βMeluaβ? redirects here. For the Super Robot Wars character, see Melua Melna Meia.
Ketevan "Katie" Melua (Georgian: α₯ααααα?α "α₯ααα" αααα£α?, surname pronounced IPA: /ΛmeluΛΙΛ?/; born 16 September 1984) is a British-Georgian singer and musician, who was born in Georgia, but moved to Northern Ireland at the age of eight and then relocated to England at the age of 14. Melua is signed to the small Dramatico record label, under the management of songwriter Mike Batt, and made her musical debut in 2003. She is, as of 2006, the United Kingdom's biggest-selling female artist and Europe's highest selling European female artist.
In November 2003, at the age of just 19, Melua released her first album, Call Off the Search, which reached the top of the United Kingdom album charts and sold 1.8 million copies within its first five months of release. Her second album, Piece by Piece, was released in September 2005 and to date has gone platinum four times.
Ketevan Melua was born in Kutaisi, Georgia, which then was part of the Soviet Union, in 1984 and spent her first years with her grandparents in the capital Tbilisi before moving, with her parents and brother, to the town of Batumi, Ajaria where her father worked as a heart specialist. During this time Melua lived in mild poverty, and for example Katie often had to carry buckets of water up five flights of stairs to her family's flat.[10] Melua would later cite this experience as the reason why she shuns certain materialistic aspects of fame and fortune.[11]
In 1993, in the aftermath of the Georgian Civil War, the family moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where her father took up a position at the prestigious Royal Victoria Hospital. Whilst living in Belfast, Melua attended Roman Catholic schools, St. Catherine's Primary School and Dominican College, Fortwilliam, while her younger brother attended Protestant schools. The family moved again to Redhill, Surrey, in 1998, although Melua recently moved out of the family home in favour of an apartment in the Paddington area of London, where she has transformed the spare bedroom into a recording studio. As a result of her diverse upbringing at an early age, Melua can speak three languages: Georgian, Russian and English.[12]
Due to her upbringing in politically unstable Georgia and troubled Belfast,[13] Melua initially planned to become either a historian or a politician.[14] This changed in 2000, at the age of 15, when Melua took part in a talent competition on British television channel ITV called "Stars Up Their Nose" (a spoof of Stars in Their Eyes), and was part of the children's program "Mad for It!".[15] Melua won the contest by singing Badfinger's Without You. The prize was Β£350 worth of MFI vouchers, with which she bought a chair for her father.[16] Had she lost the contest, she would have been gunged.[17]
After completing her GCSEs at Nonsuch High School in Surrey, Melua attended the BRIT School for the Performing Arts in the London Borough of Croydon, undertaking a BTEC with an A-level in music. She began to write songs whilst at the school.[18] Melua first met her future manager, producer Mike Batt, when studying at the school.
Melua didn't attend University, though she has often stated her desire to do so, saying that English literature, history and physics would be her courses of choice should she ever get the chance to go to University in the future.[19][20]
Melua met Luke Pritchard, lead singer of The Kooks, when they were both studying at the BRIT School where they began to court. Melua and Pritchard rarely speak of the relationship, but what is known is that the couple dated for three years and even discussed marriage. However, as she became more successful, the relationship came into difficulties and they split up in March 2005.[21]
Melua is known to have smoked cannabis for recreation and for musical inspiration. However, in 2004, Melua announced that she had stopped taking the illegal substance for the latter reason as it "dented her creativity".[22]
Melua is sometimes referred to as an 'adrenaline junkie' as she enjoys rollercoasters and fun fairs and often paraglides and hang glides.[23] She has also skydived twice and taken several flying lessons and in 2004 she was lowered from a 200 metre building in New Zealand at 60mph. When asked about Melua being an 'adrenaline junkie', Mike Batt said, "she [Melua] enjoys extremes, but in life her emotions are always in check."
