Picture perfect Melua
Katie Melua: Pictures
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Tuesday, 25, Sep 2007 11:00
Katie Melua is releasing her third album next month, with its first single If You Were a Sailboat hitting the shelves at the end of September. Pictures is a thematic album in true Melua style: haunting lyrics, melancholic melodies and the wonderful voice of a top-selling British female artist.
InTheNews caught up with the 23-year-old songstress to discuss the album's launch and find out why you don't want to call her a 'celebrity'.
Choosing the first single was difficult for Katie, who finds it impossible to pick her own favourite track on the album: "They're all different and mean different things … I hate picking singles," she says. In the end If You Were a Sailboat made the cut as "lots of people liked it".
The video for the song features Katie in a boat rowing through changing dreamlike scenes. Shot in Prague, the video is directed by the "brilliant directing team" Babanuki. Katie says she loves the "German surrealism" of the video and the fact that it reminds her of a fairytale.
Katie co-wrote six tracks on the new album, which also features a cover of In My Secret Life by Leonard Cohen. A cover of Prince's Under the Cherry Moon was recorded for the album but failed to make the final cut for Pictures: "We decided it didn't really add much to the album as a whole."
But while her fans will be delighted about the traditional Katie sound of Pictures, the album does reflect a changing Melua who is no longer the 18-year-old who brought us Closest Thing to Crazy.
According to the singer, the most notable difference between Pictures and her first two albums - Call off the Search and Piece by Piece - is that for the first time, the creative team had a concept in mind for the album. A cinematic theme runs like a thread through the songs, weaving Hollywood history from Mary Pickford to the spaghetti western song Dirty Dice.
"The fact that I am a bit older, have different interests, have more experiences and that I have grown and developed as an artist means that this album would be different in some way from the first two. I would not want to just try and emulate the success of the previous albums but I also don't feel the need to change for change's sake or to please anyone other than myself," she says.
There is "a lot more diversity" in Pictures than in her previous albums, particularly in the music separate from the lyrics. While Pictures is still essentially Katie, it explores different genres such as reggae, rock and more up tempo beats than before.
"Me and Mike wanted to inject another element," she says, referring to her collaboration with Mike Batt - the producer behind label Dramatico and the man instrumental to her success so far.
However, this is the third and final album for now for the musical pairing; as Katie is set to branch out on her own a bit more. The decision was a mutual one, she says, and one that was made after completing Piece by Piece. "We decided that three is a good number," Katie says, pointing out that the so-called split is amicable.
"People don't realise how involved he is," she says of the man who helped her shoot to superstardom. The decision to conclude their collaboration will enable Katie to develop further musically, she says, while Batt will be able to pursue other projects. "I've kept him very busy over the last few years," the singer jokes.
And while the prospect of a new chapter in her musical career is certainly an exciting one, Katie is not rushing into anything. She admits that she has not yet started thinking about collaborators and that the plan is to take her time.
"I don't want to give any clues," she says about what the future holds for her musically, but predicts that her sound will change. "It will not be the same kind of music … not the same kind of thing," is all she will reveal.
January will see Katie embark on a tour that will go "everywhere", while she remains involved with working for good causes, particularly Save the Children. Her past drives this involvement, says Katie, who was born in Georgia and has since witnessed the fall of communism and the country's struggle to rebuild the economy. Her family lived in Belfast during the Troubles, meaning that her early years had almost constant political undertones.
"I was always interested in the world of politics," she says, and her involvement with Save the Children is driven by the fact that she had "lived it myself".
Being successful offers her a platform to talk about these issues, with Katie jumping at the opportunity to talk about them in interviews. But don't call her a celebrity. "To be honest, if someone uses the word 'celebrity' on me, I cringe," she says. "It sounds f*****g pretentious but I'd rather be known as 'successful artist'.
"I think I've managed quite well … I'm not in the tabloids and the [paparazzi] leave me alone." It was a conscious decision at the start of her career to take the incognito road, Katie says, but her mature and professional demeanour makes it hard to imagine her stumbling out of clubs or joining the rehab/no knickers brigade.
Finally, can Katie describe Pictures in five words? "Ooh blimey. Diverse, emotional, thoughtful, exciting. Is that four? Darker."
Karen Moller
To see Katie's latest video click here