Spotlight On: KATIE MELUA
Listen to the full SHEROES Radio hour (includes playlist and featured interview):
Listen to the full interview only:
ABOUT THIS WEEK’S SHERO IN THE SPOTLIGHT:
To give you a sense of the feeling of awe I had at looking back at our guest’s career, read the first line of the bio on her website: “Katie Melua is one of Britain's most successful recording artists of the millennium selling more than 11 million albums, 1 million concert tickets and receiving 56 platinum awards.” It all started when Katie was just 19 years old and her 2003 debut album, Call Off the Search, was released; it became the biggest-selling album in the U.K. the following year and went platinum. Her follow up, 2005’s Piece By Piece cemented that success, going four-times platinum and making Katie Melua the U.K.'s best-selling female artist that year. It also garnered her two BRIT Award nominations for British Female Solo artist and Pop Act. And to quote her bio again - “…by the release of her third album, 2007’s Pictures, she would be the biggest-selling U.K.-based, female artist in the world that year." While Katie came up through the Brit school in London, famously attended by fellow pop icons Adele and Amy Winehouse, she was born far away, across the Black Sea in Georgia, and spent her early childhood in the former Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the Georgian civil war she moved with her family to Belfast, Ireland, before settling in London, and as you will hear her tell us, her family always believed that this move would mean big things for Katie. It turned out, they were right. Fast forward two decades and nine albums on, Katie Melua remains one of the top artists in the U.K. and Europe. And while success has not always been easy on her, Katie has recently found love and welcomed her first child, documenting her newfound happiness merging with her longtime success on her ninth album, Love & Money.
Also this week on the SHEROES Radio hour:
SHERO BIRTHDAYS: Emmylou Harris 4/2, Jill Scott 4/4
Radio SHERO: Kari Hedlund of affiliate station KAXE in Northern Minnesota spins a track by Jen Cloher “Mana Takatāpui”.