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2003 Media Interviews

Under Surveillance- New Artists You Should Know About
Bic Runga

Original article is at: AccessMag.com

Date: December 2002 - January 2003 edition

By: Sean Plummer

She’s not technically a new artist but have you heard of her? Bic Runga released her debut album, Drive, back in 1997. A charming collection of intimate pop songs and wistful ballads, it was a smash in the then 21-year-old’s home country of New Zealand and posted modest sales internationally, although arguably her biggest North American success was landing her breezy single ‘Sway’ in the original American Pie film.

Five years later, her record company, Sony affiliate Columbia, has released Drive’s follow-up, Beautiful Collision, into a pre-Christmas marketplace already crowded with big name releases. If the record sinks into oblivion, a fate Bic seems resigned to despite enthusiastic critical response and recent club residencies in Vancouver and Los Angeles, it won’t phase the self-possessed Kiwi.

“I’m certainly no priority in America,” she reasons from her Vancouver hotel room. “And the fact that Sony America doesn’t think it’s going to be that successful is kind of a compliment in some ways because I’ve seen really bad music marketed well and therefore sold well.” She pauses and laughs. “The world’s run amuck.”
Bic’s outlook, a equanimous mix of hope and hopelessness, is hard won. She criss-crossed America relentlessly in the wake of Drive’s release, exhausting herself both physically and emotionally. The experience is documented in Beautiful Collision’s first single, ‘Get Some Sleep’.

“I was living in New York for two years and using that as a base while I was on the road. So I toured America really extensively and would turn back to New York in the weeks I had off. And the whole two-year experience... I was pretty sleep-deprived. Being on the road can be really crazy. It’s a comment about being somewhere between banal and insane.”

Coming off the road in 1999, Bic started on her second record. But progress was slow and, two years in, she found herself “losing direction.” She credits fellow New Zealander Neil Finn, ex of Split Enz and Crowded House, with getting her back on track. (Finn ended up singing and playing on three tracks.)

“He reinvigorated my interest in it and brought this empathy for what I was doing that no one else had really presented me with,” she says. “There I was with someone who fully understood how difficult it was. When it was [explained] to your friends who work in offices, it’s a luxury problem, trying to nut out a record. But it is difficult, it’s really difficult.”

Her labours bore fruit: Beautiful Collision pays off both artistically and emotionally. Deceptively simple, the album’s 12 songs delve into the power and elusiveness of love from the viewpoint of someone who has had their heart — but not spirit — broken more than once.

“I like growing up,” says the now 26-year-old. “I’m really enjoying being on the wrong side of 25. Things get better and better. I know more. As much as being naïve was kind of blissful, there’s a lot to be said for real insight, and you only get that through experience, and my songs definitely reflect that. They reflect a real romantic hopelessness about love and a real idealism about it, but it’s all grounded in a healthy cynicism towards it as well.”

Bic applies this same “healthy cynicism” to her career. “I think I just had one too many industry lunches,” she says of her impatience with the music business. “A lot of the time you’re surrounded by people who don’t really love music, and when you’re outnumbered, so to speak, you question where the reality is. So it’s my reality versus their reality, and if they think that Britney Spears is really really great then maybe she is, you know? And I do think she is a great entertainer and all that but it’s not even the same planet as what I’m living in.”

She doesn’t “think much of the industry. But it is what it is, and it just makes me cling harder to my music. It just makes me feel like that is the haven for me, and not the photoshoot or the videoshoot or the record company meeting, and that makes me protect my music more.”