn’t have people cutting our hair. It was just us, being ourselves.”
Landfill indie was, as already pointed out, happening at the same time. Inevitably, Ladytron crossed paths with some of the biggest names of that period. For Marnie, there was a sense of being a fish out of water.
“I was very shy. I would take a step back. It’s weird: I was young. I wasn’t sure if I had much to give,” she says. “You’re in a room with all these people that are so talented. They know the business, they know what they are doing. I was new to this, completely new. I had no idea.”
Music in the early 2000s was (and still is to an extent) an industry created in the image of the men who ran it. “It was very male-dominated. I guess maybe being in a band, we had that protection,” says Marnie.
Things used to catch fire and blow up. We were at a festival once and it started to chuck down with rain. We couldn’t continue the gig because it was unsafe
“Two guys, two girls – none of us were really centre-stage. We had each other to fall back on. It is a hell of a lot worse now with the internet. Back then, we didn’t have the social media we have today. Today, women especially, are subjected to so much abuse and unnecessary torment. We didn’t have that. If there were things going on, we were shielded from it – to a degree.”
It took an outsider to really appreciate them. That outsider happened to be the megaton pop star, Christina Aguilera. She invited Ladytron to write and produce on her 2010 LP Bionic. It was one of the most divisive projects of her career – and a stone-cold bomb.
“Christina was a really big fan. You’ve got to give her credit,” says Marnie. “On that album, she really pulled together a lot of producers, writers, bands that she enjoyed rather than ones the label enjoyed.”
Aguilera’s determination to steer her own course was not appreciated by the record company, says Marnie.
“Which is probably why that album was a flop, unfortunately for her – and for us as well. She wasn’t doing what they wanted her to do. It was pretty cool that she went out of her comfort zone and tried different things. She sings in different ways on that album. It’s not just your traditional Christina belting it out. She tried her own thing. We got to be involved in a little part of it. We did meet her later after a gig in LA. She popped by to the club afterwards and said ‘Hi’. And then popped into the VIP room and never came out.”
Marie may be as baffled by TikTok as anyone else in their 40s, but in many other ways, things are far easier today. When Ladytron first toured they had to lug their heavy analogue equipment everywhere. It was a nightmare.
“Things used to catch fire and blow up. We were at a festival once and it started to chuck down with rain. We couldn’t continue the gig because it was unsafe. Also, you never knew whether a piece of gear was going to show up at the airport intact. These days, we tend to have a mix of analogue and digital. In theory things should go much smoother.” She smiles as she says this – a pop robot reminding us she’s human after all.
Time’s Arrow is released on January 20th
