Sometime around 2016, Kevin Rowland, the driving force behind the British band Dexys (formerly known as Dexys Midnight Runners, who are famous for their 1983 hit song “Come On Eileen”) was going through a difficult period in his personal life that included the death of his mother. He later decamped to Thailand where became immersed himself in Tao philosophy as part of working on himself physically and spiritually. At the time, the last thing on his mind was making new music.
“I couldn't see a way back into music,” recalls the Dexys lead singer and songwriter. “But after a while, I just started to look at things differently. And then one day I sat down and I wrote “The Feminine Divine,” the song. I was like, 'Wow, where did that come from?' And it came from me. I'm not saying I'm perfectly transformed. I'm still a work in progress. I get things wrong, but some kind of shift happened for sure.”
“The Feminine Divine” is the soulful and hypnotic title track of Dexys’ new studio album, which sees a release this Friday. Featuring the current Dexys lineup of Rowland, Jim Paterson, Sean Read and Michael Timothy, The Feminine Divine can be akin to a concept record that not only documents Rowland's personal rebirth but a reawakening and shift in his previous attitudes towards women.
“I just thought women were there, we're guys—that's how it is,” he explains. “I realized that the way that I looked at them was completely wrong. I'm not blaming anybody but my upbringing. There was no sex education in my teens. The school didn't tell us about [how] people have sex or how babies are made or whatever way you want to look at it. And my parents didn't mention it. So you get to 13 or 14, you reach puberty, your body is exploding with feelings and it's a secret. The only thing you've got is your friends. Mine was a very macho environment.
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“I've sort of listened to feminists talking over the years, but I didn't really understand them. And then I started to realize, like I say in the song, it's fear trying to keep people down. I think racism is the same, trying to keep people down because they're afraid of them.”
As part of his reawakening, the male protagonist on the record finds himself revering women, as is evident in the hip-hop-like “My Goddess Is” and “Goddess Rules,” whose sly and down-and-dirty sound recalls early Prince. “I'm not saying it's 100% autobiographical, but there's an awful lot of me in there,” Rowland explains. “The character or protagonist gets into a relationship, and it's completely different than it would have been before. He's looking at her as a goddess. “Goddess Rules,” it's a bit of bedroom stuff.”
Especially in its first half, The Feminine Divine encompasses a number of eclectic musical influences–exuberant '60s and ‘70s AM radio-friendly pop, funk and contemporary sounds—while still retaining Dexy's blue-eyed soul and Rowland's lead voice. Some of the material was written back as far as 30 years ago, as was the case with “The One That Loves You.” Says Rowland: “That was my stance then, which is basically claiming that if you touch my girlfriend, I'm going to beat you up.
“And the second song, “It's Alright Kevin” reappraises that and says, ‘That's not really who I am. He's looking at his old masculinity and femininity–‘I've tried so hard to being a man, and now I don't care if I can.’” The third song, “I'm Going to Get Free,” he's determined to break free, and the fourth song, “Coming Home,” he's starting to move forward. When the character transforms, the music transforms...it just kind of worked out that way.”
And Rowland perhaps delivers his best vocal performance in recent memory on the piano-dominated ballad track “My Submission.” “I've got a really good singing coach. I played her this one, and that was the demo vocal. She started crying and she said, ‘You encapsulated everything I've taught you there.’ I said, ‘Are there any bits I need to work on?’ She said ‘No, this is bringing me to tears. That's the vocal.’”
For Dexys’ upcoming tour of the U.K. and Europe, the show will be divided into two halves: the first consisting of The Feminine Divine album being played in its entirety and the second made up of the band's back catalog of songs. “And we are going to perform it theatrically,” Rowland adds. “In other words, we're going to act the songs out. And there's a female protagonist, she's coming over from New York—Claudia Chopek—she’s going to play the female part.”
The singer is also eyeing Dexys performing in the U.S., which would be the first time in 40 years that the band has played that territory. “That's a long time,” he acknowledges. “And what's good about it is we're coming back on our own terms. We're not coming back doing that revival circuit—‘remember us from the ‘80s?’ We're not doing that. We're presenting a show.”
