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‘You don’t sweat the small stuff when you nearly die’: Nadine Shah on grief, rehab and getting her groove back

A singular force in UK rock, the singer became isolated in grief, PTSD and addiction. But after ‘falling in love with everybody’ in rehab, she’s put her experiences into her biggest music yet

After her debut album, 2013’s Love Your Dum and Mad, written after the deaths of two former boyfriends, Shah became an ambassador for the mental health charity Calm; she has called out issues such as the music industry’s gender pay gap, the unfairness of the streaming economy for musicians, or the “racist bullshit” she’s faced because of her Muslim surname (her father is of Pakistani heritage). It is put to stellar use on Greatest Dancer, a strident goth banger inspired by the time she took some of her mum’s prescription meds in front of an episode of Strictly Come Dancing, and the operatic synthpop ballad Keeping Score – both feel primed for her current shows supporting Depeche Mode in huge arenas. She has been using the app to find clothes such as the black PVC catsuit on Filthy Underneath’s cover, and the Suspiria-ish red dress from punk designer Pam Hogg in the Topless Mother video – in which she rips up a homeware department’s-worth of feather pillows.

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