Beth Gibbons

Lives Outgrown is, by some measure, Beth’s most personal work to date. She has never talked
about the subject matter of any of her songs until now. She has never deployed backing vocals until now. The songs sit where her voice lives now. The album is the result of a period of sustained reflection and change — “lots of goodbyes,” in
Beth’s words. Farewells to family, to friends, even to her former self. These are songs from the mid-course of life, when looking ahead no longer yields what it used to, and looking back has a sudden, sharper focus.
“I realised what life was like with no hope,” says Beth. “And that was a sadness I’d never felt. Before, I had the ability to change my future, but when you’re up against your body, you can’t make it do something it doesn’t want to do.”
Other songs touch on motherhood, anxiety and the menopause (which Beth describes variously
as “a massive audit” and “a massive comedown” which “cuts you at the knees”) as well as,
inevitably, mortality.
“People started dying,” says Beth. “When you’re young, you never know the endings, you don’t know how it’s going to pan out. You think: we’re going to get beyond this. It’s going to get better. Some endings are hard to digest.”
But emerging from this decade of change and realignment has left Beth with what feels like a
renewed purpose. “Now I’ve come out of the other end, I just think, you’ve got to be brave,” she says