Armatrading

Rip It Up, Issue 12, 1 June 1978, Page 3

Armatrading

By the time you read this, tickets for Joan Armatrading's shows around New Zealand should be nearly, if no't totally, sold out. Which is as good proof as you’ll ever need of the following Ms Armatrading has developed. After five years and four albums, Joan Armatrading is here to stay. Unlike most artists, she admits to being a reluctant performer: ”1 just wanted to write, maybe join a band and play the guitar. But not be the front person.” But circumstances forced her into the limelight. "People heard me singing and tended to go on about my voice ... I fell in with that because I thought it was a good way to start and to get my songs heard.” But with her third album, Joan Armatrading, her status was confirmed. It gave Armatrading her first top 10 album in Britain

and was received with much critical hurrahing. It also marked her coming of age as both singer and live performer. While the follow-up, Show Some Emotion, has failed to do quite as well, it has consolidated her popularity. The possibility of Joan Armatrading ever being, as she once hoped, "famous but faceless” now looks an ever more distant prospect.