Forgotten gems: Alisha Rules the World by Alisha’s Attic

Do you remember that song I Am, I Feel?  Yeah, I used to sing along with it in my bedroom while I got ready for school in the mornings, with great feeling.  ‘I sometimes think that you forget that I am, I feel – and this girl’s a person, you know!’.

I loved the fact that the band was made up of two sisters.  Better yet was their look, which I sought to emulate – dyed hair, knee-high socks, ratty Portobello Market dresses and smeared-bruise make-up.  I had I Am, I Feel on single and was even more obsessed with the B-side Angel Eyes (‘All the boys say angel eyes/But they don’t know the devil inside/ The babe’s a bitch/She’s making you blind – and if it weren’t coloured it wouldn’t be a butterfly.’)

When the album – Alisha Rules The World – came out, I fell in love with their blend of girlie whimsy and steely-eyed bitch power.  The album, listening to it now, doesn’t really hold up that well – it is very mid-90s-lite – but it’s still an aesthetic and a theme that I love.

You know, it starts off with cute lyrics like – ‘Here we are again/The jangle of my ankle chain/Is the only sound I can hear – when I’m here with you’).  Later on there is the tragic girliness of a song like Stone In My Shoe, which I used to sob to – dear reader, literally sob – as if my heart would break, I thought I related to it so much.  ‘I sneezed another brave idea/I wanna come look for you/It would be wonderful if I ever get there – But if I fall, will there be another stone in my shoe/Making it harder to come back to you?  And if I fly/Lift your eyes as my paper boat sails away/Could it be too late or is our fate just another stone in my shoe?.’

But then there was my favourite song on the entire album, I Won’t Miss You.  I wrote the lyrics down and stuck them to my bedroom mirror.  It was the era of ‘Girl Power’, OK?  ‘She’s got her bow and arrow, army pants and pigtails/She ain’t got to be no-one’s dolly and at nobody’s whim/She’s got her shoes, her blues, her big red heart/She walks to the door and she says: “Yeah, I’m going now/Goodbye, babe, I won’t miss you/It was a long road, but it’s a fine time to get myself a little respect.’  Hell yeah – take that, Geri Halliwell!

Both of the Alisha’s Attic ladies have gone on to do cool things – co-writing songs for people like Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Kylie and Will Young, among many others.  I hope, like me, they look back on this fun, silly, cool and of-its-time album they made with great fondness.