Behind The Music: Nerina Pallot

July 9, 2010 No Comments

Words By: Matt Wheavil

Nerina Pallot has won a long and arduous battle with the music industry – It’s been almost a decade since she was dropped by Polydor Records and since then, the London born and Jersey bred singer/songwriter, has worked tirelessly to set up her own record label and release three albums – Dear Frustrated Superstar, Fires and just last year, The Graduate.

All three albums are brimming with the sort of pop songs you want to hear – not just melodically sublime, but full of lyrical depth and infectious hooks.  Listening to any of them makes you question why Pallot has had it so tough – now 35, she sits at the height of her success back stage in our very own Auntie Annies, which consists of a kitchen just large enough to squeeze a few hamsters into….

Thankfully for MLNI, she seems unfazed by this, greets us with the warmest of smiles and sits on a stool, clutching a cup of coffee on top of her crossed legs. There’s something more real about Nerina Pallot in person – you can tell she’s touring hard, looking visibly drained but still she radiates with genuine charm…

MLNI: Do you enjoy playing Northern Ireland?

Nerina: I do, I do and I don’t come here often enough. I mean this is just the second Northern Irish gig I’ve ever played and tomorrow will be my third ever gig in Dublin, so I’ve been really bad and neglected Ireland.

But you’ve had a break for a while, between Fires (2005) and The Graduate (2009), were you writing?

I was writing but when I finished promoting Fires, I was just knackered, because I’d released it on my own label and had worked really hard for about a good six, seven months and was literally selling records out of my car boot to make petrol money… I’d also been promoting it all over the world as well – I’d been off to the Far East and Australia and all sorts of places so… I was kind of just burnt out and then I got married and I just wanted to take some time off.

I’d never had time off, and then when I came to write the new album, I was still struggling for inspiration so I went back to University and decided to finish the degree I’d started years before but hadn’t finished.

I started making The Graduate in the last year of Uni and ended up finishing the album, doing my finals about the same week and running the London Marathon, so it kind of all came at me from all sides in the one week!

So was part of your writing process for The Graduate inspired by the students around you? It’s a very optimistic record…

It is an optimistic record. I think for me, I was really sad when I made fires and I think that by the time I came to make The Graduate, I was in a much better place with much better head space, so that was just a natural reflection of the way I was feeling.

But it is true because I think by the time I got to graduation, allow it was a 4 year degree, I’d done it part-time and it had been 7 years from start to finish, so it was this feeling that something was going to get finished finally

Sense of Completion?

Yeah, and also, I don’t know whether you found this but when I did my first degree I was straight out of school so it didn’t mean as much but by the time I did this one, I found my brain was so fried form thinking about clever things, I just wanted to drink beer and dance!

Another thing as well with the graduate, I kind of find the other meaning of the word, that you kind of ‘graduated’ – because you’ve obviously struggled with your career and finally got to the place you want to be.  I kind of find listening to the first track – “Everything’s Illuminated!” there’s self-doubt but by the time you get to “It was me”, you’ve kind of graduated from doubt to acceptance… that was my interpretation…

(Looks surprised) Yeah, I don’t know, I hadn’t really thought about that and I didn’t arrange the songs thematically any way, I just arranged them in a way that I thought would fit and would be a nice experience but that’s probably true…

Your second album, ‘Fires’, is a bit darker. I think the stuff in Dear Frustrated Superstar and The Graduate is very personal but then with ‘Everyone’s going to war’ (The first single from Fires), were you flirting with a political statement and trying to branch out a bit?

You know, that song just became political by accident…

By accident?

Because it’s more about a friend of mine who was serving –  I went to a military school – so I have a lot of friends who either served in the army because they did the thing where you go to University and they sponsor you for 4 years of your life, or they’re still in the army, so when the Iraq war broke out, I mean I was devastated anyway, but I put that aside because all I could think about was my friends who were getting on boats and planes to go out and fight. And one of my really good friends – her brother – was serving and her dad was also in the army and unfortunately died in action and the hardest thing was for her mum to now have her son now go out and be in action having lost her husband. And we used to have to call up and distract her so she wouldn’t look at the news or… you know that every few days in the beginning there were names coming up saying today we lost  lost loved corporals or servicemen… and it’s very hard, in fact I don’t think people necessarily realize how hard it is for the friends and families because every time there would be a news flash, I would literally put my fingers in my ears and go “please don’t let me hear blah blah blah’s name.”

And it was really difficult – I had a very visceral, personal connection for the first time. Some of my friends had gone out towards the end of Kosovo as a peace keeping corp but, it was the first of my generation that had actually gone out into active service so it felt really gaunt to me. It wasn’t this thing that politician’s were having talks about…

I was thinking about my mates who were hippies at heart. You know, we all used to spend our teenage years like sitting on the beach drinking cider and singing Bob Dylan songs and I couldn’t quite understand how they were going to go off and fight…

M: So the sense of reality just hit?

