Isabella Summers | |
---|---|
Background information | |
Birth name | Isabella Janet Florentina Summers |
Also known as | Isa Machine |
Born | Hackney, England | 31 October 1980
Genres | |
Occupation(s) |
|
Years active | 2008–present |
Labels | Universal Publishing |
Member of | Florence and the Machine |
Isabella Janet Florentina Summers [1] [2] (born 31 October 1980) [3] is an English musician, songwriter, producer, remixer and composer. She is a founding member of English indie rock band Florence and the Machine.
Summers lived her first nine years in Hackney, London. [4] When Summers was ten, her family moved to Aldeburgh, Suffolk. There Summers attended Woodbridge School, [5] had piano lessons and grew an interest in music, crediting some influence from mixtapes made by her father with "a very eclectic mixture of everything and anything from Beethoven to Bob Dylan, rarities, poetry, even the Shipping forecast". [6] Hip-hop was a preferred genre, as her neighbours gave her a tape with Snoop Dogg's Doggystyle (1993) and 6 Feet Deep (1994) by Gravediggaz, and she would also spend evenings with fishermen's sons "who smoked loads of weed and listened to hard American rap." [7] [3]
Summers moved to East Dulwich, [6] back in London, where she would get a fine arts degree at Central Saint Martins. While there, she bought a set of DJ mixers to learn how to mix, while also doing side jobs such as being a courier for Top of the Pops and transcriptions and film digitizing for Alan Parker. [5] Soon she was working with Dan Greenpeace on his 'All City Show' radio show on XFM London, an experience that led Summers to buy her first MPC which was installed at the cupboard of her shared flat. With the help of a friend she started a studio in a former plastics factory at Crystal Palace, and began making hip hop. [7] During this time, Summers worked with, amongst others, Kashmere, The Iguana Man, IRS Crew, MBC Crew, Inja and The Last Skeptik. She met Florence Welch through art school and DJ work, as Welch was attending the Camberwell College of Arts. [8]
As Summers was hired to remix songs by the band Ludes, Welch became a more common sight at her studio given she was dating Ludes' guitarist Matt Alchin, and even impressed Summers with her singing. One day, as Summers got into a creative rut, which she described as getting "sick of boys telling me what to do", she thought of writing pop music with a woman, and invited Welch to make songs with her. Following a day joining Summers' beats with Welch's lyrics, they began writing demos together, which were produced by Summers by banging on the walls to make drum sounds and using the string sounds from her keyboard. It was also during this period that Summers saw a man on the street carrying a "coffin shaped box" and asked him what it was, it turned out to be Tom Monger carrying his harp, Summers suggested that he play on the demos that became 'Dog Days Are Over' and 'Between Two Lungs'. This led to their performing together for a time under the name Florence Robot/Isa Machine, the project was renamed Florence and the Machine. Summers had only thought of being a producer and songwriter on the project but ended up also as the group's keyboardist, with her second gig being the 2007 Glastonbury Festival. Summers has co-written and produced on Florence and the Machine's first three albums Lungs (2009), Ceremonials (2011) and How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015). [9] As of June 2016, 'Dog Days Are Over' has had over 3,151,000 downloads in the United States alone. The track 'Dog Days Are Over' was used in Marvel's 2023 movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 . [10] 'Dog Days Are Over' was referenced on Drake's track 'Rich Baby Daddy' featuring SZA and Sexyy Red from his 2023 album 'For All The Dogs'. [11]
Summers has also written, produced and remixed tracks for artists including Beyoncé, Juliette Lewis, Jennifer Hudson, Jasmine Thompson, Cara Delevingne, Chloe x Halle, Flux Pavilion, Rita Ora, Judith Hill, LP and The Game. [12] [13] [14] [15]
Summers had created the main title song "Was It Love" for the Sky Atlantic series Riviera , [16] and provided her friend Sam Levinson the song "Rage" for his film Assassination Nation (2018), [17] when right after finishing the High as Hope Tour, that film's music supervisor Mary Ramos invited Summers for her first composing gig in a team-up with Mark Isham, scoring the Hulu miniseries Little Fires Everywhere , [18] which won her a Primetime Emmy Award nomination. [19] Summers followed it by composing the score for the Prime Video series Panic alongside Brian H. Kim, [20] and Netflix's Sex/Life in another collaboration with Isham. [21] Her first solo composing gig was the Apple TV show Physical , whose 1980s setting led to a score full of "crazy synths and over-the-top guitar solos". [22] Afterwards Summers scored her first movie, Call Jane (2022), [23] and the Paramount+ show The Offer . [24] In 2022 Summers scored Sony's 3000 Pictures and Netflix film Lady Chatterly's Lover, directed by Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre and starring Emma Corrin and Jack O'Connell. In 2023 Summers scored the Apple TV+ adult animation series Strange Planet by Dan Harmon and Nathan W. Pyle released on August 9, 2023. [25] Following this she also scored the third and final season of Physical for Apple TV+ released on August 2, 2023. [26] In 2023, Summers scored the soundtrack for the Focus Features film Lisa Frankenstein , directed by Zelda Williams and set to be released on February 9. She also scored the film Breathe , directed by Stefon Bristol and starring Jennifer Hudson, which was released in April 2024.
