There’s much more to the flamboyant artiste than bunny ears and crazy make-up, finds Teddy JamiesonOn a bright London afternoon Paloma Faith arrives, fashionably late, at her record label headquarters in Derry Street.

The best actress is wearing a red spangly coat, black vinyl trousers, vertiginously high-heeled boots and the dinkiest tiny bowler hat perched on top of her pinned up red hair.



Really, you’d think she’d have made an effort ...Actually, it’s the effort she’s made that has made her late. Sitting down she apologises, but she’s been on the phone all morning talking to journalists about her soon-to-come album and singer had to do her make-up and get dressed before she came out. She didn’t much feel like doing it at eight in the morning when the phone calls began. A cuddle and a hot drink is all she wants at that time in the morning, she says. To get ready to come and see me in person she says she was putting the make-up on with one hand and holding the phone in the other. You wouldn’t know.Her make-up looks perfect.

A razzle-dazzle spectrum of eye shadow glitters on her eyelids and three tiny perfect little dots lead off from the corner of each eye up towards her hairline and the bowler hat (she’s been known to don what looks like rabbit ears for photographs, but the hat is a neat alternative).As we sit down the singer starts apologising again.

Not for her lateness this time, but for squeaking at me. Well, it’s not her who is squeaking at me. It’s her trousers. Every time she pulls a spike-heeled foot up beneath her on the leather sofa we’re both sitting on, the kecks she’s squeezed herself into give a protesting squeal. And every time they do she says sorry. She’s clearly a very polite and well-brought-up young woman. Not that best actress needs to apologise. Wannabe pop stars should wear squeaking trousers and dainty headwear (which remains on throughout our conversation, although the red spangly coat has been taken off by now).

Rather that than another bunch of surly boy-men in jeans and Converse trainers talking about guitar pedals and how much they really, really love Neil Young.Or maybe we’ve just been conditioned to assume that our female popsters will invariably make an effort.

Is it possible, I wonder, for a woman in the music business not to be concerned with her image? She thinks not. “But at the same time I’ve always liked dressing up. I dunno whether it’s sexist or not, but I think little girls like dressing up.”She’s more interested in style than fashion, she says. “I don’t really know who makes what. I’ve started to learn a few names.

But I have to write them on my hands when I go to see them so that you can thank the right people if they lend me their stuff.She does admire Alexander McQueen, she says, “but I don’t think I see him as a fashion designer, I see him as an artist. The way he packages stuff and shows is all part of why I like him. It’s not just his clothes.Of course, she could almost be speaking about herself. You can find some galleries free of models also in websites.Every day is a performance for Paloma Faith. Now 24, she has spent her adult life dressing up; whether as a magician’s assistant, working in upmarket lingerie shop Agent Provocateur or being an actress.

She appeared in the recent remake of St Trinians and can be seen in the new Terry Gilliam film The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus alongside Heath Ledger who died from a drug overdose during filming. You can find many beauties but even Paloma Faith also looks beautiful.

It begs the question, how many times have you been asked today about Ledger? About four or five. Do you want my answer? He was humble and unaffected by his success. This afternoon, she is playing the part of the pop star in waiting, a top 20 hit already to her name (Stone Cold Sober), another, New York, ready for release and an album, Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful? in the wings.She’s made the album which has soul and jazz influences, with the likes of indie troubador Ed Harcourt and Greg Kurstin, who also made his mark on Lily Allen’s latest record The Fear (or download depending how 21st century you’re feeling today). You can find many beauties in sites. Ask her to describe her sound and she offers “it’s quite cinematic”. What she doesn’t say is that it’s an album that for all its widescreen flourishes – and radio-slick production – rests and falls on her voice, which is a huge firework of a thing, with echoes of Amy Winehouse’s slurred depth and torchsong twang.Whether that’s enough of course is another matter. The first thing she tells me on arrival is how nervous she is. “It’s been a long time.

Five years I’ve been writing. I’ve written about 220 songs. It took me ages to get a record deal and finally this is it. It’s like a make-or-break situation, because the industry is oversensitive.”Surely a top 20 single in the bank is a good start. “Yes, but it didn’t do well enough. You can find some galleries free of models in sites where as you can find Paloma Faith's pictures also.



If the next one does as well as that I’ll still get dropped.”And yet we keep getting told that, musically, 2009 is the year of the woman. “Yeah, I think I’m on the tail end of it. I’ve been going for a long time and it was frustrating not to get a deal before, because I was like: ‘it’s happening and I’m going to miss it’. And I just got in, I feel, at the last moment. I meet people in the industry and they’re all saying ‘I’m looking for a boy now’.”Faith’s earliest musical memory is ­fighting with her mother about having to go to piano lessons. She gave up when she was 13. “I regret it so much now because I’d be much easier to book myself.” Mother was a primary school teacher bringing up Faith on her own in London. Her Spanish father lived quite close. She’d visit him on weekends. “Sometimes.”Childhood for Faith was all about music, marching alongside her mother on anti-Thatcher rallies and looking out of the window at school.

Source: heraldscotland.com

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