‘TASTE IS A FORM OF PERSONAL CENSORSHIP’
– Mark Stewart
Mute have today announced details of the release of ‘Neon Girl’, the latest single to be taken from Mark Stewart’s recently announced eighth solo album, The Fateful Symmetry.
Featuring backing vocals by longtime affiliate Gina Birch (The Raincoats) and co-produced by Youth, ‘Neon Girl’ was inspired by the infectious “singalong” chorus’ of iconic French singer George Brassens and the “cinematic staging” of the classic film The 39 Steps. Stewart’s eloquent, singular lyricism is as prescient as always, and evermore poignant now: “His arms were too short to box with God (sorry the irony’s lost on me)”.
The video for ‘Neon Girl’ was created by Peter Harris and Hugo Glendinning.
‘Neon Girl’ follows the release of ‘Memory Of You’, the first track to be lifted from The Fateful Symmetry, which was completed shortly before Mark’s untimely passing in April 2023.
Released on 11 July 2025 on Mute, the album is a vital new masterwork and timely reminder of the groundbreaking and enduringly influential artist Mark Stewart.
Across an illustrious career of pioneering music with The Pop Group, Mark Stewart & Maffia and as a solo artist, Stewart has produced a seminal body of work, galvanised by the DIY ideals of punk, radical politics, protest movements, theory, philosophy, technology, art and poetry. With The Fateful Symmetry, Stewart’s abiding legacy as a ‘revered countercultural musician’ (The Guardian) is sustained, with an album as fearless and visionary as his best work.
Testifying to Stewart’s prolific, unrelenting ingenuity, and signifying one of his most intimate, empowering statements, The Fateful Symmetry is an astonishingly expressive and innovative record; a fierce and beautiful manifesto for a better world. The inimitable, titanic Mark Stewart, never normalised, always extraordinary.
The Fateful Symmetry is released on 11 July 2025 via Mute, Stewart’s long-standing label, helmed by old friend and kindred spirit Daniel Miller.
THE FATEFUL SYMMETRY TRACKLISTING
- Memory Of You
- Neon Girl
- This Is The Rain
- Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime (Bébe Durmiendo Cumbia Bootleg)
- Stable Song
- Twilight’s Child
- Crypto Religion
- Blank Town
- A Long Road
