Biography

Tanita Tikaram is not your average 28 year old. She has recorded 5 albums which between them have sold over 7 million copies world-wide (in Norway more than a quarter of the entire population own one of her LPs!). She has appeared in films and on catwalks. She has played over 1000 gigs world-wide. And her brother, Ramon, is a famous West End actor.

In a recent interview, Madonna said she has been listening to nothing but Tanita's albums recently. Perhaps the American icon can relate to a woman who, like her, lost her late adolescence to pop stardom.

"When I was still a teenager, I made a debut album that sold almost 4 million copies, visited city after city, staying in top hotels, performing and promoting my songs in over two dozen countries. It sounds glamorous - and in many ways it was - but I was lonely, all my friends were at college and not part of my universe. It was very hard to relate to what was happening. It was almost like I was sleepwalking through it all.

Things came to a head a few years ago.

"I did so much weird travelling in the mid-1990s. I would go off for three months at a time: a sure sign that I wasn't really settled, that I wasn't very happy where I was. I cut my hair, changed my clothes and started doing things outside of music.

She explored her interest in art and design and dabbled with acting, making a cameo appearance in Monika Treut's short film Taboo Parlour, shot in Hamburg.

Music, however, was the only thing that Tanita felt suited her. But even that needed a re-evaluation. She changed her management and her record company. And she found herself a new producer - the highly respected Marco Sabiu, who has worked with the likes of Kylie Minogue, Take That, Dubstar and Moby.

"I had reached the point where I wasn't having much fun. A friend told me I needed to rediscover my sense of play. Then I met Marco."

It turned out to be a fruitful partnership.

"Working with Marco was a real joy. He was serious about the music but had a great sense of humour that stopped me taking it all too seriously. Marco's classically trained but he's not patronising, he loves pop music and trying to communicate things in the simplest way he can. That's what all good pop music is. Marco just works like me, being in the studio was never very stressful, it was very natural. We talked about things in the same way, we describe music in the same way - as a picture we are trying to create. This period of change and reassessment resulted in a new album - Cappuccino Songs - that sees a happy innocence in amongst her trademark sombre tones for the first time. "I've had the luxury of going away from the limelight and being able to re-evaluate and rediscover my passion and motivation".

Cultural diversity was always a part of Tanita's life, given that her mother is a Malay from Borneo and her father is a Fijian of Indian descent who served with the British army in Germany before settling in Basingstoke. Thus Tanita has always been influenced by a variety of styles and this album seen even more of these coming to the fore, including sounds from Mediterranean, Scandinavian and Latin/ South American countries.

"I had been listing to a lot of Brazilian and liked the way they had been doing ballads with real rhythm, which I used on 'Amore Si' - a very kitsch, melodramatic love story. 'Back in your arms' and 'If I Ever' are straight European pop songs - with a twist.

Tanita was keen to experiment, to find the sounds that track needed, wherever they came from. She worked with a Finnish string quartet on 'I Don't Want To Lose A Love', who "provided the strangest ambience". Of her version of Abba's 'The Day Before You Came', she says "I've done it a bit spooky, a bit weird, almost electro."

"I want to discover new things, music I wasn't brought up with. In Paris I hear a lot more world music. On Radio Nostalgie in Paris they play an English record followed by a French one, and I do like French pop. I also love Abba and Fleetwood Mac. I listen to everything - to things I don't understand, like Chab Khaled and Paolo Conte because I think their music is very music is very sexy. I have a very dark voice so I always trying to find ways to lighten things up. It is part of challenge to balance the two. In lots of ways this album is balanced between light and dark, it goes between both sides of me and Marco."

The dark side of Tanita Tikaram is never far away, though. The first single 'Stop Listening' is "a song about still loving somebody with whom you have nothing left in common, being pulled this way and that way. Not being able to speak to somebody who you love is so awful."

One of Tanita's long term ambitions has been to write and work with other artists. She's recorded with Moodswings and more recently Asian Dub Foundation and Ashley Beadle have been re-mixing some of her latest tracks.

It's 1998 and Tanita Tikaram's rich, wonderfully dark voice once again weaves around pop music of genuine originality.

"I feel younger now that when I was 18", says a relaxed Tanita today. "I went a bit fast forwards back then. I don't have any expectations, it's like I'm starting again.

May 1998
Polydor Pressdepartment