Post by NZBC on May 13, 2007 14:49:35 GMT 12
Big voice in a small world
By Sacha Molitorisz
March 4, 2006
A question: who ranks as the highest-selling New Zealand artist ever? Is it a) Neil Finn; b) Tim Finn; c) Russell Crowe; or d) Bic Runga?
The answer is Runga, a songbird as big in her homeland as she is small outside it. She's not the winner of some overhyped talent quest such as Kiwi Idol; instead, she's a talented singer songwriter with a beautiful voice and a knack for writing lilting, catchy melodies. Tellingly, she has a big fan in Neil Finn and many more fans at her record label, Sony. Four years ago, Runga was voted the artist most likely to succeed by a worldwide delegation of seen-it-all-before Sony executives. That was before the release of her second album, Beautiful Collision, which went 11-times platinum in New Zealand, and five years after the release of her 1997 debut, Drive, which went seven-times platinum in her homeland. Now she has released her third album, Birds. "It's already gone triple platinum," Runga says. "It entered the charts at No. 1." All of which makes Runga a very big fish in a very small pond. "Anywhere else I would be filthy rich," she said in a 2002 interview. "As luck would have it, I sell a lot of records in the smallest territory in the world."
With a Chinese mother and a Maori father, the petite, pretty Runga was raised in Christchurch, where she started playing drums at 11 and guitar at 14, while also picking up any other instrument she could lay her hands on. On her first two albums, she played more instruments than some orchestras - stepping behind the drums, for instance. On Beautiful Collision, she played guitar, harmonica, piano and drums. And she sang.
For her third album, out in Australia today, she played a less hands-on role. (Well, slightly less hands-on: she still produced the album, as she did the previous two. Runga openly admits to being a control freak.) On Birds, Runga sings and plays guitar, while Neil Finn sings and plays various instruments, Tim Arnold (from the band Pluto) plays guitar and Shayne Carter (from Straitjacket Fits) sings backing vocals. These contributors, among others, will accompany Runga when she plays at the State Theatre later this month.
Runga is looking forward to travelling across the Tasman for the show. "I know how to tour now," says Runga, whose first name is pronounced "Bec" and is derived from a Chinese word for jade. "You have to get good at being on the road, you have to seek out inspiration, not just sound-check and play. That's what I was seeking on this record, to have Neil Finn and Shayne Carter and all my friends around me. So when we hit a new town we're not lazy about seeking out new things. Otherwise it can be a bit mind-numbing. If you're not in it for the chicks, there's not much to it."
One of the most fascinating things about Runga is that she's only just turned 30. To celebrate her birthday, she took her family to China for two weeks, visiting Beijing, Shanghai and the Great Wall.
"It's such a formidable country," she says. "Parts of it are really beautiful. It was just foreign in every way, even the sun coming through the pollution made it look like another planet. Like Mars."
Runga's base is a ramshackle old mansion in the bush an hour outside Auckland.
"It's really secluded," she says. "You have to watch you don't go feral. It was a house built for the Hall family, of Walker and Hall fame - a big jewellery company, in the '50s. It's a kind of would-be Hollywood mansion. Though there's a bit of disrepair."
But she's often not at home. Whenever possible, Runga travels. She lived in New York for a couple of years, and left on September 9, 2001. She stepped off her plane in Auckland to discover the World Trade Centre had been attacked.
"The notion that New Zealand is some kind of haven from the rest of world was really amplified.
"This is a good place, but I do have to get overseas a lot. There is always a feeling of being too comfortable here, that complacency creeps in if you let it." Judging from Birds, Runga isn't becoming complacent. It's a very old-fashioned album, especially for a woman barely out of her 20s.
Gentle and lush, it features delicate melodies augmented by lavish backing vocals and occasional flourishes of harp and French horn. Held together by the lightness and agility of Runga's voice, the best songs (Listen, Birds, Captured, Blue Blue Heart) evoke a smoky, retro thingytail bar - the sort of setting in which Runga made a cameo in the film Little Fish, as a "Vietnamese lounge singer".
One of her goals was simply to make a cohesive album. "Just trying to have one atmosphere," she says.
"This record is meant to be like a painkiller. Like a Valium. Or something soft and pillowy. This for me, I feel I've found a sound. It just feels right at this time."
