For the second special issue of our anniversary year, we’re embracing the disruptive methods and axis-shifting impacts of those artists whose refusal to compromise their creative visions has seen them turn the world upside down. Provocative and progressive force Beth Ditto, whose outspoken stance on feminism has propelled her to iconic status for a generation of unheard voices, is the first of this issue’s cover stars. In the two decades since she formed Gossip with Nathan Howdeshell and 10 years after the pair, with drummer Hannah Blilie, delivered their Rick Rubin-produced, major label-backed fourth studio album ‘Music For Men’, the cultural landscape has visibly changed. The issues and social movements important to her at 18 have gone mainstream - both for good and bad - with the conversations wider reaching, the language largely more nuanced, and multiple components appropriated by capitalism, but Ditto remains for the most part, at least, unchanged. “Gender identity as a whole, in the public eye, is starting to change: what masculine and feminine mean, and male and female,” she tells Clash ahead of Gossip’s forthcoming reunion. “Male feminism, it’s not the same as it was, the connotation is different now because we have a completely different idea of gender. It’s definitely more of an open topic but, I don’t feel discouraged, I feel like that’s just the way it is.” Also featured in this issue are These New Puritans, Lil Miquela, Conan Gray, Grace Carter, Valee, Sheryl Crow, and much more.
