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band. Soon she began to write and perform her own songs. Her music is influenced by soul and jazz and her singing style has been favourably compared to those of Amy Winehouse and Duffy.


She also has numerous acting credits,


starting with school plays and more recently as cabaret performer Georgia in the BBC television adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse’s Blandings. She has said that as a shy young girl, acting in school plays helped her emerge from her introversion. Having forced herself to be confident, the flamboyance of her appearance is, she says now, her war paint and is definitely protective. Feature film appearances include the 2007 remake of St. Trinian’s; The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus and Dread.


Her debut single, Stone Cold Sober, released in mid-2009, reached Number 17 on the UK singles Chart, followed by New York, which peaked at Number 15. Her debut album (Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful?) peaked at Number 9, remained in the album chart for 16 weeks and was later certified double platinum. In 2012, she released her second studio album (Fall to Grace) which reached Number 2 in the UK and has since been certified double platinum. The album produced Paloma Faith’s first top ten single, Picking up the Pieces and the Top 20 cover version on INXS’ Never Tear Us Apart featured in the 2012 John Lewis advertising campaign.


After the melancholy torch songs of Fall


To Grace, Paloma was inspired to move her music to new and vivid places, deepening the connections to music she had loved all her life - classic, upbeat soul from the Sixties to the Nineties, all dressed with a scalpel- sharp modern edge. To achieve this she decided to make a physical journey, living anonymously in New York where she started to write like an ordinary girl again, rather than a Brit- nominated pop star. “When I first got to New York I felt like a really huge outsider,” she recalls. “I felt insecure and wasn’t in my comfort zone. But the busier I got, the better it was.” Then the songs started coming. A Perfect Contradiction is a very different album from Fall to Grace. Although there are some melancholy moments, its essence is: when things go wrong, let’s have a dance. Her benchmark song for the album was Candi Staton’s Young Hearts Run Free, a song where the lyrics speak of sadness but the singing leaves a feeling of absolute empowerment. “I’ve been reflecting on things that have been tough, but I’m almost


celebrating that. If you haven’t been to the bottom, you wouldn’t be able to recognise how it feels to feel amazing after all,” Paloma explains. The songs speak for themselves: the hard, sassy stomp of Can’t Rely on You, a collaboration with Pharrell Williams; the strident charge of Other Woman, written with Plan B; the raunchy Take Me, with John Legend; and the tough solo compositions of Impossible Heart and Mouth to Mouth. They all show a person believing in herself, taking off, flying free. “This album feels like the real me, almost. And in a funny way it feels like coming home. I’ve realised that learning confidence really makes you capable of things – and that together we can be capable of anything,” she says. This is the message Paloma wants A Perfect Contradiction to get across: for fans all over the world to break out of their cocoons and recognise their true, vivid colours. Happily Paloma Faith herself is soaring, exploring a bigger, braver new world of music and taking us with her.


surrey magazine summer 2015


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