(click on the photo for music and more)
It's 5:30pm and Katie Melua has just finished one of the most exhaustive sound checks I've ever heard - which was an incredible performance in itself, complete with a cover of "The Love Cats" that even the Cure would applaud.
On this sultry Boston afternoon, Melua is sitting next to me on one of the velvet-leather benches upstairs at the Paradise club, where in just a few hours she will perform, her star having risen quite quickly in the UK and Europe where her single "The Closest Thing To Crazy," from Katie's album Call Off The Search, hit the top of the charts, garnering Melua a performance before and praise from none other than HRH Queen Elizabeth II, which is great, and no doubt, Melua is proud, but one senses that it is the anonymous person in the audience that matters at least as much, possibly more, than this. Melua doesn't say this, but she seems to care a great deal about the everyman/everywoman. Yet despite all this attention, Katie Melua, at only nineteen years old, remains profoundly grounded.
We've seen lesser talents and bigger egos play the role, but Melua, who disdains the successive assembly line of sexed-up and mostly identical teeny-poppers that the music industry seems to have in endless supply, is not cut of that cloth. She remains her own person. "It's just not me," she says of the industry standard of teen idols, her huge, honey-colored eyes narrowing a bit as she speaks. So who then, is Katie Melua? This is tricky: Melua, unlike so many of her contemporary counterparts, does not fit neatly into any type, either in looks or sound.
Her music is by turns London Jazz, Motown, a drop of Norah Jones, Nick Drake, her tone as dulcet and angelic as Kate Bush, a bit Ella Fitzgerald, and all with the incredible range of Sinead O'Conner and storyteller cum poet quality of Bob Dylan - a potent elixir that so far, crowds can't get enough of.
Like one of her favorite musicians, the late Nick Drake ("Bryter Layter," she says smiling), she defies definition. Drake, sadly, received the bulk of his fame after his thought-to-be-suicide overdose. Melua, though she may sing a few lines about drugs, steers well-clear of the scene.
She is a smart, studious young woman, who, one senses would rather curl up with a good book (the last, The DaVinci Code, and after that, Cracking the DaVinci Code) than snort lines - she's just not that kind of girl. She "loves to read" she says, citing Iris Murdoch as one of her favorites. This is not just another pop singer. In fact, Melua is a classically trained musician (studying in London), who began writing her own songs about four years ago with a guitar lent by a boyfriend and the aid of some mixing software on her home computer.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Great job, very fine profile and introduction to someone who would really appear to have a future. That she is only 19 really gives one pause.
2 - srp
she really is an incredible young woman. not just as a performer, but as a person. it's rare to see someone her age and getting so much attention be so absolutely grounded and centered... none of this has gone to her head in any negative way, and she's not of the same cloth as the teen "pop" crowd at all. I expect she will be around for quite a long while. I certainly hope so. Though i tell you, photos do not do her justice: she is an incredibly beautiful young woman as well - very natural, gamine, no fakery, which is just so refreshing.
Glad you liked the interview. I went for less standard; more of a portrait.
s.
3 - Kiersten Marek
Katie Melua's voice transports and transcends. Her blues are heavy and soulful, yet uplifting for their sheer expressiveness. I've never heard anything quite like her and hope she can continue to keep her head screwed on straight once the world catches on to her glorious ways.
4 - Eric Olsen
very lovely comment Kiersten, thanks, and once again, great job on this Sadi!
5 - sadi
thanks K and thanks Eric --
Katie took a lot of flak for that album and some were really pretty harsh. To me, she is a young girl with some immense talent and perhaps not the management that she needs. I fear that her management is turning her into something she is NOT, witness, the rehearsal was amazing and she completely herself and sang the best version of "love cats" by the Cure that i have EVER heard. She's a real folk singer, and not a Norah Jones-er - and that is the direction she's being pushed. Nothing wrong with Norah Jones, but that's not Katie.
Yes, just my opinion, but i think if you had heard the rehearsal (i taped it and still listen to it), you'd be even more in awe in her talent. It's easy to write something nasty or pithy; she's just a kid and just starting out. I'm glad to know that there are others here who see the same bright spot that i saw there, and truly, you had to sit with her one-on-one to get a real sense of her beauty and poise.
With the right management and the right direction (read: folk, not jazz), she will go far.
Thanks for reading, as ever,
sade