Interviews

Launch.com
14 August, 1998

From Shoeseller to Songstress.
David John Farinella

Web site: http://www.launch.com/music/content/1,5850,157700,00.html?vo=

To most of the world, Bic Runga may still be an unknown quantity, but back in her native New Zealand, the 22-year-old songstress is already a star. Late last year, following the NZ release of her debut album Drive (Columbia), Runga found herself in the enviable position of chart-topping pop icon. The whiz-bang-boom success was a shock to her system. "I'm getting my head around it, this is still my internship," she says. "I'm still trying to work it out without imploding. It's crucial to understand that what you do is a job and it's not any more special than the job you had when you were selling shoes to people, which I've done. I think I was just as interesting, or just as not interesting, when I was selling shoes."

Interesting or not, most cobblers in the world can't belt out a tune like "Sway" or the hauntingly beautiful "Bursting Through." Though Runga's songs are innocently intimate, she's quick to point out that the goal of Drive was not to feign emotion. "People who set out to be moving or emotional seldom succeed. Moving people is something you do inadvertently and it's never born out of trying, because people can see through that," she says.

For the past six months Runga has taken up residence in New York City, playing small cafe shows around town. Despite being half a world away from her hometown of Christchurch, New York is vaguely familiar to her. "The day I moved to New York I got a real sense that it was like Sesame Street, because I grew up watching Sesame Street with all the little fire hydrants and buses and grocery stores. The whole place is surreal to me," she says with a small laugh, before adding that she won't be making New York her permanent home. "I really appreciate the fact that I'm still moved by it and I don't want to be immune to it. It's just weird, it's creepy, it's like being on TV all the time."

Recently, Runga jumped off the small screen and into the Summer sheds, joining Lilith Fair's acoustic stage. More than anything, she's grateful for the opportunity. "When you read rock history books, you read about Jimi Hendrix and Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan and the festivals they all played at, and this is quite a historic event," she explains. "I'm really privileged to be playing a small part in it."

Though Runga confesses, "I've always wanted to do things quickly, so I've never really taken the time to enjoy any of it," she's been forced to cool her jets a bit this year as her star rises in the States. But waiting a while for the rest of the music world to catch up has its benefits. "The point is just to enjoy the ride," she says. "I think success for me is a long-term career. Music is something I can't help but doing, and if I had a No. 1 album next week it really wouldn't leave anywhere for me to go. I just want to keep learning and making records that I'm happy with, rather than making records that I think will sell."