On 10 August 2005, Melua became a British citizen along with her parents and brother. The citizenship ceremony took place in Weybridge, Surrey.[24] The ceremony was important to Melua because if her father had lost his job before becoming a citizen, the family would have been forced to return to Georgia. On gaining British nationality, Melua was eligible for a British passport, which makes it easier for her to travel around the world.[25] Becoming a British citizen meant that Melua had held three citizenships before she was 21; first Soviet, then Georgian and finally British. After the ceremony, Melua stated her pride at her newest nationality. "As a family, we have been very fortunate to find a happy lifestyle in this country and we feel we belong. We still consider ourselves to be Georgian, because that is where our roots are, and I return to Georgia every year to see my uncles and grandparents, but I am proud to now be a British citizen."[24]
It was whilst performing at a Brit School showcase that Melua caught the eye of Mike Batt, an English songwriter and producer who was looking for an artist capable of singing "jazz and blues in an interesting way".[26] After hearing Melua sing "Faraway voice" (a song of her own composition, about the death of her idol Eva Cassidy) Batt signed the 19-year-old Melua to his small Dramatico recording and management company and sent her into the studio.[27]
Main article: Call Off the Search
Call Off the Search featured two songs written by Melua; "Belfast (Penguins and Cats)", a song about Melua's own experience of her time in the troubled city and "Faraway voice", a song about the death of Eva Cassidy. Melua also covered songs by Delores J. Silver ("Learnin' the Blues"), John Mayall ("Crawling up a Hill"), Randy Newman ("I Think it's Going to Rain Today") and James Shelton ("Lilac Wine"). A final six songs on the album were by Mike Batt.[28]
It was initially difficult for Melua and Batt to get airplay for the album's lead single, "The Closest Thing to Crazy". This changed when BBC Radio 2 producer Paul Walters heard the single and played it on the popular Terry Wogan breakfast show.[29] Wogan played "The Closest Thing to Crazy" frequently in November and December 2003 in an attempt to make it that year's Christmas number one. The single only reached #10, but Wogan's support did raise Melua's profile and when "Call Off the Search" was released it became an immediate hit, reaching number-one on the UK album chart in January 2004. "Call off the Search" reached the top five in Ireland, top twenty in Norway, top thirty in a composite European chart and top fifty in Australia. In the UK, the album sold 1.2 million copies, making it four times platinum, and spent six weeks at the top of the charts. It sold 3 million copies worldwide. Subsequent singles did not reach the success of the first. The second single and title track reached #19. The third single, "Crawling Up A Hill", only got to #41.[30]
Main article: Piece by Piece (album)
Melua's second album, Piece by Piece, was released on September 26, 2005. It included the single "Nine Million Bicycles", which was released on September 19 of the same year. The first UK airplay for the single was on the Terry Wogan show August 1. The album contains four more songs written by Melua herself, four more by Batt, one Batt/Melua collaboration and three more songs are new versions of "great songs". The band line-up is the same as on the first album. The album debuted at the number-one spot of the UK Albums Chart on the week of October 3, 2005.[31]
On 30 September 2005, Melua came under criticism in The Guardian from writer and scientist Simon Singh for the lyrical content of the track "Nine Million Bicycles". Melua's disputed lyrics were:
We are 12 billion light-years from the edge. That's a guess β no-one can ever say it's true, but I know that I will always be with you.
They were interpreted by Singh as an assault on the accuracy of the work of cosmologists[32] which sparked a series of letters from other Guardian readers, agreeing or disagreeing.[33] On 15th October, Melua and Singh both appeared on the BBC's Today programme, and Melua unveiled a re-recording of the song which included Singh's tongue-in-cheek amendments to the lyrics:
We are 13.7 billion light-years from the edge of the observable universe; that's a good estimate with well-defined error bars and with the available information, I predict that I will always be with you.
