Back then, I was very much into the contemporary pop music of the day. Now, I'm much more interested in the quality of great songwriting, and so I listen to the likes of Stevie Wonder, the Carpenters and ABBA. I'm really enjoying listening to great songs, and the lyrical content of each track I hear is particularly important to me. When I was younger, I would tune into the music rather than the lyrics. Most of the time, the words didn't really mean anything to me because they were about things that I couldn't really relate to, such as the ups and downs of romantic relationships.
For me, Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, the two men behind Abba, rank as among the best songwriters of all time. They wrote amazing songs, which are still technically brilliant when you deconstruct them. When I started to write my own songs, I would write everything in minor keys. I'm not quite sure why, but I suppose that I must have felt that my music would be more sophisticated if they had a minor sound to them. But then, when I started looking at Abba songs, I realised that they tend to be in major keys. They have very simple, but highly effective, chord patterns and the overall sound is very optimistic. They are still so successful today because they knew how to write songs that people want to listen to.
Because my first album had sold so many copies, songwriters were keen for me to record their music on the follow-up. When you become established, people even begin to write songs with you in mind and send them to you unsolicited. I wanted to sing songs that gave me the chance to say something meaningful, but many of the writers who sent me material had an image of this young girl in their mind. I can imagine the process that they went through.
'What's she going to want to sing about?' they would ask themselves. 'Well, she's still young, so let's make her sing about dolphins and fairies and magical things, instead of anything with real substance.'
One songwriter who didn't do this was Jeff Franzel. I was very drawn to one of his tracks called 'Never Saw Blue', which was very easy on the ear and was in the same vein as 'Who Painted the Moon Black?' from Pure. It had quite a pop sound to it, but I felt that this could be balanced by other tracks on the album. Jeff came to the studio and played it to the team working on the new album and everyone seemed to love it.
'Cool,' I said. 'That's one song down for the album.' Basically, this was how things developed from there onwards, one song at a time.
At the classical end of the spectrum, I felt that I was ready to record some bigger opera pieces such as 'Lascia Ch'io Piangia', Caccini's 'Ave Maria' and 'O Mio Babbino Caro'. These sat very comfortably alongside 'Never Saw Blue' in terms of maintaining the variety of different types of music that had worked so well on Pure. I was also determined to record 'Quanta Qualia', a track by the English contemporary classical composer Patrick Hawes, which I felt was an incredibly atmospheric piece.
Working in the studio is an expensive business, so I tend not actually to record anything until I'm absolutely sure that I like it. I try to filter out as many tracks as possible, generally based on the lyrics and the piano part sent by each of the prospective writers. Usually, I judge any potential track by the way that I feel on my first listen to it. Lyrics are so important to me that, if someone has written a song and the words are too naff, I'll immediately switch off to the track, no matter how strong the melody may be.
As I flew home on the plane to New Zealand that Christmas, I listened to dozens of potential songs and, while I was there, I often received CDs in the post from the A&R boss at Decca, Jacky Schroer. It's her job to help work with artists to develop the repertoire on their albums. She flagged up particular songs and then I would respond with a yes or a no. The songs that I immediately declined were those that I simply didn't like or those that didn't suit my voice. I was really open to as many different ideas as possible, although I seemed to be dogged by dozens of very cheesy offerings.
At home, I sat in my bedroom, blasting out CDs on the stereo that I had won in one of the Talent Quest competitions. I wanted to make sure that I chose songs that grabbed me on the first listen, as there's always a danger of becoming familiar with a song and then finding yourself enjoying it only because you know it so well. It's important that a song should not burn out quickly in listeners' affections once they have heard it a few times, but the most significant thing has to be the way that a great song hooks someone in on the very first listen.
I was keen to include some of my own songs for Odyssey, and I'd been writing on my own, but I was not really at the stage where I was comfortable sharing my creations with all these people and opening myself to criticism. I worked on many of the arrangements on the album, which was a great experience, and I also co-wrote my first track, called 'What You Never Know (Won't Hurt You)', with a great songwriter called Stephan Moccio. I wanted to make sure that the track was as good as I hoped it was. So, while I was in New Zealand, I took my Walkman with me to a rock festival called Big Day Out, which sees visits from bands all over the world. I was sitting at a table with a friend from home called Anita Smith and I asked her to listen to 'What You Never Know (Won't Hurt You)'.
'What do you think of this?' I asked. 'Do you like it or not?'
'Yeah, I do,' she replied.
'Now, you're not just saying that, are you? I need honesty here.'
'I really like it,' she said. And that was good enough for me.
During the same trip back home, together with the rest of my family, I went camping. Again, I took my collection of CDs to listen to while we were staying in the tent.
