Artist Most Likely

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Artist Most Likely

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The Herald Sun, Australia (Sunday Magazine)
19 September, 2002

Artist MOST likely

Bic Runga

Original article is at: Herald Sun

Date: Sunday, 15 September 2002

By: ANGELA PULVIRENTI

Bic Runga went from writing out the words to Crowded House songs as a kid to opening shows for Neil Finn. Now this New Zealand beauty with the seductive voice is ready to take on the world. She talks to ANGELA PULVIRENTI about music, men and her mixed heritage

She is part Chinese and part Maori and one glance at Bic Runga is enough to make you wish you had similar genes. She has a kind of beauty that renders most of us green with envy - and a voice to match: distinctive, seductive and addictively soothing. Runga also writes and produces her own albums, plays an array of musical instruments and has sold more copies of her 1997 debut than any other home-grown album in New Zealand music history - including Crowded House.
In person, Runga is grounded, polite and gorgeous. But don't let the sculpted features and delicate lyrics fool you: she has opinions. And she isn't afraid to air them.

Runga released her self-produced debut album Drive when she was 21. It went platinum seven times in NZ, shattering records and earning her seven Tui Awards (Kiwi ARIAs). "Anywhere else I would be filthy rich. As luck would have it, I sell a lot of records in the smallest territory in the world," she concedes without a trace of bitterness.

Not that the album didn't capture worldwide attention. The hauntingly lovesick Sway went Top 10 on the Australian singles charts and featured in 1999's hit film American Pie. "That certainly helped internationally because the movie was sooo huge. But I was just starting out, so I don't really think people directly associated the song with me."

Well, some people did. Neil Finn, for instance. So impressed was he with his fellow Kiwi crooner he took her with him on his 1998-99 Australia and NZ tour. "I can remember writing out the words to Don't Dream It's Over when I was a kid," Runga says. "I was so inspired that a New Zealander could have a hit in America. Next thing I know I'm opening his shows and going to his house for Christmas lunch."

Runga, now 26, doesn't describe every stage of the international promo trail with the same enthusiasm. "I enjoyed about 40 per cent of it," she says. "The rest of it was just talking shit and smiling politely. I was so driven and naive when I started out, I'd never even been overseas before. I thought the music industry was going to be exciting and magical, but I realised it's mostly about marketing and sales figures."

Spending the best part of two years touring cities across Europe and the US to support the release of Drive, Runga rarely had time to go home and was based for long periods in New York. Her disenchantment and the unfamiliar surroundings proved fertile grounds for songwriting. "It was easy to be self-reflective and write songs because I wasn't around people I could really confide in most of the time," she says. "When I wasn't living in a strange city I was on the road. By the end of the whole experience I was just really homesick and desperate to start making another album."

Early in '99, with a stash of melodies in her backpack, Runga headed home.
Not that home isn't without its difficulties. Runga has had her battles growing up part Maori/part Chinese in Christchurch. "It is a very caucasian city and it can be terribly racist," she says. "I always felt like the token brown person." She speaks with the same tempered grace whether she is addressing favourite subjects or ones that rile her. "There's also a real skinhead/white supremacy element in Christchurch which made me feel really unsafe at times."

She credits the stigma of being a cultural oddity with "toughening her emotional spine". "The Maori and Chinese are both warring peoples in some ways. They have very intense, heavy philosophies. As a result, I think standing up for myself is instinctive to me."

Nobody was going to stop Runga producing her second studio album, Beautiful Collision. "I saw it as an opportunity to really push my capabilities and to learn a lot about making records," she says.

Determined to transcend the melancholy of her debut, for this album she evoked the romantic grandeur of her Gershwin, Cole Porter and Edith Piaf influences to create a more spirited musical attitude. "Drive was basically born out of naivety - I was 19, had my heart broken and thought my world was over," Runga says. "But I kind of got over myself and especially after September 11 I thought, 'I've really got to stop writing such depressing music'."

The single Get Some Sleep playfully taps into the sleep-deprived nature of life on the road while the gracefully melodic Listening for the Weather captures the sting of longing to be home with more sweet sentimentality than despondency (it also happens to feature the vocal harmonies of Neil Finn). "I definitely think this album is more whimsical and uplifting and I consider that a step forward."

Runga says the recording of Beautiful Collision was a drawn-out process. "It took three years for me to feel content with this album. I worked in eight different studios in five different cities. I probably overthought a lot of things, but you can't be too spontaneous when you're still learning."

She makes no attempt to deny her "control freak" tendencies. "I do piss off people who I work with," she offers good-naturedly. "But I want what I want and not everybody gets that. I did work with 12 different engineers on this album - most of them are still speaking to me."

Not only did Runga write, compose and produce the songs on her follow-up album, she also played the acoustic guitar, electric guitar, harmonica, piano and drums. "I've been playing the drums since I was 11. I always have trouble getting rock drummers to do what I want them to do because I like the swing in my songs to be feminine. Sometimes it's just easier to do things yourself."

Early this year, Runga was voted the artist most likely to succeed by a worldwide delegation of Sony Music's most powerful executives. Ironically, an artist fiercely protective of her musical integrity will have the support of one of the world's biggest and most experienced marketing machines when her album launches in the US and UK later this year.

"I'm sure I'll look back and think, 'Did you really understand the opportunities you had'," she says. "It's not that I'm not grateful, it's just that I've never really seen great success and it's not something I aspire to."

Runga is similarly nonchalant about the notion of fame and celebrity and prefers to live in a serene bush setting about an hour out of Auckland. "We don't really regard people as famous in New Zealand - except perhaps for sporting stars." Not that she hasn't experienced minor repercussions of being a recognisable identity in NZ. "It's just a bit weird when your friends start treating you like you're a big deal. It kind of makes your social life more complicated."

What about men? Do fame and success intimidate them? "I actually don't care if it intimidates men. I don't really care too much about men. Some men are cool and some are . you know . totally hopeless.

"It's like anything, some people will never get you and you just have to move on to the people who do. It's probably easier to get what other people want for you. But in the end, it's what you want for you that should only ever count."

Beautiful Collision is out now.

Bic Runga plays The Cornish Arms on September 22 and 23.