Fittingly, the new record comes on the 45th anniversary of Dexys Midnight Runners’ formation in Birmingham, England. The group first achieved success with their 1980 debut album, the brass-driven Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, which contained their U.K. first number-one hit “Geno.” However, that original incarnation of the band broke up after that album, resulting in Rowland forming a new Dexys lineup—including violinist Helen O’Hara and guitarist Billy Adams–that would record the band's breakthrough second album, the Celtic-influenced Too-Rye-Ay. Its single, “Come On Eileen,” was a staple of early MTV that introduced Dexys to American audiences with their scruffy, dungarees-clad look.
Of writing “Come On Eileen,” Rowland recalls: “It was about growing up with Irish Catholic girls in London and their sort of friends. Then you kind of reach puberty, and you'd like to get a bit more than friends. You're told that they're Catholic girls and all of that sort of stuff.”
He also says: ““Eileen”—I'm grateful for it. I'm a little bit frustrated that by most, certainly in the U.S., Dexys is seen as a one-hit wonder. It's frustrating, but I'd probably be a lot more frustrated if I lived there and I'm not there that often. But you know, one hit than no hit, right?”
At the time, Rowland believed “Come On Eileen” was a potential hit even though, according to him, Dexys' record company had wanted a different song from Too-Rye-Ay for a single: ”They wanted to release “Jackie Wilson Said,” which was a [Van Morrison] cover, because our last two singles had flopped. I was arguing with the record label—and it was the record company guy Roger who wanted “Jackie Wilson Said.” He said, ‘Oh, let's get the radio plugger Brad.’ I thought, ‘Well, Brad's his friend. He's obviously going to side with him.’
“He played “Eileen” first. I thought, ‘He's going to play “Jackie Wilson Said” second, that's going to be fresher and he's going to go with that one.’ We played them both, and then Brad said, ‘Play that first one again?’ And then he played “Eileen,” and about halfway through, Brad went, ‘That one.’ And Roger went, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yeah, I'm sure, that one.’ And that's how “Eileen” got to be released.”
When “Come On Eileen” reached number one in U.S., Rowland basked in the band’s newfound popularity. “I loved it. I just loved coming over to New York, especially. I absolutely loved walking around New York. It made me feel good, and I was moving out there. That was my plan. But I don't know, it just sort of was over before it began a little bit really, and I just went back to Birmingham and we wrote the next album.”
Dexys Midnight Runners released the aforementioned follow-up album Don't Stand Me Down in 1985; not only was it an about-face musically from Too-Rye-Ay, but the album’s cover presented the band members in business-like preppie attire. While it didn't fare well commercially compared to its predecessor, Don’t Stand Me Down has since garnered acclaim over time. “I think we've done that with every record,” Rowland explains about not following a musical formula. “The first one is completely different than the second one. We're still doing the same thing now. I literally do not repeat myself, I can't do it.”
After a hiatus that lasted from the mid-1980s through the 1990s, Rowland—who released a solo record, 1999’s My Beauty—revived Dexys in 2003 with a new personnel and put out One Day I'm Going to Soar (2012) and Let the Record Show: Dexys Do Irish and Country Soul (2016). Of late, Rowland has been on a creative roll after his retreat to Thailand. In 2022, he unveiled a new remix of Too-Rye-Ay on that album’s 40th anniversary because he was unhappy with the way the sound was done upon its original release. That shortly led to the recording of The Feminine Divine.
“I thought to myself, ‘Actually, I could do some music now, because five-six years earlier, I had no intention of doing it,” he says. :I just didn't feel like I had anything musical I wanted to do. But I've got the vitality now, and I thought ‘I've got something I want to say, I've got something I want to express.’”
Meanwhile, Rowland has been thinking about the next Dexys record. “I've got a theme for it really completely different to this one,” he says. “I was planning to demo them this year, but it probably won't happen because we're so busy now with promotion and rehearsals and then touring at the end of the year. So it'll probably be next year we’ll demo properly and then we'll look at recording it.”
