The multi-platinum selling artist talks the songs that have inspired her politically, socially and emotionally.
Paloma Faith is full of surprises.
You could try and pigeonhole her as just another pop-star, but that would be a flippant way to describe someone whose life has been leading to this moment, a moment where she pulls away from the pop-star cast and enters into a new realm of representing the social awareness that we all really need in 2017.
Faith’s fourth album The Architect deserves to take a valuable place in both her discography and the public consciousness at large. As well as being filled with euphoric melodies, it’s also a fitting commentary on the 2017 we’re living in, with which she’s hoping to spread an ‘epidemic of kindness.’ The record also opens with a certain Samuel L. Jackson, who makes an appearance after she quite literally ‘just called in a favour’ after helping out with Jackson’s One for the Boys charity.
Speaking to Faith about the pivotal songs in her life, she says each of them is a strong representation of the person she is today. “There’s a classic-ness to these songs that means they’re still relevant. I mean, I wish that some of them weren't relevant anymore, I wish that we could look at it and go ‘Oh well, everything’s wonderful now, but back in the day when it wasn’t…”, but unfortunately it’s not!
The songs Faith has picked are underscored by a relentless sense of hope, including songs she first heard as a child and have stayed with her ever since, that she’s now sharing and singing to her own children. They’re proof that the greatest stories not only stay relevant, but they grow and are handed onto the next generation.
1
“Why” by Tracy Chapman
“I used to listen to her debut album all the time on road trips with my Mum and Step-Dad when we used to go on little weekends away to Norfolk. We’d be on the motorway and this was always playing, I heard it so much that I knew all the words.
"I knew every song on the record word for word and I felt like it made me think. Obviously the lyrical content on that whole album comes from the social and political, that was a big influence on the record I’ve just made. I haven’t necessarily listened to it for like twenty years, but if I ever hear a song from it I just know them like a little robot, because they’re ingrained in me.
“This song has the line “Why do babies starve, when there’s enough food to feed the world? Why, when there’s so many of us, are there people still alone?” I could sit here and recite the entire thing to you!
"But I was seven and learning all of that and I think I was that kind of kid, I was an introspective child. I’ve always been quite caring and I was raised to be caring, but watching other children suffer in a way that I wasn’t made me very aware of myself in the context of the world and my fortune compared to people in third world situations.
“The lyrics to ‘Why’ taught me about empathy, they made ask questions and understand the world from quite a mature perspective for a child.”
2
“What’s Going’ On” by Marvin Gaye
“What’s Going On was basically the most influential album for me, he wrote it in the Vietnam war. The label didn’t want to release it, they said it would be too political and people wouldn’t listen to it but he insisted, so they released it and it’s the best album he ever did.
“I think that people get confused when you say ‘I’m going to do social commentary', they think it’s not about emotions when actually it is. I’ve just written an album about kindness, compassion, empathy and love, but it’s not just romantic love and it’s not about me personally. It’s about me being in the shoes of various different unspoken voices that live and exist within our society.
“When I first decided to do an album like this my label said ‘absolutely not’, so it feels appropriate to put this song on the list. It had such a huge influence on me being able to make this record, because I used this as an example to them to let me do it and it was the reason why they said ‘OK, let’s hear what you do before we make a decision’. And then everyone loved the songs.”
3
“Blowin in the Wind” by Bob Dylan
“This is another song I was raised with. My Mum was, and still is, pretty much Bob Dylan’s biggest fan. When I first got signed by Sony one of the things that I wanted in my contract was that every single thing he’d ever released, including all the bootlegs, all the B-sides, everything, I wanted them sent to my Mum’s house. She is his biggest fan and I was raised with his songs almost as the soundtrack to my childhood.
"I think the lyrics are absolutely incredible, like ‘How many roads must a man walk down, before you call him a man?’ With that line it opens about humanity and dignity and how we’re all the same. It really is the benchmark for all of the human rights situations and issues that we have in society today. It’s about hierarchy, class, the separation between East and West and the fact that the one percent has everything and the majority of the world is poor and struggling to feed themselves.
“All of that is what makes a man, you know that line, who writes like that? Who can basically summarise the entirety of global issues in one sentence other than Bob Dylan? And as much as when I was a kid and I’d moan to my Mum about finding him annoying and saying ‘I don’t like his voice, he can’t sing!’, as an adult I’ve grown up being forced to know these lyrics off by heart and I’ve got them ingrained in me.
“They’re in my blood and they had a massive influence in forming who I am as a person on a moral level. His songs are under my skin and I think this song is absolutely genius.”
4
“Cleva” by Erykah Badu
“I was young when I heard this. I was really into neo-soul, which was a part of the music genre movement that she was a part of. It was Erykah Badu, D'Angelo, Maxwell and all these artists that came around in the ‘90s, it was called neo-soul, which was hippy soul music in laymen’s terms.
“I heard this song as a young girl and I really loved it. I found it empowering, because of the tagline on it, if you listen to it it’s about imperfections and then she says, ‘but I’m clever’ at the end of everything. It’s a really simple idea, but as a young girl/teenager, listening to women say that as a trump card, I think it’s really influenced me, who I became and who I had the confidence to be, because it’s a trump card in life.
“It’s like ‘So maybe I’m not this or that, basically what you expect of me as a woman, but I’m clever, I’ll be witty, I’ll catch you out, I’ll remember what you said and I’ll surprise you, because I’ll bring it back and all of that.’ That was an empowering moment of my youth.”
