"They told me to change my name. They also told me to sing other people's songs." How Joan Armatrading refused to compromise, baffled session pros, and made the album that set her on the path to stardom

Joan Armatrading headshot.

“I thought Pam was great,” Joan Armatrading says of her early lyric-writing partner, Pam Nestor. “She was totally different from me. Pam did all the things that I didn’t do [laughs].”

Armatrading is going back in time with Classic Rock to revisit the record that put the singer-songwriter in the public eye: Whatever’s For Us. Released in November 1972 on the brand-new Cube Records imprint and produced by Gus Dudgeon, it demonstrated the 21-year-old’s flair for adding sophisticated, soul-laden melodies to Nestor’s lyrics. Then there was that voice, and that musicianship on guitar and piano.