A faster, poppier, punky song today marks a return from those hot wild west summer days of Baby Girl. I’ve massively enjoyed watching the enigma of Queen Anne shimmer into view this past year. The two crazy brains behind the concept, Katie Silverman and Sandy Chila, have created an entire world for this music to live inside, including a pop microdrama over on socials. Links to all my previous articles, including a compilation of the microdrama, are at the bottom of this post.
said you wanted a ticket
to a better place
run far from the fears
that you couldn’t face
so where are you now?
Americans will need no explanation for the drawing of a bus on the artwork to this single. Even us Brits have heard of the famous long-distance Greyhound bus service. It’s as iconic as Route 66 and remains an anomaly: a western/northern country without a proper train service in a land where the ‘haves’ fly everywhere and the ‘have nots’ prefer to drive. The clientele left over is decidedly marginalised.
When I first heard that Greyhound was shuddering down the tracks, I picked up a book received last Christmas: Greyhound by Joanna Pocock, in which the author makes a new pilgrimage across America by bus, twenty years after making the same trip.
The contrasts in the America she discovered using this method were stark. Other women writers such as Simone de Beauvoir, Ethel Mannin and Irma Kurtz have all made use of Greyhounds. Pocock herself notes that the male travel writers tend to drive themselves around the US in automobiles, a contrast she finds meaningful indeed.
so you made it to the city
with some money to spend
and the girls who say you’re pretty
they’re not really your friends
i guess i don’t count
For a while, Stevie Nicks’ father was a senior executive of the Greyhound company, before the Germans bought it out, and pre-fame Stevie has fond memories of using her access-all-areas family pass to get into those parts of America that are a little harder to reach.
This record also reminded me of a beloved Shelby Lynn track: Jesus on a Greyhound. She met a man on the bus who struck up a conversation with the young Shelby. She felt able to tell him anything, and confessed all her sins, before later on the journey starting to believe this guy with scarred hands was in fact the real Jesus.
and i should really get home but
no use being alone cuz
i’ll be thinking of you
so dance with me on the table
i’m a little unstable
hold me up like you do
Just to complete the picture, Bobbie Gentry sang Greyhound Goin’ Somewhere and made it sound like a romantic way to travel, a far cry from today’s Greyhounds. Perhaps Miranda Lambert’s more recent Greyhound Bound for Nowhere is more realistic.
This week’s Queen Anne song Greyhound takes me back to the duo’s cover of Bowie’s Let’s Dance. It’s rocky, poppy and quick. There are a lot of words. She’s angry this time, our popstar sensation, full of energy with a lot to say. I really feel that every Queen Anne single is unique, and takes us further into their imagined world.
If you feel the need for a different way to explain the Queen Anne ‘tude this segment from a recent non-Q&A (or Q&Non-A) speaks non-volumes.
Q: what is this song about?
A: it’s not that long. you can just listen to it in the time it would take me to explain.Q: can we have a hint?
A: that is why songs have titles. the title is a hint about the content of the song.Q: isn’t a greyhound a dog?
A: it is also an intercity bus service and an alcoholic beverage. that is what makes my art open to interpretation, and therefore good.
By the way, that reference to a Greyhound cocktail is connected to the buses. It was originally a gin+grapefruit drink that in later years has been made with vodka. Grapefruit is the key flavour and this iconic drink was served in Greyhound restaurants inside their bus terminals.
Regular readers will know that Katie Silverman also moonlights as both a Hollywood actor and a Harvard student. She can really sing too, for all the nonchalant give-a-shit attiude of the Queen Anne persona. If you hadn’t realised it yet, she really is one to watch.
There is much more on Queen Anne, the best band you have yet to hear, on Instagram and on their own website. You can also buy and stream on Bandcamp. Queen Anne were picked out by 1883 magazine as a 2026 artist to watch.
