In Conversation: Sarah Jane Morris

Few artists embody resilience and creative independence quite like Sarah Jane Morris. First emerging through theatre before forging a distinctive musical career, Morris has long been celebrated for her powerful, soulful voice and her refusal to follow convention. From her early acting work to collaborations across jazz, rock, and world music, she has built a reputation as both a storyteller and an innovator. Her ambitious Sisterhood project—now continuing with Sisterhood 2—is perhaps her most personal undertaking yet: a deeply researched, passionately crafted tribute to the women who shaped her life and artistry.

We caught up with Morris as she briefly paused at home between performances to talk about the new album, the extraordinary journey behind it, and what comes next.

How are you doing—are you okay?

I’m okay, thank you. Just home for a few days, so I’m catching up with everything.

It’s an exciting time because Sisterhood 2 is out. The response to the first album was really warm—did you expect that when you started?

When I first began, it was really just a research project to get me through COVID. I don’t have a television, so my husband and I read to each other. I said, “Let’s find out about all these women who paved the way for me.”

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Over the years of writing about music, I’ve been fortunate to talk to a lot of amazing musicians. My favourite interview ever conducted with this outlet was late last summer when Sarah Jane Morris spoke to me about this album. It truly was a labour of love (and you can read the interview here) and now it’s here.

Born out of boredom during the lockdowns, Ms. Morris and her right-hand man guitarist Tony Rémy set to researching and writing songs about the lives of female singer-songwriters who have inspired her. She had started with a list of about fifty, she narrowed it down to ten. So what we have is the result of a lot of hard work, inspiration and dedication. Not only does it tell the stories of ten amazing artists, but they also wrote it in the styles that the artists had popularised and performed in. Ambitious? Unquestionably, but Ms. Morris has pulled this off with spectacular style. Maybe that should be styles plural, as this record takes in jazz and blues, along with gospel and soul, and does so with aplomb.......

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There’s a particular kind of confidence that comes from making a “concept record” late in a career: you stop chasing novelty for its own sake and start building worlds that feel inevitable.

The Sisterhood 2 finds Sarah Jane Morris—joined again by guitarist, co-writer and co-producer Tony Rémy—expanding the song-cycle she began in 2024 with The Sisterhood. Released on 6 March 2026, just ahead of International Women’s Day, this second volume offers 11 new originals written as portraits of trailblazing female singer-songwriters: not impersonations, not pastiche, but affectionate character studies shaped by musical fingerprints.

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Acclaimed pop, blues, jazz and soul singing sensation Sarah Jane Morris is proving once again that sisters are doing it for themselves with her new album Sisterhood 2.

Released on 6 March, the album collaboration with guitarist Tony Remy, features 11 tracks celebrating trailblazing female singer-songwriters of our time, including Dolly Parton, Amy Winehouse, Tracy Chapman, Joan Baez, Peggy Seeger and Sinead O’Connor.

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Interview: Sarah Jane Morris, Singer

by Naomi Johnson (Voice Community)

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Released once again in advance of International Women's Day, The Sisterhood 2 is a worthy successor to Sarah Jane Morris and Tony Rémy's celebrated 2024 album. It presents 11 more luminous portraits of female singer-songwriters – artists Morris calls her "essential lodestars" – each chosen for their excellence and originality, dual role as writer and interpreter, and artistic courage.

With her fabulously rich timbral quality and storytelling gift, Morris inhabits each subject while remaining unmistakably herself. In co-writer, co-producer and guitarist Rémy she has found the ideal creative foil. Album opener "Longing To Be Free" pays tribute to Peggy Seeger's life of musical activism, its extended outro lingering like a rallying cry. Opening with delicately layered, fingerpicked guitars and fiddle, the poignant "Oh Mother My Mother" honours Sinéad O'Connor by tapping into the mythological, transformative world of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Written for Tracy Chapman, "I Can Hear Jesus Weeping" delivers a melodically beautiful but biting rebuke of society's abandonment of the vulnerable.

"Love Wit and Stardust" captures Dolly Parton's generous spirit with a disarmingly funky chorus, while "Always Both and Never" conjures Joan Baez's world with richly layered guitars and Morris's voice doubled at the octave – heroism and hedonism in perfect tension. Bonnie Raitt's groove-driven tribute “Sweet Mama Raitt” gives Rémy room for a blazing solo, and Morris demonstrates rare interpretative subtlety in the Joan Armatrading offering, "Let Only Love Remain".

