News Articles
Runga's release after lengthy production
Original content copyright 2002 to Otago Daily Times Online
Original article is at: Otago Daily Times Online
Date: 6 July, 2002
By: Shane Gilchrist
Half a decade since debut Drive thrust her to the
forefront of the New Zealand music scene and 18 months past the date she had
originally promised to deliver a finished second album to her sympathetic record
company, Bic
Runga
has come up for air. Now we can all stop holding our breath, writes SHANE
GILCHRIST.
Released this week, the follow-up to 1997's Drive has already had its fair share of media coverage, largely focused on the album's elephantine gestation. Fair? Unfair? Whatever. All the attention to time-frames merely serves to point out how high Runga stands in the musical pecking order, and how public and press alike have eagerly anticipated something new from a songsmith who had three top 20 singles (Sway , Bursting Through , and Drive ) by the age of 21.
Drive , the album, built on the success of the singles. On its release in August 1997, it entered the charts at No 1, a position it held for a month, and maintained a top 10 place in the album charts for 20 weeks. It earned Runga seven prizes at the 1998 New Zealand Music Awards, and two of its songs were included on the American Pie film soundtrack. At last count, sales had reached seven times platinum (105,000), making it the most successful album in New Zealand by a New Zealander. Overseas, sales are around the 70,000 mark.
For the former Cashmere High School pupil who took up drums when she was 11, guitar and piano in her mid-teens, and moved from her Hornby home to Auckland in 1994 to further her musical ambitions, the success has had more than a few spin-offs: a publishing deal with giant Warner-Chappell, a couple of Auckland houses (neither of which she lives in at present, preferring instead the surroundings of her boyfriend's flat), and a financial stability that few of her Kiwi peers enjoy.
Asked if she regards herself as financially comfortable, the 26-year-old is up-front. "Definitely, considering it's my job. It's unheard of to be making money in music [in New Zealand]. I'm OK, you know. I think it's still hard to make money from music in New Zealand. You really need to be making money off-shore, which I guess I did with American Pie and my publishing contract in America.
"I'm not rich but I don't struggle and I'm not worried. And I don't care about money - I never have. I mean, I still have a 15-year-old's attitude to money. I don't know how to budget. I just figure it kind of flows in and it flows out."
Runga may admit to teenage impulses but it's a wise head that sits atop the beautiful clothes in which she's so often pictured. A year after Drive's release in New Zealand, about the time it hit shop shelves in the United States, where she spent much of 1998, she was quoted on the web-site launch.com as saying: "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."
On hearing her words spoken back to her, Runga reiterates her stance on fame, and what some may perceive as a glamorous life. "I wouldn't say [my life is] more exciting than the average person. Some people have really exciting existences. You make your own fun. I had a laugh when I worked in a shoe store - it was a lot less stressful."
It seems Runga would survive quite happily if the bottom fell out of the music market. In a voice that's as clear on the telephone as the pure tone that graces her recordings, she talks excitedly about her latest passion, sewing.
"I've just had a kind of clothing epiphany. It's occurred to me that fabric and the ways fabrics are made . . . it's like record making. If you start with a really great song then there is no way that the record can be bad. It's the same with clothes."
That starting point is precisely the reason why Beautiful Collision took considerable time to make. Runga didn't want to follow Drive with an album that was merely good. It had to be better.
"The last record's lyrics were very . . . um, they were heartfelt and honest but they didn't have much skill as far as words go. There are lots of words you just shouldn't use in songs, like `pain' and `heart' and `baby'. There are so many dead words in music that I just really didn't want to go there. It's just not good craft.
"With that in mind, three years is not that much time really, because most people spend that long on books or screenplays if they're really concerning themselves with words."
Beautiful Collision comprises 12 tracks and lasts a shade over 40 minutes. Three years into 40 minutes? Forget the maths; find some words instead. Obsession is one Runga uses.
"I think more than being a perfectionist I'm obsessive. If you know anything about making records, you know it's almost impossible to spend three years on something, because you just lose the plot - you just don't have much fun after one year. But the more obsessed I got about it, the deeper I wanted to go into it. It's a really intriguing process. It's really interesting to see how far you can stretch yourself.
"After three years of making a record I think you can lose a little perspective. But one thing I can say for the songs is I'm not sick of them and that's a testament to the songwriting. I'm really proud of the songwriting. I think the biggest stumbling block was making sure the lyrics were better than the last record's."
So, after three years, eight studios in five different cities, and utilising the talents of a dozen engineers and a mixing genius by the name of Michael Brauer (whose credits include Coldplay), is Runga happy with the outcome?