Now, camping was a big annual event right through our childhoods. Our family holidays usually began with four or five false starts. As we drove to the end of our driveway, the shout would go up from Mum in the front passenger seat, 'We've forgotten the sunhats!' Around we would turn to pick up the absent items. Then, we would get half an hour away and suddenly Mum would say, 'I don't know if I packed enough summer clothes. It's looking quite sunny now.' Or, 'Sophie's forgotten her sarong. If we don't go back now, we'll have to buy another one.' So, around we would turn again. In the end, it became one of the Westenra family's running jokes. When we finally set off, there was always a horrible seven-hour drive to Golden Bank on the top of New Zealand's South Island.
Dad always drove, with Mum sitting next to him in the front and us three kids squashed into the back. Hitched to the back of the car was our trailer, crammed full with the tent, our bikes and a couple of chilly bins to help keep our food cool.
We tended to go camping in time for New Year's Eve. The plan was to arrive during the day and then to stay up late to see in the New Year. Most families set off around breakfast, so that they could arrive at the campsite in good time, set up their gear and then involve themselves in the festivities. We were never quite as organised as that and would usually arrive under the cover of darkness, which would mean that we would struggle to put up our tent with just the car's headlights and some torches to help us see what we were doing.
Our tent was an ex-demonstration model from a camping store, which we had bought as a Westenra family bargain. When it was finally pitched, the insides quickly took on a home-away-from-home quality, with the amount of paraphernalia that we brought with us growing every year. Mind you, some of the stuff that other campers brought with them, such as portable televisions, always made me wonder why they'd even bothered to go camping in the first place.
We had a little gas stove to cook on, although generally the campsites had kitchens. It became a great social event, as we saw the same families year after year. We had some wonderful times and it was a particularly big adventure when we were small children. Having said that, there were some miserable times, too, when it rained, and we were forced to trudge out through the mud to visit the toilet in the middle of the night, armed only with a torch and an umbrella. I can remember asking myself why we were there when, not so far away, we had a nice, warm, dry house with our own beds. On balance, though, I wouldn't have swapped those camping experiences with Mum, Dad, Sophie and Isaac for anything else in the wor
ld.
It sounds very arrogant to me as I write this next sentence, but it's the truth. The main reason why the camping had to stop was that I had become too recognisable for us to be able to stay on the campsite and for me to find the experience in any way a relaxing break. On the first morning after we arrived at the site, I was standing in the queue for a shower in the morning.
'Hey, you're the singer, aren't you?' the woman standing next to me asked excitedly.
I looked embarrassed and mumbled, 'Er, yes, I am,' silently adding, 'And I just want to have my shower. I don't want anyone to recognise me. I've just got out of bed.'
My entire holiday began to centre on avoiding being recognised on the campsite. I think this was the first time that we truly understood the effect of a whole year of television, radio and newspaper reports, relentless advertising and posters in the window of every record store in New Zealand. It's not that I blame people – I realise that they bought my albums and bought into a slice of me in the process. So it was perfectly understandable that they would be intrigued when my family and I pitched our tent on the campsite where they had chosen to spend their holiday.
The trouble was that, once people had located our tent, there was simply no escape. Small groups started to hang out nearby for no good reason at all. Mum had to tell people that I was resting because I was tired, in the hope that they would become bored and go away. We had a family-sized tent with two big rooms and an outside area. Even though we were right on the beach front, which was really beautiful, I spent hours hiding out inside pretending to be asleep so that the visitors would go away. There were hundreds of tents on the campsite, but absolutely everyone seemed to have worked out which one was ours. One young boy even brought around his fish and chips to eat while he waited for me to wake up. He just sat there chatting for ages to my family. It started not to be a holiday for me.
I was at the age where I wanted to hang out with my friends as well. It was by no means a rebellion on my part, but I was keen to exert my teenage independence. This made me kind of resentful that I was on a family holiday where I couldn't even chill out because I was having to be sociable the whole time.
The camping had to stop, and the following year we had a free week's holiday in Australia on the Gold Coast, between two concerts that I had to give, so it worked out really well. We had done the whole camping thing. Now we deserved a bit of luxury, with a bathroom of our own, rather than one we had to share with the whole campsite. Then, in 2006 we rented a house instead, which was great fun and much more civilised.
Being shut away in the back of the tent did give me plenty of listening time and, by the time I returned to London, I was pretty certain about the tracks I wanted to appear on my new album, which once again was produced by Giles Martin. Just as he had done with Pure, he made the whole experience very enjoyable and we continued to have a lot of laughs between takes.
We recorded most of the album at Metropolis Studios in London, at the same time as the McFly boys were recording there. As usual, I was excited to be working in the same building as a bunch of chart-topping pop stars. Every morning, I passed a group of girls not much younger than I was, who waited outside the studios, hoping to catch a glimpse of the band. They must have had to hang around for hours just to get the most fleeting of sights of them. I used to feel quite smug about being able to walk into the studio complex and say, 'Hey, guys!' to them. I had met them before, briefly, at a Universal Music sales conference, where we performed in front of the people responsible for selling our records into retailers. It still gave me a buzz to be recording in a studio such as Metropolis – it was such a starry place to be.
