I’ve been a bit of a Kate Nash fan since 2007. I loved her first album; didn’t like the singles off the second, so didn’t bother with it; and I love the third and fourth albums.
Despite being sick at the time, I finally got to see her live last year, and had a blast.
When a sponsored post appeared in my Facebook feed promoting a documentary about her, with the premiere taking place in New York, I kind of felt I was in before I’d even seen the trailer.
I went to see it. And I have thoughts. And I thought a review might be the best way for me to get them out. Although it might seem a tenuous link to what we do on this site, ultimately, it’s about a broke musician. Like we are.
Obviously, there are some spoilers ahead!
The trailer
As I have noted, I was going to watch Underestimate the Girl (UTG) before I saw the trailer.
But still, I watched the trailer before booking any tickets. Here it is!
Looks and sounds great, right?
It looks and sounds like a bombastic exposé of the scalliwaggery of the rich white men who run the music industry, right?
It looks and sounds like it’s going to propose solutions on how to combat the lack of pastoral and mental health care for young, female artists, right?
Does it deliver on the expectations set by the trailer?
Kate Nash: unreliable narrator
So, relatively early in UTG, it talks about how she came to prominence.
If you’ve heard of Kate Nash, you’ll know the story: she broke her leg, wrote songs at home while recovering, put them on MySpace, and voilá! She was famous!
And, that’s the line they stick with in UTG.
And sadly, it was at this point – so early in the movie – that it became unstuck for me.
I know enough about the music industry to know that simplistic explanation is absolute nonsense.
To get signed by a record label – even in the mid-noughties – you need to…
- Have songs
- Record those songs to commercial release quality
- Build a fanbase who are parting with cash for you to prove you’ll make money for the label
- Network, so somebody connected to a label can send your commercial release quality recordings to the right A&R person; so they’ll want to see your show; so they’ll see people parting with cash for you; then they know you have some financial viability e.g. you’re signable
That’s just to get signed. Once you lock that down, you need to gig your arse off to keep building your fanbase, and keeping proving your financial viability.
And then you’re famous!
In case you haven’t worked it out, there’s more to it than uploading your songs to a website full of other people desperately trying to get signed.
So, for Kate Nash to flippantly present it as such, in a documentary where you’re expecting brutal honesty, because – as she repeatedly alludes to, she’s free from the pressure of labels – well…
… it makes her an unreliable narrator. When you remember that she’s now an actress too, it sets UTG up to be less authentic than the trailer suggested.
A series of unfortunate events
However, there was still an hour to go, and Kate herself, and two of the ladies from GLOW were in the audience.
After establishing herself as an unreliable narrator, it was hard to give a monkeys about anything else that was going to happen.
The rest of the movie largely followed Nash’s life in the US from after she released her third album and got dropped by her label.
It mostly follows her as she struggles to re-establish herself as a musician in the US; her manager using her money to pay for his wedding; the people helping her; selling her clothes.
Quite frankly, it plays like a brain dump about the bad things happening. It’s mostly bad things.
Carry on regardless
And after all that, the film ends by telling us where Kate Nash is now – which is something people watching the film e.g. fans – will already know: fan-funded fourth album, and a regular on GLOW.
A few times throughout, she mentions the difficulties facing women in the music industry – as she did in the trailer. But that’s really the extent of insight into the matter. She says it a few times in different ways.
She doesn’t give in-depth examples; doesn’t back anything up with statistics; and doesn’t propose any real solutions.
An anecdotal headline can’t do ding dong diddly dick to make any real change.
Acknowledging the fact that I’m a boy, on the way home after the screening, I double-checked with Mrs. Light Audio Recording to make sure that my reservation on this matter wasn’t a mansplanation. She agreed with me.
Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl – conclusion
In summary, it’s not a bad movie.
However, it’s not as authentic or insightful as I expected or hoped for.
I’ll still listen to Kate Nash’s music, and I’ll still watch GLOW.
But, sadly, I feel with UTG, she has discredited herself.
If you’re looking for reliable info on making it in music, I think the best resources are…
- Machiavelli’s Guide To The Music Industry: this is a blog with specific steps and insights to making it in the music industry, with examples and stories.
In the interest of full disclosure, it’s written by a mate of mine, the Grammy Award-winning Trev Gibson from Circle Studios in Brum.
He has multiple posts on getting signed, so you can see right off the bat that there’s more to it than just putting your songs on the internet among a bajillion other musicians putting their music on the internet. - Kill Your Friends by John Niven: according to Trev, apart from the murders, this is the most accurate depiction of the music industry around
But, die-hard Kate Nash fans will lap it all up.
If you found this helpful, subscribe on the right hand side of this page. You’ll be notified of new posts on Thursdays, inspiring you going into the weekend.
And share why you found it helpful. Because it helps us, and others!
Share your own light audio recording thoughts and experiences! There’s a Facebook group, a Subreddit, Twitter and Instagram.
Also, on LinkedIn, you can see the business-brain of Light Audio Recording at work.
Additionally, feel free to shoot me a coffee!
Finally, this is a music project, so we’re on Spotify – the playlist below starts with the most recent release and works backwards. So, feel free to follow us!