Tell you who really likes saying “Music is life or death. Music is everything”: Kate Nash. It’s jarring. Beyond “a sixth former who just saved up for a guitar”, I, like you, have never heard a human being say those words, but here in Kate Nash: Underestimate the Girl (BBC Three, from Sunday) it’s a sort of humming mantra. Did you ever think … music could be life or death? Did you ever think … music could be everything? Watch Kate Nash say it, endlessly for 86 minutes, and find out.
We should start with two disclosures: one, I sincerely feel the Kate Nash line “You said I must eat so many lemons/ ’cos I am so bitter” from 2007’s No 2 hit Foundations has inflected every argument I’ve ever had in my entire romantic career, and I hold her personally responsible for all of them as a result; and two, Underestimate the Girl is a documentary about how Kate Nash has been consistently attacked and written off by the media and smug white men for her whole career, and now it’s time to take back control and &c, &c, &c, and what I am saying, as a member of the media and a smug white man, is: Kate Nash has got me over a barrel here. She has absolutely played a blinder. I am writing this review with one hand tied behind my back. There is nothing I can say.
But … well. Here’s the thing: Underestimate the Girl sets itself up to be an account of a toxic music industry and all the wrongs and backstabbings that Nash has suffered as a result of her position in and around it – an intimate artist-shot portrait that takes her from “Brit-winning industry golden girl” to “DIY riot grrrl dumped by her label via text” – but it basically never quite becomes what it promises it’s going to be.
The opening section is fine enough – lots of archive footage alongside some insight into how her debut album Made of Bricks happened and the sudden jolt of fame that came with it – and then it devolves into being about not really very much at all. There is a sequence where Kate Nash buys a TV. On more than one occasion, I have watched scenes where Kate Nash gets slightly lost driving a car around a city, and does that head-down-and-squint-up thing everyone does when they get lost. I am introduced to Kate Nash’s dog. Did I need to meet Kate Nash’s dog? This is a thing I wonder, now. I know Kate Nash’s dog’s name. Did I ever really need to know that?
As a snapshot of an artist in flux, Underestimate the Girl is interesting enough – the arc takes Nash from LA to London, from label stability to Kickstarter-assisted independent success, and ends with a triumphant homecoming show to an adoring crowd, so it’s quite feelgood – but at times it really does feel a lot more like an SD card dump than an exercise in storytelling. (There is a bit where I watched Kate Nash’s drummer read out a text from her mum. I did not need to do that.)
Would it have been better with a tighter edit and a 40-minute running time? Undoubtedly, yes. Am I being yet another negative voice in media for saying that? Sadly, I am. Please don’t make a documentary renouncing me, Kate Nash. I am already sorry for what I said.