Summers was invited by the Cy Twombly Foundation in conjuncture with Gagosian Gallery to interpret Cy Twombly's sculptures into music for their 2019 London exhibition 'Cy Twombly Sculpture', the piece titled 'To Neptune, Ruler of the Seas Profound' was interwoven with quotations from poems and literary texts by authors who have served as muses or subjects for Twombly, including Homer, Stéphane Mallarmé, and William Butler Yeats. The performance expands on a composition Summers performed in Rome in May 2022 at the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio. [27] Furthermore Summers performed it a third time at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills in 2022 to a sold out audience.
Year | Artist | Album | Track | Role(s) | Label | Note | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Writer | Producer | ||||||
2009 | Florence and the Machine | Lungs | "Are You Hurting the One You Love" | Yes | Island Records | ||
"Between Two Lungs" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Cosmic Love" | Yes | Yes | Also remixed with DJ Lexxx Remix | ||||
"Dog Days Are Over" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Falling" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Ghosts" | Yes | ||||||
"Hardest of Hearts" | Yes | ||||||
"Hospital Beds" | Yes | ||||||
"I'm Not Calling You a Liar" | Yes | Yes | |||||
2011 | Florence and the Machine | Ceremonials | "All This And Heaven Too" | Yes | Island Records | ||
"No Light, No Light" | Yes | ||||||
"Remain Nameless" | Yes | Yes | Deluxe edition bonus track | ||||
Ivan Ink 'n' Isa | Ivan Ink 'n' Isa - EP | "Caught in Symmetry" | Yes | Yes | Brink Records | ||
"Lover's Kiss" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Silver Or Lead" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Standing on a Hill" | Yes | Yes | |||||
2012 | Dia Frampton | Red | "Bullseye" | Yes | Yes | Universal Republic | |
Florence and the Machine | Snow White and the Huntsman | "Breath of Life" | Yes | Yes | Island Records | ||
Sam Sparro | Return to Paradise | "Shades of Grey" | Yes | EMI | |||
2013 | Angel Haze | Dirty Gold | "Rose Tinted Suicide" | Yes | Yes | Island Records | |
2014 | LP | Forever For Now | "Forever For Now" | Yes | Yes | Warner Bros. Records | |
"Some day" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Road To Ruin" | Yes | Yes | |||||
Iggy Azalea | Reclassified | "Trouble" | Yes | Virgin EMI Records | Featuring Jennifer Hudson. | ||
The Game (et al.) | Single | "Don't Shoot" | Yes | Multiple labels | Feat. Diddy, Rick Ross, 2 Chainz, DJ Khaled, and others. | ||
2015 | Florence and the Machine | How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful | "Delilah" | Yes | Island Records | ||
"How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Which Witch" | Yes | Yes | |||||
Flux Pavilion | Tesla | "Never See the Light" | Yes | Yes | Circus Recordings | Featuring Andrea Martin | |
Katharine McPhee | Hysteria | "Hysteria" | Yes | Yes | eOne | ||
"Burn" | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Lick My Lips " | Yes | Yes | |||||
"Don't Need Love" | Yes | Yes | |||||
Isa Machine and LP | Rock the Kasbah | "Torch" | Yes | Yes | Varèse Sarabande | ||
2017 | Isabella Summers featuring Lena | Riviera (TV Series Soundtrack) | "Was It Love" | Yes | Yes | Island Records | |
2018 | Isabella Summers | Assassination Nation | "Rage" | Yes | Yes | Lakeshore Records | |
2020 | Isabella Summers and Mark Isham | Little Fires Everywhere | Entire score | Yes | Yes | Hollywood Records | |
2021 | Isabella Summers and Brian H. Kim | Panic | Entire score | Yes | Yes | Milan Records | |
Tate McRae | "The Darkest Hour" | Yes | Yes | ||||
Isabella Summers and Mark Isham | Sex/Life | Entire score | Yes | Yes | N/A | ||
Isabella Summers | Physical | Entire score | Yes | Yes | Lakeshore Records | ||
Paradise City | Entire score | Yes | Yes | Sumerian Records | |||
2022 | Call Jane | Entire score | Yes | Yes | N/A | ||
The Offer | Entire score | Yes | Yes | Paramount Music | |||
Lady Chatterley's Lover | Entire Score | Yes | Yes | Netflix Music | |||
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe | Entire Score | Yes | Yes | Self-published | |||
Isabella Summers and Elise McQueen | Devil in Ohio | "The Gift of the Rose" | Yes | Netflix Music | |||
2023 | Isabella Summers | Strange Planet | Entire score | Yes | Yes | N/A | |
Wild Sea | Whole album | Yes | Yes | Self-published | |||
2024 | Lisa Frankenstein | Entire score | Yes | Yes | Back Lot Music | ||
Breathe | Entire score | Yes | Yes | N/A |
Edwin Parker "Cy" Twombly Jr. was an American painter, sculptor and photographer.