Birds is out today on Sony/BMG
By Sacha Molitorisz
March 4, 2006
A question: who ranks as the highest-selling New Zealand artist ever? Is it a) Neil Finn; b) Tim Finn; c) Russell Crowe; or d) Bic Runga?
The answer is Runga, a songbird as big in her homeland as she is small outside it. She's not the winner of some overhyped talent quest such as Kiwi Idol; instead, she's a talented singer songwriter with a beautiful voice and a knack for writing lilting, catchy melodies. Tellingly, she has a big fan in Neil Finn and many more fans at her record label, Sony. Four years ago, Runga was voted the artist most likely to succeed by a worldwide delegation of seen-it-all-before Sony executives. That was before the release of her second album, Beautiful Collision, which went 11-times platinum in New Zealand, and five years after the release of her 1997 debut, Drive, which went seven-times platinum in her homeland. Now she has released her third album, Birds. "It's already gone triple platinum," Runga says. "It entered the charts at No. 1." All of which makes Runga a very big fish in a very small pond. "Anywhere else I would be filthy rich," she said in a 2002 interview. "As luck would have it, I sell a lot of records in the smallest territory in the world."
With a Chinese mother and a Maori father, the petite, pretty Runga was raised in Christchurch, where she started playing drums at 11 and guitar at 14, while also picking up any other instrument she could lay her hands on. On her first two albums, she played more instruments than some orchestras - stepping behind the drums, for instance. On Beautiful Collision, she played guitar, harmonica, piano and drums. And she sang.
For her third album, out in Australia today, she played a less hands-on role. (Well, slightly less hands-on: she still produced the album, as she did the previous two. Runga openly admits to being a control freak.) On Birds, Runga sings and plays guitar, while Neil Finn sings and plays various instruments, Tim Arnold (from the band Pluto) plays guitar and Shayne Carter (from Straitjacket Fits) sings backing vocals. These contributors, among others, will accompany Runga when she plays at the State Theatre later this month.
Runga is looking forward to travelling across the Tasman for the show. "I know how to tour now," says Runga, whose first name is pronounced "Bec" and is derived from a Chinese word for jade. "You have to get good at being on the road, you have to seek out inspiration, not just sound-check and play. That's what I was seeking on this record, to have Neil Finn and Shayne Carter and all my friends around me. So when we hit a new town we're not lazy about seeking out new things. Otherwise it can be a bit mind-numbing. If you're not in it for the chicks, there's not much to it."
One of the most fascinating things about Runga is that she's only just turned 30. To celebrate her birthday, she took her family to China for two weeks, visiting Beijing, Shanghai and the Great Wall.
"It's such a formidable country," she says. "Parts of it are really beautiful. It was just foreign in every way, even the sun coming through the pollution made it look like another planet. Like Mars."
Runga's base is a ramshackle old mansion in the bush an hour outside Auckland.
"It's really secluded," she says. "You have to watch you don't go feral. It was a house built for the Hall family, of Walker and Hall fame - a big jewellery company, in the '50s. It's a kind of would-be Hollywood mansion. Though there's a bit of disrepair."
But she's often not at home. Whenever possible, Runga travels. She lived in New York for a couple of years, and left on September 9, 2001. She stepped off her plane in Auckland to discover the World Trade Centre had been attacked.
"The notion that New Zealand is some kind of haven from the rest of world was really amplified.
"This is a good place, but I do have to get overseas a lot. There is always a feeling of being too comfortable here, that complacency creeps in if you let it." Judging from Birds, Runga isn't becoming complacent. It's a very old-fashioned album, especially for a woman barely out of her 20s.
Gentle and lush, it features delicate melodies augmented by lavish backing vocals and occasional flourishes of harp and French horn. Held together by the lightness and agility of Runga's voice, the best songs (Listen, Birds, Captured, Blue Blue Heart) evoke a smoky, retro thingytail bar - the sort of setting in which Runga made a cameo in the film Little Fish, as a "Vietnamese lounge singer".
One of her goals was simply to make a cohesive album. "Just trying to have one atmosphere," she says.
"This record is meant to be like a painkiller. Like a Valium. Or something soft and pillowy. This for me, I feel I've found a sound. It just feels right at this time."
Birds is out today on Sony/BMG