I was lucky enough to sit down with Paloma Faith for an hour and put questions to her that she answered openly and honestly, in her usual beautiful heart-on-her-sleeve style. She is a singer and lyricist that has produced five hugely successful albums and has achieved worldwide recognition. She is an intelligent, insightful woman and makes statements about life and creativity that would benefit us all. She spoke in a way that would guide all artists, not just musicians. Writers, thinkers, visual artists, performers and anyone could learn from her reflections.
May 28, 2023Liked by Kier Proudlove Kureishi, Hanif Kureishi
Love everything about this interview. Treat your life like a research project ... that feels so tight to me ... never stop being curious and studying and creating. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing 🧡
Jun 3, 2023·edited Jun 3, 2023Liked by Kier Proudlove Kureishi
Loved listening to this Kier - thank you. You have a lovely thoughtful manner interviewing (not everyone who does interviews does!) and it was reflected in how honestly and frankly Paloma spoke. She was great on creativity and reinvention. Girls and women are still so often conditioned towards playing down their achievements so to hear Paloma's confidence in her own worth - not arrogant at all, just sure - is really valuable. What a glorious laugh! I remember her when she worked at AP in Broadwick St, Soho around 2001/2002 - amazing red beehive hair and so nice to everyone to came in. Will be interested to hear more of your interviews.
What an interesting interview. I found, quite surprisingly, that I identified with her in places. I sing, upon occasion and being introverted prefer to sing with no one there. Makes live performance an extremely uncomfortable affair for me, one just acts. And as for recording can only imagine how freeing it is to be able to record and produce one's own work. Fascinating 🙏
I am very interested in singers/lyricists who get involved in the songwriting process, but who don't play musical instruments themselves. Any songs that emerge from such a relationship are going to be the product of people communicating across different mediums; across different creative languages almost. This is an unfortunate analogy, but I can't think of a better one: When an RNA virus makes a DNA copy of itself, it opens up the possibility for mutation and evolution. When a non-musical person and a musician are attempting to steer themselves in a particular direction, then what gets lost in translation may be of greater interest than what hits the mark, because it will be something novel and spontaneous and unanticipated.
At the most basic tier of this kind of collaboration, there is a clear division of labour. Kazuo Ishiguro, who is predominantly a novelist, wrote wonderful lyrics for Stacy Kent – in particular, 'The Ice Hotel' and 'I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again' (both variations of the same theme. I have always loved the lines: “I want a waiter to give us a reprimand, in a language neither of us understand, while we argue about the customs of the land,” from the latter). I don't know whether Ishiguro got involved at the musical end of things. I assume not, though he is a talented man.
Then there are songwriters like Henry Rollins who are non-musicians, but who do perform their own work. Rollins weathered five years as the frontman of Black Flag (as much a test of physical and mental endurance, as it was creative expression). Later he donned a talismanic pair of black shorts and formed The Rollins Band.
In this creative partnership, Rollins wrote the lyrics. Chris Haskett who played on the band's early records, recalls jamming five or six hours a day, five days a week. Interestingly, he also describes the development of the creative partnership, beginning as a group of people with individual styles who eventually became an ensemble as a result of playing together so often. A common vision is an essential part of this kind collaboration, where the participants are spending a lot of time in each other's company. Haskett describes the band as being guided by a search for “musical and existential truth”.
The relationships that Paloma Faith shares with her musical collaborators feel more like gentle nudges in a particular creative direction. I like the indirect nature of the process, which allows for greater freedom of expression: Here is a story about something that happened to me – here is something I felt – and it goes from there and takes form.
I suppose it is similar to the way that a producer like Brian Eno works, where he is able to identify what a band is aiming for and then intuitively guide them in that direction.
An extreme version of this relationship would be the creatively fruitful, but often abusive, artist dictatorships that were imposed by the Mark E Smith, on innumerable members of The Fall (66 musicians reputably passed through the band's ranks), and, to a greater extent, by Don Van Vilet (aka Captain Beefheart) upon the long-suffering Magic Band.
