Amy Macdonald and Deacon Blue are the musical guests on BBC Scotland’s annual Hogmanay showcase this evening. The New Year festivities, which will be hosted by comedian Susan Calman, kick off on BBC One Scotland at 11.30pm tonight. Viewers in Scotland and across the rest of the UK can also watch the show online via BBC iPlayer. In a message posted on her Twitter account today, Macdonald said “Come and see the new year in with us, there’s nothing else to do!”
Don’t forget we’re performing on @SusanCalman‘s Hogmanay 2020 tonight!
Tune in to @BBCScotland from 11:30pm or watch online https://t.co/qhpqOZF4Mj
BBC Scotland / Alan Peebles#deaconblue #hogmanay2020 pic.twitter.com/IAuEfUaT4u
— Deacon Blue (@deaconbluemusic) December 31, 2020
2020 has been a busy year for both acts. In October Macdonald released her fifth studio LP The Human Demands, a top ten album in the UK and across Europe. Though the majority of the record was written before the pandemic took hold, the lyrical themes of isolation, depression and ageing it touches on felt increasingly relevant in the context of lockdown life. The Bishopbriggs-born singer acknowledged this in a recent interview with the Glasgow Times, saying: “There’s nothing directly about this situation (in the album) but there are a lot of songs about life and the highs and lows, and the ups and downs, and everything in between. There are definitely tracks that feel extremely pertinent now. If you didn’t know better you might assume they were written about this situation.”
The latest single release from the album is Fire, a soaring, anthemic slice of rugged folk-rock in the same vein as earlier Macdonald hits like Slow It Down and Woman of the World. The Scottish songstress told XS Noise that the track was written for her husband, Partick Thistle football Richard Foster. She said “It was the first song I wrote after getting married, in Las Vegas of all places…I was so happy at the time, just married, that I came up with something that isn’t typical of me at all. I said to my husband: this is the only song you’ll ever get out of me, so enjoy it.”
Macdonald recently told The Herald that she was delighted with the record as a whole and her evolving sound. She said “I am absolutely thrilled with how the album sounds. I can’t think of any other female artist who is sounding like me right now. It just feels exciting and it feels new. It feels a bit different and it is something I am really, really, proud of.”
There was also new material this year from Deacon Blue, with the Glaswegian outfit topping the Scottish Albums Chart in March (and reaching fourth spot in the UK Albums Chart) with their ninth album City of Love. LA Weekly described the record as “spectacularly good“, adding that “everything that made their past work so special shines here too“; while PopMatters opined that the band had delivered “a confident set of arena-friendly songs of hope.”
The veteran pop-rockers, who first shot to international stardom with their 1988 hit Real Gone Kid, will follow up City of Love with a new mini-album, Riding On The Tide of Love, due out on March 5th. A statement on the band’s website says: “‘Riding On The Tide Of Love’ is a continuation of ‘City Of Love’, a companion piece that we recorded piece by piece, going into the studio one by one to record our individual parts. In its own way it’s brought us all together, we hope it will bring you together too.”
The group will play 26 British dates next year as part of their UK and Europe Cities of Love tour, which begins in Brighton on Sunday 6th June. Tickets for all dates are available to buy online here.
