Episode 68: Karen Elson
Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Kat Rulach
4.8 • 527 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2022
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Karen Elson is a supermodel and singer-songwriter. We were born in the same year and I’ve admired her from afar for a long time, so it’s great to have got to actually speak to her via zoom at her home in Nashville.
Karen has a son and daughter with her ex, The White Stripes frontman Jack White.
Karen was born in Manchester but by the age of 16 she was travelling the world as a model. We talk about the treatment of young girls in the industry when she was young, how that’s changing, and about how she’d like to see that change further.
She tells me about her love of Nashville and how she strives to be just a normal mum to her kids, after seeing how privileged children she met as a model, were often not happy.
In 2020 she published new autobiography Red Flame, and in lockdown she released an EP called Radio Redhead, in which she sang some of her favourite covers as well as her own songs. A lockdown pastime we also have in common!
Spinning Plates is produced by Claire Jones. Post-production is by Richard Jones.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Sophia Lusbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to |
| 0:09.6 | to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. |
| 0:14.4 | I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, |
| 0:20.4 | so I spin a few plates myself. |
| 0:21.6 | Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, |
| 0:24.6 | but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. |
| 0:27.6 | I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. |
| 0:31.6 | Welcome to spinning plates. |
| 0:34.6 | Good day to you. |
| 0:36.6 | You can have to be a little hasty with chatting to you at this point because I am packing to go camping. |
| 0:47.3 | I'm taking my primary school malls on their um their big school i can't speak can't speak their big school |
| 1:00.3 | camping trip and there's going to be 50 families it's not organized by the school it's |
| 1:05.6 | organized by the parents and i'm packing and i don't know if I don't know how you guys feel about camping but from my point of view I've done it a few times and I'm always there's always a part where I'm like where am I leaving my house made of bricks with all the things in that I need and then trying to remember everything I use for 48 hours |
| 1:28.6 | and take all the essential versions of it just so I can wake up outdoors. I could just literally |
| 1:35.2 | go in the garden at like 6am and I'd get that same experience. But here I find myself and I'm going |
| 1:42.7 | to forget something. That is a certainty. |
| 1:46.0 | And I'm just trying to remember every single thing we might need. |
| 1:50.6 | And I've made life easy for myself. |
| 1:52.4 | You're going to judge me here. |
| 1:53.7 | I'm not even bringing a tent. |
| 1:55.4 | I've hired a bell tent, which I've never done before. |
| 1:58.1 | I promise, it's not my usual style. |
... |
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