Yeah, and I think it became political by virtue of the subject matter and I didn’t understand why my mates who were hippies were in the army. It was like kinda…

It’s amazing to find out that it’s so personal and maybe all of you’re writing is consistently personal…

All of it is, All of it is.

And emotions, it’s like all different emotions and it affects me, it speaks to me a lot when I listen to a lot of your songs.

Even though it’s [the Graduate]  one of the most pop things I’ve done, there’s always like this thing in there, you know there’s like this experience that I have been through that I sort of mutate and obscure so that a.) I don’t gave away too much of myself and b.) you know how some records are too confessional? That they almost stop you from being able to make them your own because it’s too much about specific persons or people or colours that you sort of sometimes need to have a bit of obscurity.

Fan intimacy is really important to you isn’t it?

Yeah

Cos, you’ve got twitter, the Nerina world videos and even those bedroom gigs you did. Is that because of all you’ve been through, is that something… do you really want to show your fans appreciation?

I don’t know, I just think it’s a natural interaction. I mean I’ve always… My fans have always been… you know the first album, only a few people ever had that first album so they named themselves ‘The Cult’ and they created this sort of little club.  And it was only a handful of like 50-100 people who were regularly sort of coming to shows and it felt like a family. And so it’s my way of dealing with fans or people who listen to my music cos fans always just randomly sort of materialize

So do you feel that you’ve still got that cult vibe?

Yeah, definitely! And sometimes I kind of struggle to disassociate myself from that, you know, and it’s very much part of what I do for a live performance as well. But I mean, it’s an extension of my personality, you know, not everybody’s the same. I think it really depends on what kind of music you make and I really rely heavily on the audience when I’m playing live so I think it’s a natural decision.

Do you remember the first song you wrote?

Yeah I do, um, it was called, um, “What ya gonna do?” and it was really rubbish!

What was it about?

It was about, I was about thirteen when I wrote it. I don’t know if they’ve changed the years of school but the 4^th year  which I think now is.. what’s the first years of GCSE, year 8?

4^th year…

Yeah, so we did a study trip and had to raise money to go on the study trip so we did a like a music night for all our friends and family to come to and my friends were like, Hey you, you’re a musician, why don’t you write us all a song  – and I had this really crap song and they’re all like, well sing it! And I was like no it’s crap! And then I sung it and that was it really…

Did you always want to be a songwriter since you were a kid?

Yeah, yeah

Intrinsic?

Yeah definitely

Were your degrees in music?… Somebody told me you have a degree in English literature

Well, that was the second degree I did, yeah

I find your music has a lot of vocabulary in it – Shakespeare references and things like that

Yeah, there are quite a few but I’m just lazy, I steal things, If I can’t think of my own ideas, I read something… and it’s not me being clever, it’s just me being really lazy!

I don’t think you’re that lazy, in your youtube videos you play like 50 different instruments!

Oh I’ve got time on my hands!

What’s your favourite motto?

Never ever ever ever ever give up!

Never ever give up – Is that the advice you give to singer/songwriters?

To anybody in anything in any part of life.

Yeah, because you haven’t given up?

Just because it’s just a good, you never know what’s round the corner

I think I agree – Like your song ‘Everything’s illuminated!’ has got a sort of half-glass full, even when things are down – that sort of thing…

I don’t think you know how much you have in you until you’re tested and you’ll never test yourself unless you are dogged. And sometimes the things you feel are the failure and the things you feel are bigger than yourself are often the making of you. But if you run away from it all or you give up at the first hurdle you’ll never face that thing that could be the making of you.

And it’s a Winston Churchill saying and I think that’s possibly what he meant. But it is that idea of just ploughing on, regardless.

Finally, what’s next, are you just going to relax after this?

No, I’m going to be busy again because when I get off tour I’ve got to, I’m working with some other artists. I’m doing a bit of production and writing with my husband so we’re doing some other bits and bobs. Then I start writing my new record. I’m going to have a bit of time off… I fancy having a month off after this tour. I NEED a break.

And then, the shows come December… so we’ll wrap up again hopefully finish the new album by end of this year…

Another one!?

Yeah, Begin it all again! Hopefully get the new album out sometime in the next year or so.

Yeah, full guns blazing?

Yeah, I left it too long. I’ve always been like ridiculous with gaps between records and now I just get a lot more satisfaction from just working all the time.

Seen you’re working with your husband (Andy Chatterley), how is that going?

Yeah, we were recently doing some work for Kylie Minogue

Really!?

Yeah and we’ve got a couple of tracks on her new album

Cool!

Yeah, so that was really good fun and I just wrote a song that we both produced on Ricky’s new album as well.  We’ve been busy doing some other stuff and have been working with other artists.

Look forward to it! Thank you very much.

Thank you – lovely to meet you!

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