Katie Melua extrae ya su segundo single de "SECRET SYMPHONY" ("Sinfonía secreta"), se trata de "MOONSHINE" ("Luz de luna"), que acompaña de un nuevo video que hoy incluímos aquí. Además de un artículo de dailymail.com en inglés.
Katie Melua takes out her second single from "SECRET SYMPHONY", it's "MOONSHINE", which she accompanies with a new video inclosed here today. Also an article from dailymail.com.
Video "MOONSHINE", Katie Melua:
Katie Melua: Back from the brink
UPDATED: 23:01 GMT, 12 May 2012
Two years ago, at the height of her global success, the singer songwriter’s fairy-tale life bit back – and she had a nervous breakdown. Here she tells Catherine O’Brien what drove her to the edge
‘The breakdown was very frightening. There was a definite sense of, “How could this happen?” because you would look at me and think I had nothing to be depressed about. But I hit a wall and had no option but to stop’
Katie Melua is sitting in the darkened corner of a West London pub, her smile relaxed. A shaft of sunlight shines upon the dazzling diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand. ‘Isn’t it stunning? I am not that into jewellery, but when it’s given with such a huge level of love and commitment and romance – well, it’s pretty cool,’ she says.
Four years ago, Katie told You that she didn’t believe in marriage. It was just invented for money and convenience, she declared, adding for good measure: ‘If I have children, I am never going to read them stories about finding Prince Charming because they will grow up feeling disappointed.’ She laughs as I read this back to her now. ‘Marriage seemed so scary then. But once you have met the right person…’
Katie’s ‘right person’ is James Toseland, the 31-year-old Yorkshire-born former World Superbike champion. They met a year ago, and last December, while on holiday in the Maldives, James proposed.
‘When you sell 11 million albums you start thinking, “Maybe I am different”’
'I just couldn’t believe it. I can’t remember exactly what he said. All I know is that I said yes.’
James is surely Katie’s Prince Charming and it is tempting to think that his marriage proposal is the latest chapter in her fairy-tale life. From the hardship of her early beginnings – her family fled to the UK from the strife-torn former Soviet state of Georgia when she was eight – she has gone on to become one of our most successful recording artists, worth £12 million (second only to Adele’s £20 million fortune on The Sunday Times rich list), with hits such as ‘Nine Million Bicycles’ and ‘The Closest Thing to Crazy’, combined with album sales of 11 million. But, although Katie is deeply in love, she doesn’t believe in perfect endings. ‘Looking from the outside, it appears I am having a happy-ever-after,’ she says. ‘But the reality can be different from the fairy tale.’
Two years ago, just when Katie appeared not to have a worry in the world, she suffered a nervous breakdown. The tour she was about to embark upon had to be cancelled, she was admitted to hospital, and for six months she disappeared from view. ‘It was very frightening. There was a definite sense of, “How could this happen?” because you would look at me and think I had nothing to be depressed about. But I hit a wall and had no option but to stop,’ she explains. A combination of therapy, antidepressants, time with her family and ‘switching off the phone, not having to be on a plane or doing interviews’ secured her recovery, but, even now, she is still working out the complex triggers of her illness. ‘It’s brought me back down to earth. I’ve realised that I am not as invincible as I thought I was,’ she says.
Katie and her fiancé James Toseland are getting married in September
‘My pianist told me that James was in the audience. I thought, “Oh my God! He’s hot!”’
Katie is hardly the first performer to suffer a personal crisis. Mariah Carey, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera have all come back from the brink; Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse tragically didn’t. But Katie’s breakdown was as shocking as it was unexpected because she is one of the most understated superstars you could meet. Her producer Mike Batt, who discovered her at the age of 18, jokes that he is still waiting for her to complain that her hotel room isn’t big enough. She drives a Vauxhall Astra, regularly travels by bus and tube, and still hangs out with her old schoolfriends. Her tumble of jet-black ringlets and smoky eyes may give her an edgy air, but she exudes a sense of calm. ‘I rarely lose it,’ she says. ‘I tend to internalise anger, which isn’t good.’
Now 27, Katie possesses a capable but contained demeanour shaped by a life of polar extremes. Her early childhood clashed with the break-up of the Soviet Union, during which Georgia’s economy was plunged into chaos. Her father was a heart surgeon, her mother a nurse and they were relatively well-off, but bread shortages became the norm and having a bath entailed carrying buckets of water up five flights of stairs to the flat they shared with her grandparents. ‘It sounds grim,’ she says, ‘but I had a happy childhood. Children are resilient – they can always find a way to play.’
In the early 1990s, Katie’s father got a job at Belfast’s Royal Victoria Hospital and the family – Katie also has a brother, Zurab, now 19 – moved to a new home near the then notorious Falls Road. Having just escaped a bloody civil war, Katie was unfazed by the sight of soldiers in tanks as she walked to school. ‘I was eight years old, but I walked there by myself. I knew how to look after myself.’
