Interview For Double Spread Page

Interview with Imogen Piper

Following in the footsteps of her idols Kate Bush and Tori Amos, Imogen Piper is tipped to be the star of tomorrow.

Questions:
You have high praise for such musicians as Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and Tori Amos, artists that, some would say, are an unusual choice for someone of your generation. When did you first discover these artists and what was it that attracted you to their unique styles?

Annie and Tori came a lot later, in my early teens, but Kate Bush has been with me since the beginning. My parents always played her music around the house and I used to watch a video, a sort of collection of all her music videos and copy her every move. I’d watch it obsessively, truly obsessively- sometimes several times a day. I loved her so much I’d copy her hair from her ‘Hammer Horror’ video for school. It was a little difficult explaining to the other children who she was, but at the same time I sort of knew that they wouldn’t understand her. For them, Britney was ‘music’ and I knew the ripping I would get if I was found out as a traitor to popular music. I think the appeal of Bush was that she didn’t conform and everything she did was dramatic. She had guts. If you watch her videos she pulls the most fantastic range of facial expressions; shows passion for the words she’s singing. And the lyrics themselves are inventive and have significant meaning, something which most modern music lacks.

You play a range of instruments, all of which are featured on your upcoming album (name of album.) I hear you are self taught.

Most of the instruments I play I can only get a few chords out of but that’s been enough to get me by. Bass and guitar are just the instruments that I pick up when a piano’s not available but they don’t really get me excited about music. The piano is my main instrument and my love for it happened sort of by accident. I had a piano teacher, for three years, at the end of which I could not read music or play anything good enough to use as party trick material. And I hated it; I would never practice. It was several years later that I sat at the piano and tried to play it just to pass the time. I only realised it was a hobby when I discovered I was hold up in my room committing several hours a day to it.

So tell us about some of the tracks on your debut album.

I based a lot of them on the Grimm’s fairy tales as I have always been fascinated by the hidden meanings and morals behind them. The song ‘Tell Tale Heart’ is based on the Edgar Allan Poe story of the same name; gothic literature is a great source of inspiration. I mean, Kate Bush wrote a song about the famous gothic novel Wuthering Heights, so I guess that made me realise how well that style of song writing worked.

For you, do lyrics or music come first?

Always the lyrics. If I write the music first I become frustrated when the lyrics don’t fit. Once I have the words, I can be sitting staring at them for hours before anything musical happens. And then you have to think of the melody of the song. My trick is to sing the complete opposite to the way the notes are going ; like, if the notes suddenly drop in key, my voice will go higher. It makes the song less predictable. There’s nothing worse than listening to a song when you know which notes are coming up before you’ve heard them. That happens with a lot of modern lyrics too. You can predict the next line before it happens as the rhyming scheme is so clichéd.

How do you handle the crowds at gigs? Was it nerve wracking the first time you played to a large audience?

I went very suddenly from playing to a few guys in pubs on a Sunday night to performing to a crowd of thousands so it took me a while to find my feet. I thought that it would be worse than it was but I had obtained quite a fan base from my YouTube account and it was these fans that turned up to the gigs so they were very enthusiastic and supportive.

So no bad experiences on stage?

Someone started a fight in the crowd during one of my earlier nightclub performances and that was a bit unnerving. It got out of hand. I really didn’t want that sort of thing happening, you know? As if I didn’t have enough to worry about. My worst nightmare would be falling on stage but as of yet, I’ve managed to leave each performance with my dignity intact. (Laughs) Of course, there’s a first time for everything.