Bic's Collision Course

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The Daily Telegraph
12 September, 2002

Bic's Collision Course with fate

"Refreshing ... bic runga doesn't say much but her music does"

Original article is at: The Daily Telegraph

Date: Thursday, 12 September 2002

By: MATT FRILINGOS, MATTHEW FRILINGOS

``I'd love to be Missy Elliot,'' says Bic Runga. It's a strange sentence to hear coming from a singer best known for acoustic guitar-based ballads.

Made internationally famous in 1997 by her song Sway, a moving acoustic number which was eventually added to the American Pie film soundtrack, Runga now admits she struggled for a great deal of time trying to produce an album peppered with hip-hop beats.

``I pretty much spent a year trying to make beats and it's just not my forte,'' she says.

Runga eventually returned to her preferred medium and this year released her long-awaited second album, Beautiful Collision.

She is refreshingly frank when doing interviews to promote her work.

``I run out of things to talk about, actually,'' she laughs. ``I can't think how else to make it interesting, or even know what I want to say.

``I think it's a pretty good record and I think that people will like it, I daresay people should own it,'' she deadpans.

Fortunately, the part-Maori, part-Chinese Kiwi singer's work is good enough to speak for itself.

Runga's debut album Drive is the biggest-selling local artist album in New Zealand music history.

She plays down her achievement: ``It sounds cool when you say it but I don't know that it means anything financially -- I'm still poor,'' she laughs.

At New Zealand's Tui awards (the equivalent of the ARIAs), Drive won album of the year, record of the year, best vocal performance and best songwriter.

Following the album's release Runga toured for two years straight, eventually basing herself in the US, where she began work in late 1999 on her second album.

Throughout the recording process in New York, Runga continued to play a series of her trademark live acoustic gigs in her adopted city, sometimes with by a band, sometimes solo.

In view of the success her debut album achieved, Runga says she felt a certain responsibility to her audience while recording Beautiful Collision.

The new album's sound is instantly recognisable if you've heard Runga's earlier work but her songwriting is evidently more mature.

``You do have a certain duty to your audience not to change too much but certainly not to repeat yourself as well,'' she says.

``For me it was just more about making sure that I ended up with some better work this time around.''

Runga firmly believes maturity added to the make-up of the new album -- she is now 26 and was 21 when Drive (which she produced herself) was released.

``This time my songwriting was better and my production skills were better -- it took three years to make -- I got through it in the end but it was hard work,'' she says.

Beautiful Collision (sony) is out now. Bic Runga plays the basement on monday 16 and tuesday 17 September.