I was out on the road soon after Odyssey was released, but, rather than my own headline tour, this time I was appearing with Il Divo, the pop-opera quartet created by Simon Cowell, who have been particularly successful in the USA and in countries across Europe. For the American leg of the tour, I had a rock-band setup with drums, guitar, bass and Jeff Franzel on keyboards.
Working alongside Il Divo was a great opportunity for me to meet American audiences in a big way for the first time and also for me to experiment with a more pop-influenced style, rather than the classical-music setup that I had been used to at home in New Zealand and in the UK. We had some rehearsals in a little New York studio before we set off on the road. I loved working with a drummer; it was a novelty for me because most of my arrangements are string-based. It was a different experience and I felt quite pumped up when I heard the strong percussive beat next to me.
While we were in New York, we also spent some time thinking about what I should be wearing on stage. In the end, I opted for black knee-high boots, jeans and a sequinned top. It was a different look from anything I had worn before, and I enjoyed it a lot.
It was quite an adventure being on tour with Sebastian, Carlos, David and Urs – the Il Divo boys. All four of them were unfailingly charming to me – especially Sebastian, who always kept an eye out for me to make sure that I was all right. When I first met them, they all came up to me to introduce themselves individually, which I thought was really sweet. They were very friendly, although I didn't see as much of them on the American leg of the tour as I did when we were in Europe. Initially, I was in my own little world with my band and they were in their zone. We bumped into each other at catering and on the side of the stage when they were running off from their soundcheck and I was going on to do mine.
As I was coming off the stage after performing in Los Angeles, I looked up and saw Simon Cowell walking down a corridor in front of me. He had been meeting with the Il Divo guys. Oh, my goodness! I thought to myself. He's right in front of me. I should introduce myself, I really should. But I bottled it and I was too shy to say a simple 'Hello, I'm Hayley.' I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights. The effect he had on people as he walked past them along the corridor was amazing. He is one of the most instantly recognisable individuals in America and people just stared at him open-mouthed when they saw him. There were lots of people just as starstruck as me, and I would have felt very embarrassed had I gone up to him. That said, given the chance again, I would say hello to him because I admire what he's achieved enormously.
While I was working with Il Divo, I was very lucky to have a tour manager called Ali McMordie, who was a real rock'n'roll kind of guy. I'm sure that I posed far less of a challenge to him than some of the bands he had looked after in the past. His role was to make sure that everything ran smoothly and to see that we were all in the right place at the right time. He also had to sort out any problems that cropped up along the way. Previously, he had been a bass guitarist in a rock group, so he had seen a bit of life. He's the sort of guy who has a very tough exterior, but turns out to be very sweet when you get to know him.
The musicians in the band were all male, so quite often I had to block my ears in the tour bus. It was only when I laughingly shouted out, 'Oh my gosh! I don't need to be hearing this!' that they remembered that they had a lady present. This had its good and bad points, but we had great fun and there was a lot of joking all through the tour.
Working with the band allowed me the opportunity to perform quite differently, and I still incorporate what I learned then into my sets these days. Sometimes, it's good to be thrown into new situations, so that you develop and learn new skills. I really got a handle on talking to audiences on the tour. For a start, I was the support act, so I was warned that, since I was not the main reason that the audience had come to the concert, they might behave differently towards me, for example, by not turning up until halfway through my set. Most of the time, the crowd who turned up to Il Divo's concerts were not your typical rock'n'roll audience and the majority of them were there on time, although there were still people who drifted in late and I had to work hard at grabbing their attention. I enjoyed that challenge because it reminded me of my busking days. I went into the mindset that I had used back in Christchurch, when I knew that I had to stop people in their tracks using nothing bu
t my voice.
I started the show by chatting to the audience a little and I kept things very light throughout. I started off each night with 'She Moves Through the Fair' and then I sang many of my old favourites, although 'Both Sides Now' was the song that really seemed to hit the spot with the audience.
I definitely thrive on applause and the reaction from the audience when I'm on stage. I guess it feeds the ego. As singers go, I don't believe that I have a big ego, though. Because of my upbringing, I'm still quite a humble, down-to-earth sort of person and I know that the rest of my family will always keep me grounded. They would never in a million years let me become big-headed.
I'm not going to name names here, because this is not that sort of book. But, rest assured, as I've travelled around the world, I've come across some really big egos among my fellow recording artists. They behave as if everyone were in second place to them. I can't understand how they fail to see what they're doing and what kind of image they're giving off. Maybe I'm too self-aware for my own good and sometimes I possibly care a little too much about what people think. But, when I hear about some of the antics that some stars get up to, I think, Oh my gosh! How embarrassing to create that much of a scene!
If I rise above myself and look down, I don't see myself as grabbing so frantically at fame as some people, who seem to be desperate to make their mark at any cost. I feel much more sure of my place in this world and the reasons why I'm here. I have some friends in the music industry who can be very sweet people, but they struggle to keep their egos in check. I don't understand how they can be such lovely people one minute and then so unsure of themselves the next. Their behaviour is almost self-destructive.
Hayley Westenra Page 11