Singer, songwriter and fashion icon Karen Elson will debut a new collection of covers, her Radio Redhead EP, next Friday, December 18. Her rendition of Vera Lynn's 1939 wartime classic "We'll Meet Again"-featured in the 1943 Lynn-starring musical of the same name, Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and prolifically covered since-debuts today. Listen/pre-save the EP here and watch the video, created by Elson and Alex La Cruz, here.
"'We'll Meet Again' really feels like the impetus to this entire Radio Redhead project," says Elson. "It feels so poignant for the times that we're in: with COVID, with so many of us being separated from friends and family, it just felt like the right song to sing at this time."
The EP includes further covers of Elton John's "Sacrifice," Cher's "Believe," Abba's "Lay All Your Love On Me," and Robyn's "Dancing On My Own."
Sharing a name with Elson's series of quarantine cover livestreams, the EP was recorded and produced with Ian Fitchuk (Kacey Musgraves' Golden Hour) and engineer Konrad Snyder at their East Nashville studio.
"It took us a week to record this EP," says Elson. "Every day we'd approach a different song, break it apart, try to get to the root of the emotion and then build an homage to the original. The music feels very vulnerable and intimate-these songs are so powerful in their own right, we weren't trying to make them anything they're not. Just get down to their marrow and their essence."
The EP is Elson's first new music since the 2017 full length Double Roses-produced by Jonathan Wilson and featuring collaborations with Father John Misty, Pat Carney of The Black Keys, Laura Marling and more-which received widespread acclaim from The Guardian, Clash, Paste, Mojo and a number of others.
2020 has also seen the release of Elson's much-lauded illustrated memoir The Red Flame in partnership with Rizzoli, chronicling her hardscrabble childhood in the north of England, fashion debut on the cover of Vogue Italia at 18, and storied, paradigm-shifting career as a supermodel, all alongside iconic photographs by her closest collaborators: Steven Meisel, Tim Walker, Annie Leibovitz, Mert and Marcus, Juergen Teller, Harley Weir, Alasdair McLellan and many more. The book is accompanied by forewards by British Vogue editor Edward Enninful, Walker and a conversation with Grace Coddington.
Born and raised in Oldham, outside Manchester, Elson was discovered as a teenager and launched to an international fashion career at 18, going on to cover Vogue, British Vogue, Vogue Italia, W, Dazed & Confused, Numéro, Harper's Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire and countless more. A lifelong music fan and songwriter, Elson released her debut solo album, The Ghost Who Walks, in 2010, followed by Double Roses in 2017.
Photo Credit: Karen Elson
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