"You Got the Love" is a song by British songwriting team the Source featuring American singer-songwriter Candi Staton. Originally released in 1986, the song was remixed and re-released in 1991, 1997, and 2006. It reached number three on the UK Singles Chart, number two on the UK Dance Singles Chart and number one on the UK Club Chart.
Florence and the Machine are an English indie rock band formed in London in 2007 by lead vocalist Florence Welch, keyboardist Isabella Summers, guitarist Rob Ackroyd, drummer Christopher Lloyd Hayden & harpist Tom Monger. The band has consisted a number of other musicians. The band's music has received acclaim across the media, especially from the BBC, which played a large part in their rise to prominence by promoting Florence and the Machine as part of BBC Music Introducing. At the 2009 Brit Awards they received the Brit Awards "Critics' Choice" award. The band's music is renowned for its dramatic, eccentric production and Welch's powerful vocals.
Florence Leontine Mary Welch is an English singer and songwriter. She is the lead vocalist and primary songwriter of the indie rock band Florence and the Machine. The band's debut studio album, Lungs (2009), topped the UK Albums Chart and won the Brit Award for Best British Album. Their next four albums also achieved chart success. In 2018, Welch released a book titled Useless Magic, a collection of lyrics and poems written by her, along with illustrations.
"Kiss with a Fist" is the debut single by indie rock band Florence and the Machine, taken from their debut studio album Lungs (2009). The single was released through Moshi Moshi Records on 9 June 2008 in the UK and was then released four months later on 6 October 2008 through IAMSOUND Records in the US. The B-side to "Kiss with a Fist" is a cover version of the Cold War Kids song "Hospital Beds".
"Dog Days Are Over" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine from their debut album Lungs (2009). It was originally scheduled for release on 24 November 2008 through Moshi Moshi Records in the UK as the album's second single, but was later pushed back for release on 1 December 2008. A day later on 2 December 2008 the single was released in download and seven-inch vinyl format through IAMSOUND Records in the US. The B-side to the single is a cover of "You Got the Love" by The Source featuring Candi Staton which later was confirmed as a track on their debut album and the band's fifth single. The single reached the top 30 in Canada, Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Lungs is the debut studio album by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, released on 3 July 2009 by Island Records. After working on various projects, Florence Welch formed a band which included Robert Ackroyd, Chris Hayden, Mark Saunders, Tom Monger, and former collaborator Isabella Summers. The album features production from James Ford, Paul Epworth, Stephen Mackey, Eg White and Charlie Hugall, with additional production by band member Isabella Summers. The album has been reissued several times: an expanded version titled Between Two Lungs (2010), a digital EP subtitled The B-Sides (2011), and a Tenth Anniversary Edition (2019).
"Cosmic Love" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine from their debut studio album Lungs (2009). The song was written by the band's lead singer Florence Welch and keyboardist Isabella Summers, and produced by Paul Epworth, with additional production from Summers.
"Heavy in Your Arms" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine. It was released on 14 November 2010 as the third single from the soundtrack of the 2010 film The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. The track was written by Florence Welch and Paul Epworth, with production handled by the latter. The song is a gothic rock ballad that has inspirations from hip hop and gospel music. Lyrically, the song is about "the weight of love and how sometimes it can be a burden between two people". The track was also featured in some of the band's later works.
Ceremonials is the second studio album by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine. It was released on 28 October 2011 by Island Records. The band started working on the album in 2010 and finished it in 2011. The standard edition of the album was entirely produced by Paul Epworth, who also worked prominently on the band's debut album Lungs (2009).
