Michael Weston King Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore

Michael Weston King didn’t plan to make a new solo record...
The English singer-songwriter, who, with his wife, Lou Dalgleish, makes up the country-soul duo, My Darling Clementine, was working on their latest album in spring 2024 – initial recording took place in the small Add a Band studios in rural Mid Wales, near to where Michael and Lou had relocated in 2023, and where Michael had made his solo album, The Struggle, in 2022.
But, in the summer of 2024, a personal tragedy changed everything...
Michael and Lou lost their six-year-old granddaughter, Bebe, in the Southport attacks in July that year, and, as much as they tried to carry on and make a My Darling Clementine album, which was going to be a record about starting over and beginning a new life in the country, with the weight of so much sadness and grief bearing down on them, it just didn’t seem the right thing to do.
The tragic events of summer 2024 not only changed the music they were making and the songs they were writing, it also altered their outlook on life.
Recognising that everyone’s grief is individual – even that of a husband and wife – Michael and Lou needed to channel their suffering via their own individual creativity and in their own way , rather than in collaboration, so they worked on two solo albums.
Lou’s record will be out later this year, while Michael’s – Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore – is released on April 4, 2026 – Bebe’s birthday.
Opening song, ‘The Golden Hour’, is Michael’s take on the tragic events of summer 2024 and references how the murder of the three young girls in Southport and their families’ grief was hijacked and exploited by the far-right – ‘We took our sorrow home – some took it to the street...’
It’s a defiant and rousing anthem – a widescreen epic, with strong echoes of early Springsteen.
The album’s brooding title track – another song informed by the loss of Bebe – is a dark, haunting and funereal Southern Gothic-style ballad in the vein of Nick Cave, while the cinematic ‘Die of Shame’, with its spy-film guitar licks and dramatic string arrangement, concerns itself with the media coverage of the Southport tragedy.
The moving ‘La Bamba In The Rain’ – set in the English seaside town of Southport, where Michael was raised – addresses the issue of why the ethnicity and immigration status of the perpetrator of the attacks in the town was irrelevant: ‘There’s no hope for us this time, when every little thing is treated as a sin or crime. When the Union Jack’s unfurled and placed around the waist of every teenage boy and girl.’
Final song, the stripped-back, delicate, and lullaby-like ‘Sally Sparkles’, was inspired by the ‘stage name’ Bebe used when she performed on the swing in her back garden.
Partly recorded in rural Wales and not so rural Sheffield, Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore was produced by Michael, along with Colin Elliot (Richard Hawley, Jarvis Cocker, Self Esteem), who also mixed the album.
The musicians on the record include Dean Beresford (Richard Hawley, Imelda May) on drums, Matt Holland (Van Morrison) on trumpet, Shez Sheridan (Richard Hawley, Duane Eddy, Nancy Sinatra) on guitar, Clovis Phillips (Bill Callahan, Jerry DeCicca, Jeb Loy Nichols) on bass, keys and guitars, Clive Mellor (Liam Gallagher) on harmonica, and American friends, Erin Moran – aka A Girl Called Eddy – and Jeb Loy Nichols on backing vocals.
Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore cannot be described as ‘country', or indeed ‘Americana’, it is simply Michael’s instinctive musical reaction to the events of summer 2024.
A large part of the album is influenced and affected by Michael’s unimaginable personal loss, but not every song on the record is about the tragedy.
There are a few lighter moments too, like ‘A Field of Our Own’, a gorgeous, folk-tinged and slightly jazzy tale about relocating to the countryside and, quite literally, finding pastures new; ‘When I Grow Old’, which is a bittersweet reflection on ageing, and the unabashed and uplifting love song, ‘Grow Old With Me,’ with its soulful horn arrangement and honest lyric: ‘Yes, I love being here on my own... I still need to know you’re coming home.’
Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore is an outstanding album of wonderfully-crafted, emotional and atmospheric songs – often dark and painfully honest, but not without moments of wry humour, stoicism and compassion.
Talking about making music since the tragedy, Michael says: “To be honest, it was almost impossible to write about anything else. I hope I am now creatively exhausted on the subject, but I think it will affect my writing for ever, just as indeed, the loss of Bebe will.”
Nothing Can Hurt Me Anymore by Michael Weston King is released on April 4, 2026: Bebe's Birtday