John 'Drumbo' French once described how the Captain had asked the band to play “a strawberry” (it was common for him to describe the music that he wanted them to perform in abstract terms). In this instance, Van Vilet was highly displeased by Drumbo's musical interpretation of a strawberry and threw him down a flight of stairs.
Lovely interview, and the triple layer, photo, soundtrack and text makes a great personal contribution to the substack.
Love everything about this interview. Treat your life like a research project ... that feels so tight to me ... never stop being curious and studying and creating. Beautiful. Thank you for sharing 🧡
Thank you for sharing this, Keir. Really lovely interview!
Loved listening to this Kier - thank you. You have a lovely thoughtful manner interviewing (not everyone who does interviews does!) and it was reflected in how honestly and frankly Paloma spoke. She was great on creativity and reinvention. Girls and women are still so often conditioned towards playing down their achievements so to hear Paloma's confidence in her own worth - not arrogant at all, just sure - is really valuable. What a glorious laugh! I remember her when she worked at AP in Broadwick St, Soho around 2001/2002 - amazing red beehive hair and so nice to everyone to came in. Will be interested to hear more of your interviews.
What an interesting interview. I found, quite surprisingly, that I identified with her in places. I sing, upon occasion and being introverted prefer to sing with no one there. Makes live performance an extremely uncomfortable affair for me, one just acts. And as for recording can only imagine how freeing it is to be able to record and produce one's own work. Fascinating 🙏
Best advice - get on a plane and go and reinvent yourself in another country..
I am very interested in singers/lyricists who get involved in the songwriting process, but who don't play musical instruments themselves. Any songs that emerge from such a relationship are going to be the product of people communicating across different mediums; across different creative languages almost. This is an unfortunate analogy, but I can't think of a better one: When an RNA virus makes a DNA copy of itself, it opens up the possibility for mutation and evolution. When a non-musical person and a musician are attempting to steer themselves in a particular direction, then what gets lost in translation may be of greater interest than what hits the mark, because it will be something novel and spontaneous and unanticipated.
At the most basic tier of this kind of collaboration, there is a clear division of labour. Kazuo Ishiguro, who is predominantly a novelist, wrote wonderful lyrics for Stacy Kent – in particular, 'The Ice Hotel' and 'I Wish I Could Go Travelling Again' (both variations of the same theme. I have always loved the lines: “I want a waiter to give us a reprimand, in a language neither of us understand, while we argue about the customs of the land,” from the latter). I don't know whether Ishiguro got involved at the musical end of things. I assume not, though he is a talented man.
Then there are songwriters like Henry Rollins who are non-musicians, but who do perform their own work. Rollins weathered five years as the frontman of Black Flag (as much a test of physical and mental endurance, as it was creative expression). Later he donned a talismanic pair of black shorts and formed The Rollins Band.
In this creative partnership, Rollins wrote the lyrics. Chris Haskett who played on the band's early records, recalls jamming five or six hours a day, five days a week. Interestingly, he also describes the development of the creative partnership, beginning as a group of people with individual styles who eventually became an ensemble as a result of playing together so often. A common vision is an essential part of this kind collaboration, where the participants are spending a lot of time in each other's company. Haskett describes the band as being guided by a search for “musical and existential truth”.
The relationships that Paloma Faith shares with her musical collaborators feel more like gentle nudges in a particular creative direction. I like the indirect nature of the process, which allows for greater freedom of expression: Here is a story about something that happened to me – here is something I felt – and it goes from there and takes form.
I suppose it is similar to the way that a producer like Brian Eno works, where he is able to identify what a band is aiming for and then intuitively guide them in that direction.
An extreme version of this relationship would be the creatively fruitful, but often abusive, artist dictatorships that were imposed by the Mark E Smith, on innumerable members of The Fall (66 musicians reputably passed through the band's ranks), and, to a greater extent, by Don Van Vilet (aka Captain Beefheart) upon the long-suffering Magic Band.
John 'Drumbo' French once described how the Captain had asked the band to play “a strawberry” (it was common for him to describe the music that he wanted them to perform in abstract terms). In this instance, Van Vilet was highly displeased by Drumbo's musical interpretation of a strawberry and threw him down a flight of stairs.