"I think, unfortunately, it's not an innovative album. I like music that is innovative, that sounds like nothing I've heard before," says Runga, who dabbled in electronic approaches, drum machines and the like, before reverting to her instincts - guitar, piano, real drums and that voice - for the finished product.
Brauer was hired, in part, because of his ability to mix music in such a way that it remains sonically palatable across various radio frequencies. Still, Beautiful Collision has a nostalgia to it that pleases Runga.
"This record sounds like a lot of things I've heard before, but not in a negative way, more in a nostalgic way. I have a real affinity with music from the '30s and I'm not hearing any of that style of music in music today. What I mean by that is that kind of hopeless romanticism [such as] Cole Porter; the way love songs were really whimsical and in waltz time. It's not banal, which a lot of record making has come to, and I'm proud of that, too."
Capturing a feeling of hopeless romanticism without using those dead words, those cliches? No wonder the creative path was somewhat tortuous. When Runga first started work on Beautiful Collision , she had about 15 songs, none of which were fully-formed. "That was the hardest part, actually taking the song from one verse and a chorus to a fully fledged entity unto itself. From the start I was going around saying I had 15 songs when actually I only had 15 verses and 15 choruses."
Under different circumstances, with a different company backing her, Runga's difficult second album could well have been hurried along. That she was allowed to produce Beautiful Collision , a role she immediately adopted on Drive , illustrates a desire on her part to effectively bridge the gap between what she sings and what an audience hears. It also reveals significant creative leniency on the part of her record label, Sony.
"They [Sony] are in a really unusual position in that they give me absolute control and I think after the second year of spending their money they were feeling concerned, but all credit to them. It's very peculiar in this industry to have a record label that allows you to do what you want, because it's all about making a product. I was actually supposed to deliver an album within 18 months, so I was a year and a-half over."
That ability to manage her music has come more easily than other aspects of Runga's career, she admits.
"I have more [control] now but I wasn't a great communicator before and that's just part of growing up. I didn't really know how to say no to things. When you go and meet a make-up artist for the first time and suddenly they're meant to paint a picture on your face, it's a really disempowering relationship you have with them. It's all about communicating and I've learnt to do that better."
Runga says it also helps to have a sister who has been through similar experiences. Six years older, Boh is engaged to Bic's manager, Campbell Smith. She is also the singer and guitarist in stellar*. The band may comprise four members, but Boh is its "face". She, too, knows all about the image-makers.
"Me and Boh have had an amazing relationship this last two years. She's had people paint things on her face that she wasn't happy with," Runga laughs. "You're really at the mercy of what the photographer is seeing, or what the stylist thinks you are, or how the market make-up artist interprets your face. We both could whinge about that forever because there are so many variables and suddenly you're interpreted in some way."
The pair have another sister, Pearl, an Auckland schoolteacher who is two years older than Bic. She also dabbles in music, although not to the same extent as her siblings. The daughters of a Chinese-Malaysian mother, Sophia, who sang in lounge clubs in Malaysia in the '60s, and a Maori father, Joseph, the trio grew up in an environment in which music and art were encouraged.
Now retired, mum and dad still live in Hornby, on the outskirts of Christchurch, but look set to follow their daughters north.
"I'm looking to buy a place for my parents to live the rest of their lives in, which is in Auckland, because it's warmer," Runga says.
As for her own future, Runga is on the move again, heading to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks for a series of gigs before Beautiful Collision is released in the United States in September. Like the busy two-year period following the release of Drive , a taxing timetable to which she refers in her latest single Get Some Sleep , Runga could be away from home for a while. This time, however, she says she'll be based in Los Angeles rather than New York.
Strangely, that decision means there's more chance you'll see Runga by a lake, or mountain, near you.
"Because I'm going to be spending so much time in America I want to keep [she means rent, rather than buy] a place somewhere in the South Island. Just coming back to Auckland from Los Angeles, it's like more of the same and I don't think it's enough of a fix for me . . . I really need to go to the Southern Alps. That lump of dirt feels so different from the North Island and certainly from America.
And what of the next album?
"I really like the idea of doing an album of duets, maybe dopey duets with my favourite country singers. I do know I want to make records quicker from now on. I've paid my dues really. I want to let it flow a bit quicker. I know my skills now.
"This three-year period kind of took up my decade, more so than I thought it would, but I also want to make at least another two albums. I like the idea of moving on to something else after another two albums.
"If you are aware of the end then you really go for it in the present. If I can put a ceiling on my musical career for say another eight or 10 years then I will really go for it and it means I'll be true musically.
"And then I would like to make clothes."
Original content copyright 2002 to Otago Daily Times Online
