Listen to Miranda, the new Frank Turner single celebrating his reconciliation with his trans parent

“My father is called Miranda these days. She’s a proud transgender woman and my resentment has started to fade …”

So begins Frank Turner’s striking new single, Miranda, a song inspired by the Hampshire-born singer/songwriter slowly rebuilding a relationship with his trans parent, following nine years of virtual silence. The pair were eventually brought together in 2018, at the bedside of Turner’s terminally-ill uncle, by which time his nemesis was living as Miranda.

“Immediately I felt that this was a person who was a lot more considerate,” Turner remembers in a new interview with The Guardian. “More aware of the people around them and of their impact on other people. Less boringly male and forthright. Miranda is a really nice person, and my dad was a prick.”

“When anger and resentment and rage didn’t die immediately,” he admits, “there was a lot for me to deal with.”

The new relationship between the pair would evolve slowly, and remains a work-in-progress. But where there was once only bitterness, hurt, rage and distrust, hope has taken root.

“She’s really fun, really chatty and she cares,” says Turner. “[She’s] interested in who I am and what I do, which my dad never was at all. It’s always going to be a work in progress, but we’re doing all right.”

FTHC is scheduled for release on February 4.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.