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Why Your Critics Shouldn’t Keep You From Making Art
The bittersweet redemption of Vashti Bunyan
May 1965, British singer-songwriter Vashti Bunyan released her first single, “Some Things Just Stick In Your Mind.” Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song was not a hit.
Bunyan wasn’t into the swinging London scene so she and her art school boyfriend, having no car and no money for petrol, as she put it, clip-clopped out of town in a horse-drawn carriage up the A6 bound for Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. On the long journey, she wrote songs, and when the couple arrived, they started a family. Her life looked, I like to imagine, a lot like the album cover of 1970’s Just Another Diamond Day, the result of being coaxed back to London to give her recording career another shot.
Just Another Diamond Day was also not a hit. Critics panned the record’s hippie optimism and simple nursery rhyme sounds which, like most criticism, reveals more about the critics than the work itself.
Bunyan thought, “‘Oh, well, I’ve made another mistake. They must be right. It must be rubbish. I’ll never pick up a guitar again.’ So I didn’t.”
In 1969, Vashti Bunyan was back home on the island of Berneray beginning her 30-Year Pause. In articles about Bunyan, this part is always told as ellipsis, as if it…
