Chantal Kreviazuk back with new album, jibes for the music industry
TORONTO (CP) – Chantal Kreviazuk is no Nelly Furtado.
At least, not in the booty-shakin’, dance-club rockin’, glammed-up sex-pot kind of way. The piano-based singer-songwriter says she’s content to be “an old soul”, despite feeling frustrated with the state of today’s pop charts and their obsession with celebrity, youth and beauty.
“It’s really hard to be an artist and have deeper music out there – to get heard and fit in. Rock music is almost dead radio-wise,” Kreviazuk bemoans as she returns to the spotlight with Ghost Stories, her first album in four years.
“We do have a bit of a hump to get over, with regard to things being a little more promiscuous-looking and so on.”
Oops. Did she say Promiscuous?
“I can’t use that word! There’s a hit song called Promiscuous, so I can’t use that word!” Kreviazuk wails, immediately backpedalling from an off-hand remark that could be interpreted as a slam against Furtado’s hip-shaking summer hit.
“It’s more about booty and being booty-licious. It’s a little bit frustrating,” she explains.
But that’s not to say she doesn’t dig Furtado’s new hip-hop flavour. Kreviazuk says she loves the song Promiscuous, which spent six weeks at number one on the Billboard charts.
“It’s different, (but) she’s still in there,” Kreviazuk says of the B.C. artist’s dancier, grittier sound – a radical shift in tone from Furtado’s low-key, folky image put forth previously.
“But she’s just sort of packaging herself with the rhythm thing. I don’t know if I could really do that, but she can and so it’s awesome.”
“Everybody’s got to figure out a way to make it work right now.”
In recent years, Kreviazuk has made it work by licensing her songs to Hollywood films such as How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and popular U.S. television shows such as Laguna Beach.
The Winnipeg artist, who scored pop hits in Canada with catchy melodies such as In This Life, Far Away and Before You, has also found a successful career co-writing tracks for other artists including chart regulars Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, and Avril Lavigne.
The svelte brunette says cracking the U.S. market with her own track is just not what her career is about anymore.
“I’ve never had that kind of like, whatever, instant, wow, big pop song. That just didn’t happen but I really love my career,” says Kreviazuk, a prolific composer who was a child prodigy with perfect pitch at age three.
“I’m one of the most licensed artists in film and television in the U.S. I have hits with the highest profile artists in the world now in the U.S. There’s nothing now that I feel like I haven’t accomplished.”
Kreviazuk’s greatest accomplishments have included two boys – one-year-old Lucca and two-year-old Rowan – with rock singer husband Raine Maida.
She says writing and recording her infectious new album, out Tuesday, was very much a family affair. Ghost Stories was co-written with Maida, recorded at their home studio and even little Rowan makes a vocal cameo – calling out for his mommy at the beginning of Waiting for the Sun.
“I was playing the piano in the studio kitchen and Rowan was outside the door… Just being silly, standing there waiting,” she says.
“It was so cute, and so we just left it, it’s in the track.”
Led by the first single All I Can Do, the album features Kreviazuk’s trademark rich vocals and chunky piano melodies against a strong driving rhythm – something she credits to Maida, lead singer for rock band Our Lady Peace.
She says the album is the “most natural” she’s ever produced.
“It’s the record I think I always wanted to make.”
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