REALLY SAYING SOMETHING

Features

Candie Payne

With names as sweet as a summer’s breeze, female artists are wafting back into the spotlight bringing with them a fresh brand of sexy but savvy pop. Stranger swapped some pillow talk with the leaders of the pack…

Words by Lotte Mahon

First published Stranger 14 - April 2007

At a time when old-school Svengalis are back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons, with Phil Spector’s courtcase being broadcast to millions and Berry Gordy Jnr. trying to dodge the Dreamgirls comparisons, artists that have been influenced by their former protégés are making their way steadily up the charts with a new take on good, old-fashioned pop music.

Often overlooked as cutesy or kitsch, the girl-group sound has sold many a record over the decades but in recent years it was more often parodied by manufactured popstars who attempted the style with none of the substance. But it seems that the tides are changing: fresh out of Merseyside’s Deltasonic stable comes the effortlessly charming Ms. Candie Payne [left].

After spending part of her childhood in New York she returned to Liverpool at a time when pop music was nothing to brag about. “A few years ago pop was totally bastardised by all the boy and girl bands being churned out, but now people are taking pop music seriously again. Sinatra and The Beatles were popular musicians, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”
And true to her word, Candie has created an übercool album proving that there is such a thing as credible pop. With echoes of Dusty Springfield, Astrud Gilberto and Carole King, Candie’s debut album, I Wish I Could Have Loved You More, lets the lyrics doing the talking, focusing less on the gloss of bubblegum pop and more on an everyman, honesty for its appeal.

Candie Payne

Like those many of the original girl groups, Candie’s songs come from the heart but her vocal has an air of melancholy and the lyrics are often bitter-sweet. However, Candie insists that this tone was not deliberate, it was simply the product of a time in her life. “When I started writing at 21, I didn’t want to attempt to write about things I didn’t understand, so I picked a subject that I knew about, which like many girls of that age was boys and all the complexities of relationships.”

Candie is a new addition to the wealth of young female artists finding success in the industry and proving that the girl group sound is by no means only the domain of groups. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s solo artists’ successes far outweighed that of any UK female groups. We never produced a homegrown girl group to truly rival the success of The Ronettes or later The Supremes.

This trend appears to be continuing with the success of Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, whose image is now almost identical to the legendary Ronnie Spector, and her album Back to Black is a Motown/Wall of Sound hybrid, which pays respectful homage to the past, whilst heading full pelt into the future of popular music.

Candie Payne

However, as always there are exceptions to the rule and for the past few years one group has been notably tipping their polka dot hats to both the sound and style of retro-pop without a hint of embarrassment. They are The Pipettes. “When we got together we wanted to bring back theatrics to performance, so rather than just rolling out of bed and onto stage we wanted to make an effort, to have an uniform or visual motif that would represent us, and polka dots do that pretty well,” says RiotBecki of The Pipettes.
But it’s not all about the dresses; The Pipettes came together for the love of the music not just the glitz. “We aren’t doing this for fame or celebrity recognition. The Pipettes was a fantastic idea and we wanted to see it through and write our own music.”

So how has an industry and a genre of music famed for its patriarchal control changed for these female artists? Well for a start, they don’t take any messing as Candie explains: “I managed myself for a long time and when record companies ask you to define your look and sound, it forces you to look inside yourself and decide who you are and stick to it.”

Are we to believe then, that the sexism of the music industry is no longer a stumbling block? According to RiotBecki, when it comes to independent female artists there are still a few non-believers out there, “People do say ‘Oh, you write your own songs!’ they think we are manipulated puppets I guess, but we’re not.”

And that’s the most exciting part of this new wave of female singer/songwriters: the personalities that are stamped unashamedly on each track are honest and real. Gone are the days of the Svengalis looming in the background, pulling the strings. “I dress how I want and I’m not going to contrive it just so kids can copy it,” Candie says. “If people like it then good but I am who I am.” Sounds like a slice of sugar-coated sense.

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