Both sides amicably agreed that the new lyrics were less likely to achieve commercial success, amidst a discussion about scientific accuracy versus artistic licence. Melua revealed that she 'should have known better' as she used to be a member of the Astronomy club at school.[34]
A double A-side of the self-penned "I Cried For You" and a cover of The Cure's "Just Like Heaven" (1988), which is the theme song to the film Just Like Heaven,[35] was released in the UK on December 5 and peaked at UK #35. "I Cried For You" was penned by Melua and was inspired by a meeting with the writer of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.[36]
A third single, "Spider's Web" was released on 17 April 2006 and peaked at UK #52. Melua embarked on a concert tour in support of Piece by Piece, the UK leg of which started in Aberdeen, Scotland on January 20, 2006.[37]
Towards the end of 2006, Melua released the single, "It's Only Pain" written by Mike Batt.[38] This was followed by the release of "Shy Boy", written by Mike Batt. Her third album is due for release in September 2007.[citation needed]
In November 2004 Melua was asked to take part in Band Aid 20 in which she joined a chorus of British and Irish pop stars to create a rendition of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to raise money for famine relief in Africa. This was in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the original Band Aid.[39]
On March 19, 2005, Melua sang "Too Much Love Will Kill You" with Brian May at the 46664 concert in George, South Africa for Nelson Mandela's HIV charity. Melua had been a fan of Queen since her childhood in Georgia when her uncles would play the band's music, so performing with May was a realisation of a childhood dream.[40][10]
Melua is a goodwill ambassador to the charity Save the Children and in 2005 she went to Sri Lanka to see the work the charity was doing for children in the area after the civil war and tsunami.[41] In 2006 Melua donated all the proceeds from her single Spider's web to the charity.[42]
Melua is also a supporter of the Oxfam charity shops, using them frequently to buy her clothing. Melua however, has stated that this is as much to do with her dislike of spending and glamour than support for the charity,[10] admitting that, when out in public, she looks "like a tramp" and that her hairdresser playfully calls her look "the Romanian window cleaner".[43]
On 7 July, 2007 Melua performed at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg.
On 2 October 2006, Melua entered the Guinness Book of Records for playing the deepest underwater concert 303 metres below sea level on Statoil's Troll A platform in the North Sea. Melua and her band underwent extensive medical tests and survival training in Norway before flying by helicopter to the rig.[44] Melua later described achieving the record as "the most surreal gig I have ever done". Unfortunately she was to hold the record only briefly, since in April 2007 an orchestra from Kalisz, Poland, performed a concert still further underground, in a Polish salt mine. Melua's concert is commemorated in the DVD release Concert Under the Sea, released in June 2007.
In April 2006, for The Sun newspaper, Melua chose an eclectic fourteen pieces of her favourite music that she enjoyed and had the biggest musical influence on her. The pieces she chose were, Paul Simon's "Hearts And Bones", Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah", Joni Mitchell's "Marcie", Bob Dylan's "Masters of War", James Taylor's "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)", Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place To Go", Portishead's "Glory Box", BjΓΆrk's "The Pleasure Is All Mine", Camille's "Au Port", Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name", Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy", Finlay Quaye's "Even After All", Suzanne Vega's "Caramel" and Babyshambles' "Fuck Forever".[45]
Melua has also revealed on numerous occasions how Queen were a huge influence on her as a child/teenager, with one of her memories being buying Queen's Greatest Hits II and singing along to "Radio Ga Ga" in her home country Georgia.[46]
Melua appeared on the BBC's The Culture Show in November 2006 advocating Paul McCartney as her choice in the search for Britain's greatest living icon.[47][48]
Melua has sometimes been criticised for relying on Mike Batt to write many of her most famous songs.[49][50][51] Melua has countered such comments, stating that her songs "aren't good enough" and that it would be foolish not to take advantage of the experience of her Ivor Novello Award winning manager.[52] Some have also taken the view that Katie's vocals can be emotionless and dull. John Murphy of musicOMH.com said of "Nine Million Bicycles", "The only trouble is that there's absolutely no passion, no soul and no excitement to be found here...Yet all good music should provoke some sort of emotion, and this provokes none whatsoever".[53]
In 2007, Melua announced that she would be appearing in a segment of the movie Grindhouse. The segment entitled "Don't", a faux trailer, was directed by Edgar Wright.[54][55]
In Melua's role, she and a group of friends open a door to find a hatchet wielding man go mad at them and bury the hatchet in Melua's head, splitting her in two.
Call Off the Search
2003: "The Closest Thing to Crazy" β #10 UK
2004: "Call Off the Search" β #19 UK
2004: "Crawling Up A Hill" β #46 UK
Piece by Piece
2005: "Nine Million Bicycles" β #5 UK #2 Netherlands, #1 PL
2005: "I Cried for You"/"Just Like Heaven" β #35 UK, #36 Netherlands
2006: "Spiders' Web" β #52 UK, , #2 PL
2006: "It's Only Pain" #41 UK, , #4 PL
2006: "Shy Boy" #1 PL
