Comparing the chaste words to some of the “violent” lyrics in modern-day rap songs, Jamaica-born Mitchell says: “There is certainly something so clean and pure about those songs. We used to sing Brown Girl in the Ring at the playground back home in Jamaica. At the moment, there’s such little hope in the lyrics we hear. I do worry about the message and where the message is coming from.
“If the heart of the story is dark then that’s a message that the kids will receive. People are so aggressive.”
The bubbly figure beaming back at me across Zoom could not be further removed from the belligerent and hostile culture she describes.
A born-again Christian who first started belting out some of Boney M’s now best known tracks from the congregation of her church in Clarendon, Jamaica, where she grew up, she had no plan to enter the music business – let alone be the voice of three of the UK’s all time top 20 singles.
As the band’s main vocalist, she was at the heart of an extraordinary phenomenon which saw the four-piece disco act dominate the UK and European charts alongside fellow continental megastars Abba.
“Music plays a part in all of our lives, whether we want to be singers or not,” she chuckles. “I never thought of myself as being a singer, to be honest with you, until it actually happened.”
Liz was just 11 when she was sent on a plane to Britain in June 1963 to be reunited with her parents, who were among the Windrush generation.
“I just remember it being very cold and not knowing anyone,” she recalls.
Her father Norman and mother Lowes had travelled ahead and left Liz in the care of her grandparents while they established themselves in Harlesden, north London. Norman, now 100, and Lowes, 94, still live nearby.
By September, she had been enrolled into a state comprehensive where she soon gained a reputation for her soulful voice as she would sing with her girlfriends in the school cloakroom.
“Someone heard me one day and said: ‘Oh, you really can sing, can you help me with my audition?’ And then this audition turned out to be my audition as well and the rest of it is all history.”
Liz, who had not only been brought up on gospel music but also the likes of the Beatles and Aretha Franklin, ended up accompanying the friend for an audition for Hair, the musical.
Against the wishes of her parents, who begged her to “get a proper job”, she joined the chorus line for the show’s 1970 run in West Germany, where she performed alongside fellow wannabe Donna Summer.
“Donna wasn’t famous at that time,” she recalls. “We were just young people trying to make it.”