"Shake It Out" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, released as the first official single from their second studio album, Ceremonials (2011). It was written by Florence Welch and Paul Epworth, while production was handled by Epworth. The song was digitally released in Australia on 14 September 2011, and it was available in the United States on 19 October. It had its radio debut on XFM on 14 September 2011 in the United Kingdom. Welch revealed that the song was written within an hour and according to her it talked about shaking the regrets and the things that were haunting her.
The Ceremonials Tour was the second concert tour by the English indie rock band Florence and the Machine. The tour included performances at music festivals because it is lead singer Florence Welch's favourite way to perform live. Welch had originally planned to spend over a year touring for Ceremonials before announcing that the December 2012 dates would be the final performances of the tour. On 25 February 2013, it was announced that Florence and the Machine would be playing at the Coke Live Music Festival in Poland on 10 August 2013, and, on 26 March 2013, it was announced that the band would be playing at Chime for Change's "The Sound of Change Live" concert at Twickenham Stadium in London alongside Beyoncé, Ellie Goulding and Haim, amongst others.
"No Light, No Light" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine from their second studio album, Ceremonials (2011). The song was written by band members Florence Welch and Isabella Summers while the production was handled by Paul Epworth. Island Records released the song as the second single from the album on 16 January 2012. The song was the first one written for the album in the band's tour bus in Amsterdam. Lyrically, in the song, Welch expresses frustration about the state of her fragile relationship and further tries to keep it together. "No Light, No Light" received positive reviews by music critics who generally praised Welch's vocals and the drum-led instrumentation. It was also placed on several critics' year-end lists of best singles. The song peaked at number 50 on the UK Singles Chart, the Irish Singles Chart and number 39 on the US Billboard Alternative Songs chart.
MTV Unplugged is the second live album by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, released on 6 April 2012 by Island Records. It was filmed on 15 December 2011 in New York City's oldest synagogue building, the Angel Orensanz Center, as part of the MTV Unplugged series, with the band being backed by a ten-person choir. The album contains acoustic performances of eleven songs, nine from the band's two studio albums, Lungs (2009) and Ceremonials (2011) alongside a cover of "Jackson" with Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme and "Try a Little Tenderness". Upon its release, MTV Unplugged received mixed to positive reviews by music critics.
"Sweet Nothing" is a song by Scottish DJ Calvin Harris from his third studio album, 18 Months (2012). It features vocals from Florence and the Machine singer Florence Welch. Harris previously worked with the band in a remix of their single, "Spectrum" (2012). While recording 18 Months, Harris expressed interest in working with Welch. He mentioned that it was not easy and he had to chase her, due to schedule conflicts. Welch accepted his invitation and the two recorded "Sweet Nothing". The track premiered on The Chris Moyles Show on BBC Radio 1 on 28 August 2012 and was later released as the fifth single from the album on 12 October 2012.
How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful is the third studio album by the English indie rock band Florence and the Machine, released on 29 May 2015 by Island Records. After her year-long break from music, the lead vocalist, Florence Welch, returned to configure the album, recording material that dealt with personal conflicts and struggles. In comparison to the band's two previous studio albums, it is much more refined and stripped-down instrumentally, and incorporates a mixture of musical influences such as folk, blues and gospel.
"Delilah" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine from their third studio album, How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful (2015). It was written by Florence Welch and Isabella Summers, and produced by Markus Dravs. The song was released on 27 November 2015 as the album's fourth and final single.
Isabella Rubi "Izzi" Manfredi is an Australian pop rock singer, songwriter and activist from Sydney, New South Wales. Manfredi is best known as the former lead vocalist of indie rock band the Preatures. Her debut single, "Jealousy", was released on 26 May 2021, and debut album "izzi" released in 2022.
"King" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine from their fifth studio album, Dance Fever (2022). It was released on 23 February 2022 by Polydor Records. The song was written and produced by Florence Welch and Jack Antonoff. A pop rock ballad with a strong bassline, the song discusses Welch's conflict in choosing between her career and starting a family as well as gender expectations for women in society.
"Free" is a song by English indie rock band Florence and the Machine. It was released on 20 April 2022 as the fourth single from the band's fifth studio album, Dance Fever (2022) through the record label Polydor Records. "Free" was written and produced by Florence Welch and Jack Antonoff. "Free" is an urgent pop song that lyrically discusses the singer's problems with anxiety and traumas. She has said it was the last song she wrote before the first lockdown of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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