Nouvelle Vague’s Melanie Pain
by We checked in with Nouvelle Vague frontwoman Melanie Pain about her debut solo album My Name — and her impending tour of Australia, which kicks off in Melbourne this Friday: Q. The Nouvelle Vague website describes your solo album as being ‘French romantic pop songs flirting with folk Americana’. That’s quite a summary! When you were first getting into music as a career, was it the French music of yesteryear that inspired you or were you taking your influences from elsewhere? A. ‘My main influence is from the 60s French pop, or ‘yéyé’, as we call it. This style was taking pop, twist and rock to make it in a French cool way. Serge Gainsbourg, Françoise Hardy, France Gall, Brigitte Bardot, all these pop singers really bring excellent French lyrics to fresh pop melodies and were also very charismatic characters’.
Q. How easily did the songs for your solo album fall into place? Did you find the songwriting process without Marc Collin frightening or invigorating (or both?)
A. ‘My album was written over the last two years while I was touring with Nouvelle Vague. I worked with Villeneuve in Paris for the songwriting and naturally Marc Collin helped me to produce it in 2008. I love working with him. We know each other quite well now after five years touring non-stop. And he is such a great producer’.
Q. What are you most looking forward to doing or seeing when you get to Australia and are there any Australian bands or singer in particular that have captured your imagination?
A. ‘I’m always really happy to get to a coffee as soon as i arrive in Australia, get a flat white and a good BLT sandwich, then hang out in the streets and let my body slowly get to the sunny Australian rhythm. I’ve been a huge fan of Nick Cave since I was fourteen and recently had the chance to meet Holly Throsby in Sydney’.
Tagged: Melanie Pain, Nouvelle Vague
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