The wonderful “Crazy Angel” for Patti Smith possesses a pleasing grittiness, while the sepulchral funk of “Also Known As Etta James” (for Etta James) is a delicious homage to Janis Joplin’s role model and Bonnie Rait’s idol. The album closes magnificently with "The Dignity of Love" for Janis Ian, a Bacharach-rich, brass-and-strings celebration of love in all its forms. A fabulous collection which pulls you in a myriad of emotional directions.

Source: theartsdesk.com/new-music/morris-and-remy-return-more-essential-lodestars-sisterhood-2

Released yesterday to coincide with International Women’s Day, The Sisterhood will surely prove to be one of the brightest jewels in Sarah Jane Morris’s varicoloured discography.

A labour of love which Morris has been contemplating for two decades, the album presents a tribute to “my ten singers, my essential lodestars”, as she puts it, acknowledging and honouring female artists past and present who have inspired her own musical journey. Wonderfully arranged and stylistically diverse, Morris and her co-writer/co-producer Tony Rémy pull off a remarkable feat of crafting 10 songs which tell each singer-songwriter’s story while simultaneously capturing their musical and lyrical essence.

The multilayered title track serves up a deliciously funked-up homage to the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, while the trailblazing Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith, is celebrated in “Couldn't Be Without”. A monstrous backbeat and stacked up horns underpin “Tomorrow Never Happens”, a paean to Janis Joplin tellingly programmed directly after Joplin’s greatest musical inspiration.

As well as glorious tributes to Nina Simone (“So Much Love”), Rickie Lee Jones (“Jazz Side of the Road”) and Billie Holiday (“Junk In My Trunk”), “Rimbaud Of Suburbia” draws aofascinating line between the singular sound-world of Kate Bush and the striking free verse of the precocious French poet of the title, whose 1872 poem, Bonne pensée du matin, is heard in its entirety.

View original review on theartsdesk.com

Celebrating female artists and visionaries that have proven inspirations throughout her life and career, Sarah Jane Morris’ ‘The Sisterhood’ finds her at the pinnacle of creativity.

A representation of her musical foundations, the 10 songs on the record see the chart-topping singer pay tribute to Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox and Kate Bush.

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Click here to view full review on Retropop >

On International Women’s Day 8 March 2024, British soul, jazz and R&B singer Sarah Jane Morris launched her new album The Sisterhood.

It is her tribute to ten iconic women singers and songwriters, who have had a massive influence on the development of the popular song. This is Morris’s lock-down project. She and her husband artist Mark Pulsford spent the months of isolation studying the lives of pioneering singers and musicians, women whose music is world famous, but whose stories are less well known. Together Morris and Pulsford then wrote a series of song lyrics, each an illuminating, sometimes shocking tale from the lives of these remarkable women.

Morris then got together with her long time co-writer/co-producer/guitarist Tony Rémy to write the music. Each song would be absolutely contemporary, it would also reflect the styles, forms and influences of the artists depicted. The ten women chosen are: Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox and Kate Bush – representing a wide mixture of styles of popular music.

To honour the legacies of these stars, whilst creating new work demands a breadth of experience of different popular musical forms as well as great versatility in performance styles. Clearly Morris and Rmy have the necessary skills.

View full review on London Jazz News website >

Sarah Jane Morris is arguably most remembered for her pipe-belting performance on The Communards’ 1986 chart-smash ‘Don’t leave me this way’. However, since those heady days Morris has released fifteen solo albums that traverse a range of elements: jazz, pop, rhythm & blues, soul, 2014’s Africa-dedicated ‘Bloody Rain’ and a folk tribute to John Martyn in 2019. No rest for the committed.

Her new long-player out on the appositely named Fallen Angel label, ‘The Sisterhood’ is suitably released on International Women’s’ Day and is an artistic nod to her myriad influences, aesthetically, politically, vocally.

Ten sonic salutes to trailblazers, path-forgers and cultural cornerstones Morris herself terms her ‘lodestars’: Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Nina Simone, Miriam Makeba, Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Annie Lennox, and Kate Bush..........

.........‘The Sisterhood’ is a wonderful walk down memory lane, a wistful wander through past mistresses’ magnificence and sadly a depressing reminder of oppression, suppression and repression. Morris rights wrongs and sets thing straight in style.

Click here to view the original review on music-news.com