She couldn’t speak a word of English when she arrived but was fluent within three months. When she was 13, the family moved first to Cheam and then Redhill in Surrey. By then she was highly adaptable. ‘I moved schools seven or eight times, but I never thought of it as a problem,’ she says. ‘I didn’t become attached to people.’
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How it all began: A 19-year-old Katie performing tracks from her debut album Call off the Search at an appearance in Central London
Singing was her one constant. Inspired by a combination of her mother’s piano playing and her uncle’s passion for Queen, she had her first lessons in Georgia when she was around seven and carried on once she moved to the UK. ‘Everybody in Georgia is musical, but I was slightly obsessed,’ she says. At 15 she started writing songs, then, after her GCSEs, she won a place at the Brit School of performing arts in Croydon (alma mater also of Adele, Jessie J, Amy Winehouse and Leona Lewis) and it was there that Mike Batt (of Wombles fame) discovered her.
He was 50, she was just 18, but they bonded over their mutual admiration for Eva Cassidy. The first album they produced together, Call off the Search, became the bestselling British album of 2004. Katie remembers the moment Mike called to tell her it was number one. ‘I was living at home with my parents and doing a part-time music course. Mum said, “Yay,” and then we carried on having breakfast. But it was the end of life as I’d known it.’
From the outset, Katie was remarkably prescient about her career direction. Leona Lewis was one of her classmates, but she could never have contemplated the X Factor route that Leona later took, partly because she wanted to be able to record her own songs and partly because she wasn’t prepared to play the celebrity game. ‘I didn’t want things blowing up and getting out of my control. I just wanted to enjoy the music.’
Katie achieved that rarest of things in the music business – success on her own terms. At 21, she bought a house for herself in London’s Holland Park and splashed out on £40,000-worth of recording equipment to create her own studio. Her second and third albums became international chart toppers and she was playing to sellout audiences on tour. So when she found herself, in September 2010, immobilised in a chair and staring into space, her first reactions were incomprehension and denial. ‘You are doing your dream job so you should be happy, but it doesn’t work like that,’ she says. ‘It’s difficult to put into words, but happiness is not a constant. So you reach a certain level, but the longer you are up there, the more numb you become to it.’ In many ways, the reasons for her breakdown are still a tangle in her head.
Stress and exhaustion didn’t help – she was travelling relentlessly to promote her fourth album – but loneliness was also a factor. She is surrounded by a loyal entourage, ‘but I am aware that the buck stops with me. If I am not able to perform it affects everyone. I like being on the edge and depended upon, but there is a loneliness that comes from carrying that responsibility. And just being alone in your hotel room a lot of the time, it wears away at you. I love the band I play with and I can always go down to the bar and hang out with them, but I am also aware that that is how drinking problems can start.’
Katie will be touring this summer but says she 'knows her limits'
Although she is partial to Jack Daniel’s, she has never dabbled with drugs, but she understands how success can lead to addiction. ‘I think maybe part of it is about trying to get some feeling back after the numbness takes over,’ she says. She credits her father, who now works as a GP, with warning her off drugs, and her family for keeping her grounded. But another strand of her breakdown was that even they could not prevent her from falling for some of her own hype. ‘You try to keep level-headed, but when you sell 11 million albums you start thinking, “Maybe I am different.”’
There was no Damascene moment to Katie’s recovery. ‘I can’t say I’ve figured it all out. I can say that the medication helped and coming off it felt really good.’ Early last year she felt well enough to begin work on her new album Secret Symphony, a collection of ballads that showcases her soulful voice. And by May she was back on tour. One night, at a gig in Sheffield, her pianist Jim Watson, who is a biking fanatic, announced excitedly that James Toseland was in the audience. ‘I said, “Who’s James Toseland?’” she says, laughing.
Although she could hardly be expected to know it, chiselled-featured James is a legend in motorbiking circles. He also has a mum who is a Katie Melua fan and he had bought her the concert tickets as a gift. Jim invited them backstage. ‘I thought, “Oh my God! He’s hot!’” Katie giggles. They swapped numbers, started dating and found that, despite different backgrounds, they have much in common. Katie, for all her outwardly controlled emotions, is an adrenalin junkie. She skydives, has swum with sharks and once walked over hot coals for charity. James’s second passion is the piano. He’s in a band inauspiciously named Crash, and four years ago wowed the BBC Sports Personality of the Year show with a solo blues performance.
The past year has proved a crossroads for them both. After suffering a devastating wrist injury, James had to announce last November that his 15-year motorcycling career was over. He’s planning to develop his music and is looking into bike-connected business ventures. Meanwhile, Katie is back working, but with a fresh outlook.
‘I know my limits,’ she says. She will be touring this summer, and in September she and James will marry. They are planning a ‘chilled’ ceremony in London and he will be moving from his home in the Isle of Man to hers in London. They both want children but she says they are ‘just going
to see where life takes us’. Katie is right, there is no such thing as happy ever after. But it’s good to see her so happy in the here and now.
Katie’s album Secret Symphony is out now. Katie will perform at Hampton Court Palace Festival on 22 June and will be on tour in October. Visit katiemelua.com
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