Katie Melua Announces New Studio Album & Releases First Single
KATIE MELUA ANNOUNCES NEW STUDIO ALBUM & RELEASES FIRST SINGLE
NEW VIDEO DIRECTED BY CHARLIE LIGHTENING & STARRING BILLY HOWLE
A LOVE LIKE THAT – released 30 JUNE 2020
Listen HERE from 12 noon BST.
A gloriously cinematic exploration of love, with lyrics written by Katie Melua, and production by Leo Abrahams – ‘A LOVE LIKE THAT’ is a true tour-de-force of artistic and lyrical maturity.
This is songcraft at its finest, with Melua’s faultless performance completely inhabiting the song, and the musical presentation and arrangements expertly executed by Abrahams, co-composer Sam Dixon, and mixers Cameron Craig and Luke Potashnick. The full cast of exceptional musicians on this track also includes drummer Emre Ramazanoglu, flautist Jack Pinter, and The Georgian Philharmonic Orchestra.
The video for ‘A LOVE LIKE THAT’ is the first in a series of stunning visuals Melua has collaborated on with the award-winning director Charlie Lightening (Paul McCartney, Liam Gallagher, Kasabian) and featuring Billy Howle (Star Wars, Dunkirk, MotherFatherSon).
Katie Melua: “I’m really proud of the video. I loved working with Charlie Lightening, we had lots of talks about how to make it a meaningful work and deal with the new limits on filming. We went with just me and Billy Howle on screen, we tried to show with subtle gestures and nuances the truth of love in its early stages. Hopefully everyone can enjoy watching it.”
Charlie Lightening: “It was so nice to collaborate with Katie on this project. We talked through the idea at length and honed what we wanted to achieve. It’s always so good when the artist has a strong idea of where the visual needs to go. It meant we could create a character and figure out this narrative journey that you go on throughout the film. The music is so cinematic so to create this film has been so rewarding. Everything just came together perfectly in the end.”
The single is the first to be taken from Melua’s forthcoming studio album Album No. 8, a record that represents the culmination of a prolonged period of musical rediscovery for the 35-year-old. The lyrics, her most personal yet, see her attempting to reconcile the knotty complexities of real-life love to its fairytale counterpart. Elsewhere, Melua draws from the vernacular of folk songs to evoke a sense of magic-hour wonder mirrored by string arrangements whose depth and movement evoke Charles Stepney’s work with Rotary Connection and Ramsey Lewis. What results is her most cohesive and assured album to date.
ALBUM No. 8 – released 16 OCTOBER 2020
Pre-order HERE
Album No. 8 Tracklisting
A Love Like That
English Manner
Leaving The Mountain
Joy
Voices In the Night
Maybe I Dreamt It
Heading Home
Your Longing Is Gone
Airtime
Remind Me To Forget
Speaking about the writing process of ‘A Love Like That’, Melua says, “This song is asking the essential timeless question about mad love, ‘How do you make a love like that last?’ But before it became about love between a couple, it started its life centred on my relationship with work and the stamina required to keep being an artist in the music industry. It was only after my co-composer Sam Dixon and I wrapped our session, that I retreated to a cottage in the Cotswolds for 3 weeks to wrestle with the song’s lyrics. ‘A Love Like That’ continues a narrative that is across the new album. And in the context of love – it is about having the courage to speak openly and freely.”
“The highlight for me was recording the orchestra in Tbilisi with Katie,” recalls producer Leo Abrahams. “The arrangement is written to convey the protagonist’s changing state of mind throughout the song: from turbulent to calm, sentimental to defiant. Technically this was probably the simplest arrangement on the record but we had to do almost 20 takes of the tremolando introduction to get the right amount of aggression but with an elegant resolution. The players seemed to enjoy it!”
KATIE MELUA
Katie Melua is one of Britain’s most successful musical artists, having received over 56 platinum awards. The 35-year old is originally from Tbilisi, Georgia and moved to the UK aged 8. Her voice carries extraordinary qualities of clarity, emotional depth, and richness of tone that have been her trademarks since she released her debut album Call Off The Search when she was only 19 years old. Melua has released 7 top 10 studio albums – Call Off The Search, Piece By Piece, Pictures, The House, Secret Symphony, Ketevan and, most recently, 2016’s self-produced, critically acclaimed In Winter (she and Kate Bush remain the only two British female artists in history to achieve this). An accomplished songwriter, composer, and arranger some of Melua’s most well-known hits include ‘Nine Million Bicycles’, ‘The Closest Thing to Crazy’, ‘Perfect World’, and her now infamous cover of ‘Wonderful Life’. A constantly in-demand touring artist, Melua enchants her audiences worldwide with her uniquely powerful and captivating voice, flawless performances, and charming personality. Melua’s 8th studio album will be released in the autumn of 2020.
LEO ABRAHAMS
Leo Abrahams is an English musician, composer and producer. He has collaborated and produced records with a multitude of musicians including Jon Hopkins, Regina Spektor, Frightened Rabbit, Ghostpoet and Pulp. He has co-written film soundtracks including Peter Jackson’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ (with Brain Eno) and Steve McQueen’s award-winning ‘Hunger’ (with David Holmes). Abrahams has also released five solo albums in styles ranging from folk to experimental, and in November undertook a 16-date solo tour of Siberia to develop a free-improvisation ambient guitar project.
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