5
“Into My Arms” by Nick Cave
“For me this is probably the greatest song ever written, because it really speaks to me. He says, ‘I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but I know, darling, that you do, but if I did, I would kneel down and ask him not to intervene when it came to you…’ It’s so poignant, because it’s about somebody saying to somebody else, ‘I don’t believe in the same religion as you, but I can still love you.’
“On that sort of level of today, with what’s going on in terms of all of these terrorist attacks in the name of some religion, I feel like this song could teach us something, because we shouldn’t be divided if we believe in different things. This song is more about holding a hand out from an atheist who loves a believer, but it feels very relevant, because it could be between religions also.
“Because I love this song so much, I’ve actually covered it, there’s a version of me singing it on a Radio 2 album, because I did it for Dermot O'Leary’s live thing. I’ve always loved this song.
“It solidifies as the years pass with me, because when my baby was born I was singing it to the newborn and it took on a whole new meaning for me, because it’s about protection and it’s about love. There’s a bit in it that says ‘I don’t believe in the existence of angels, but looking at you I wonder if that’s true, but if I did I would summon them together and ask them to watch over you.’
“When I’d just had my baby I was exhausted and looking at the child and singing it, I was bawling my eyes out and that’s poignant.”
6
“All You Need Is Love” by The Beatles
“This was another song of my childhood. I’ve got strong memories of my Mum having it on in the house and dancing in her beautifully uncoordinated and out of rhythm way, to the most boppiest rhythm song ever. I guess it’s a very simple song and it’s one that reminds me of being a kid. It was also ingrained in me as a kid, because ‘All you need is love’ is how I was raised, I wasn’t raised to need anything else.
“I remember saying to someone recently that as a kid I felt rich and because I was brought up in Hackney, it wasn’t a particularly wealthy area, but I always I had food on the table, even if it was just half a scotch egg. That was all I’d eat and I felt wealthy because I was looking at the news and I was seeing people in other countries, where kids with pot bellies were starving, with flies on them and stuff, and that was just awful. I remember feeling I was wealthy because I had so much love from my Mum.
“I was just showered with it and I was actually made to believe as a kid that love can conquer all and that love was the winner of everything.”
7
“Redemption Song” by Bob Marley
“I was really into dance as a kid and I actually ended up training as a dancer in adulthood. There was this dance company that used to be an outreach community project for inner city kids around the country called RJC - Reggae, Jazz and Contemporary. It was dance that was based on fusing contemporary dance with reggae, hip-hop and all different types of dance basically. It was a community project with loads of us teenagers going to it.
“This was a song I first learned as a teenager and one of the first songs I heard from them. The lyrics were amazing, like ‘emancipate yourself from mental slavery.’ They’re so powerful, timeless, classic and appropriate that they stayed with me. That line in particular is about power, if you give someone power then they’re powerful but if you take their power away then they aren’t and that’s what it’s about.
“It’s a song I’ve always gone back to when I’ve felt weakened or outnumbered in my belief, because I do believe that I want to fight the good fight and that my intentions are always good. It’s all about coming from a place of kindness and compassion. Being of a socialist stance, I do think that sometimes when you’re faced with opposing views people sort of revert to anger and it starts to feel a bit lonely because people feel angry.
“I don’t want conflict, I just want to do the best for the greater good, rather than the individual. I think that’s what powers one to escape your own mind in some way, or to escape an indoctrinated belief system that you’ve got in your mind, when you should say 'this isn’t right?’”
8
“Video” by India.Arie
“This song is from that same era as Erykah Badu, when I was listening to all those artists from that neo-soul movement. It’s another woman artist and she was saying ‘I’m not the average girl from the video and I won’t be defined by the tag on my clothes.’ She was celebrating herself and being empowered by being who she is, with the lyrics saying ‘just because I’m not conventionally good looking or conventionally mainstream, that doesn’t mean that I’m not beautiful.’
“As a teenager at the time listening to that, I felt good about hearing those lyrics, because that’s a really life changing moment, when you go through adolescence and you feel trapped. You’re a bit torn between social expectations and who you actually are, trying to define yourself and not being certain, but these lyrics were empowering because they made you feel like it’s OK to not look like pop stars and it’s OK to have something else going on.
“I feel like that’s very appropriate today too, because you go on Instagram and look at all these teenagers and they’re doing contouring tutorials or whatever they do, posing half naked. I just feel it’s kind of sad in a way, because it’s totally influenced by the populist culture that women are portraying in the mainstream media. I feel like they need to be OK with who they are and what they look like. At the time I felt that pressure, but we had artists singing about those things that were helping us out along a bit and I don’t know if they have those artists now.
“I tried to do it on my album. On the extended version there’s four extra songs and there’s one called ‘My Body.’ It says ‘This might not be typical, but you’re original, every little imperfection is a gift and they’re a blessing.’ It’s basically saying what those songs did for me, in the hope that some girls and some boys even, will know that they can appreciate their body.”
9
“We Shall Overcome” by Mahalia Jackson
“I was raised with jazz and blues music from my Dad’s side, he’s a jazz fanatic. Mahalia Jackson was just a really powerful voice that I heard in my youth and my Mum played that a lot as well and we’d sing it.
“It’s just that line, ‘We Shall Overcome’, it’s powerful, it’s a hopeful line, it’s another sort of social commentary song, but there’s hope in it. It’s saying ‘We’ll win and we mustn’t give up.’ And that’s an empowering idea.”
The Architect is out now on RCA Records
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