Reviews
Timeoff Music
30 July, 2002
Romantic Notions
Original content copyright 2002 to Timeoff Pty Ltd., Brisbane, Australa
Original article is at: www.timeoff.com.au
30 July 2002
By: Julian Porter
If she was from another country, New Zealander Bic Runga might just be filthy rich!
Certainly a seven times platinum record, even in this country, would guarantee most of the trappings of success. Unfortunately for Runga, she’s made her most remarkable achievements in a country of three-and-a-half million people.
“Yeah, platinum is only 15,000 here, so seven times platinum is what? I don’t know,” Runga laughs. “My maths is atrocious!”
Of course, the system is designed to represent the impact of a record on the market more than pure sales figures and Runga’s 1997 debut Drive certainly had a huge impact in New Zealand. Those 105,000-plus sales made it the country’s biggest selling local artist album ever! So, just how famous is she at home?
“Famous enough – I mean, people stop me in the street all the time,” she says without a hint of irony. “But New Zealanders are so shy and retiring it’s not like they’re in your face or anything.”
If being hassled by the public is a concern, perhaps Runga would be best off keeping her profile at its currently manageable level in the States.
“We had some minor success getting the song ‘Sway’ on the American Pie soundtrack which sold really well there,” she says. “Now every time I go the America I hear it a lot in supermarkets. An awful lot! But nobody knows it’s by me, you know. Apart from that, relatively little happened. As far as the international public goes, I’m just starting out with this record.”
The record she refers to is the gorgeous Beautiful Collision. A nostalgic showcase of well-measured tunes arranged intelligently around a voice that’s equal parts purity and sass. While three years seems a lot of recording time, Runga explains she actually spent a lot of it gaining an industry education she didn’t have when she released Drive.
“My goal was really to learn about record making,” she says. “I realised I didn’t know enough about making records and it was a bit like putting myself through record production school. Going back to basics and learning my craft, both from the engineers I worked with and through a lot of self-discovery.”
One thing she discovered was an interest in exploring genres wider than the intelligent, contemporary pop for which she’s best known.
“I really like other eras – 60s Californian pop, 1930s romantic music. I like the waltz. I like a lot of dopey country as well. So it’s a very eclectic album.”
No doubt this interest in the past stems partly from Runga’s Chinese mother who, before meeting her Maori father spent time singing in the nightclub of a classy Malaysian hotel.
“She was incredibly beautiful,” Runga says. “I’ve seen photos of her with her ensemble – an upright bass-player, a vibraphone player and a pianist. Very old school… I do like the idea of having another life on another continent where you can just live some sort of romantic notion.”
Beautiful Collision is out now Columbia/Sony.
Original content copyright 2002 to Timeoff Music
