Eleven years ago, I made a mix CD for the woman I was dating, Jenn Holland, (yes, mix CD’s were still a thing in 2015). On the mix was a song, “All the Hospitals,” by a band called People Eating People, who released only one album, back in 2009. I don’t remember where I first heard it — one of my previous girlfriends might have turned me onto it (if so, Mia or Melissa, thank you), but it had been darting in and out of my playlists since around 2010.
Anyway, Jenn loved the song so much that she actually listened to People Eating People’s album. She fell in love with it, and turned me on to the rest of their tunes. Somewhere along the way, Jenn and I fell in love as well, and she went from being a woman I was dating to my girlfriend and eventually, after many years, my wife.
Over all those years, we shared an obsession with People Eating People, a band no one seemed to know, who had fewer than 2,000 followers on Spotify. But as with many bands, we didn’t know anything else about them; they seemed to be one of these acts who put out one incredible album and then disappeared. In 2016, I happened to hear a single by a singer-songwriter by the name of Nouela (it’s pronounced “No-el-ah” but I had always called her “Nwaylah” when discussing her songs), who had just released a single, “Nobody.” That led me to her Spotify page and her other songs, nearly each and every one of them a banger.
For years both People Eating People and Nouela were staples on my regular playlists, both in mixes I listened to privately and in those I’d share with others. But earlier this year, I finally decided to find out a little bit more about one of my favorite bands in the world. I did some quick research, and in that moment I discovered that People Eating People and Nouela were the same person, singer-songwriter Nouela Johnston.
The two acts didn’t have a hundred thousand followers between them on Spotify, and yet somehow the algorithm had led me to putting both in regular rotation. Sadly, there was almost nothing about Nouela online, and she almost certainly hadn’t released any music since 2016. I looked up “For Now,” my favorite song, on YouTube, and found a recording of Nouela giving a majestic performance in the back of some bar while people talked over the whole thing.
I wanted to travel back into the past and strangle them. What I wouldn’t give to hear her perform her songs live. It broke my heart that such a staggering talent had been heard by so few people in this world.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
