Hollie McNish interviews Charlotte Church
Hollie McNish meeting Charlotte Church is quite frankly something that needed to happen for the good of the world. As arts collective Neu! Reekie! prepare to bring Church’s Pop Dungeon to the stage for just its fourth outing, they send poet and voice of her generation Hollie to interview the multi-talented performer-slash-activist
I’m not sure why, but I was petrified to meet Charlotte Church. Perhaps it was because being a similar age to me with similar age kids, a similarish career and a pretty parallel political passion, I quite wanted to get on with her. Or, erm, for her to like me a bit. Perhaps it was because I’ve been interviewed a lot, but never been on the other side of the mouthpiece, the side where you have to actually know more than your own opinion and life. Perhaps it was because I had recently read about her frustration with other performers who wouldn’t take a stance politically and in the two previous weeks I’d turned down three political panel discussions and two gigs at political rallies for fear of not knowing enough and sounding stupid. I’m going to sort that out now though.
Whatever the reason, I was shitting myself and so fairly content that we finally managed to meet in an Edinburgh bar and – more importantly for the nerves – gin distillery.
Within five minutes she asked me what my next poetry collection was about. I of course elegantly replied, “Well, it seems to be quite a lot about fingering.” For the next hour or so, that’s really where the conversation went; on that well-loved and often underrated (when tackled well) form of human contact. We had more in common than I’d known. Perfect.
A follow-up Skype was arranged to cover some other topics.
HM: I've just got a few things to ask since I got too drunk last time and started talking about fingering. So… How old are you?
CC: I'm 30 this year.
HM: 30 this year! That's a good age, I think.
CC: Yeah man, I'm enjoying it. I'm having a ball.
HM: I bet you are! When I turned 30 I made this long list of things I wouldn't do anymore. I wouldn't take the sort of shit I felt like I had taken in my 20s: all sorts of things, from asking someone to move on a train if they were sat down and their bag was on the other chair – which I used to be too scared to do – to just saying no if I didn't want to do a gig or if my manager wanted me to wear a certain outfit that I didn’t want to wear...
Sorry my daughter's in the background, she wanted to listen. Oh wait... she's going to the toilet!
CC: Yeah I've got my little ones too. Are you watching that Ariana Grande stuff? My two are watching... What are they called?
HM: I don't know, as in 'on the telly'?
CC: Yeah, god! She's got the most annoying speaking voice! Lovely singing voice but most annoying speaking voice! But no, carry on!
On saying yes and not giving a rat’s arse
HM: You’ve started doing stuff very independently and making all this really interesting music. Not that I didn't think your stuff was interesting before, but you seem to be a bit freer. Is that to do with age? When did that start?
CC: Yeah, that's been going on for a while. It's been a general gradual move over, because I did the whole record label thing and left them when I was about, I don't know, 22, or something like that.
And then I went off to make a record in Nashville – but that wasn't quite what I wanted to do. Then I met Johnny [Powell, her partner and collaborator] and started making music much more independently. So I suppose, for me, I've gone a little bit the other way in that I used to say 'No' a lot. And actually, in recent times, I've just started saying 'Yes' a bit more. Just going, 'Yeah! Yeah, I'll give that a go!'
HM: Why do you think you were saying 'No' before? Just being scared it was a bit different, or that you wouldn't be good at it? Or just didn't want to?
CC: A lot of it was fear-based, I think. Even though your fear increases as you get older in certain ways, in other ways I feel like I'm letting go of it as well.
I wasn't really desperately trying to please but I definitely was aware of what popular culture thought I should be and I definitely did take some notice of that. Whereas now I don't give a rat's arse!
HM: What's been the thing you've been most pleased you said 'Yes' to, that you might not have however many years ago?
CC: D'you know what? Pretty much everything! Because everything is completely connected, so one thing I said yes to would then lead to another thing, which would lead to another thing. So I think it’s just a general change rather than a specific thing.
I did a little bit of acting when I was younger. I did one film when I was 16 and it was dreadful and I was like, ‘I'm never doing that again. I'm the worst actress ever!' And then I did Under Milk Wood [the 2015 film] and I had a ball! I met some amazing people and it was really scary; I had to do it in Welsh and in English (and I'm not a Welsh speaker).
Now I just feel like if the right opportunity comes along I can take it. I am in that fortunate position where I don't necessarily have to do things. You know there're a lot of people in my life who’ll be, like, 'You could make so much more money…’
HM: Yeah, I get the same as well! I get told off for every time I turn down an advert, basically.
Charlotte Church’s Late Night Pop Dungeon
CC: We've had a couple of offers off people who are like 'Oh my god. You should tour this' and, you know, 'We'll represent you and we'll be your booking agents,' but I'm a bit like, 'Nah!' I'll only book gigs that are really special. But if we have more funds then I'll definitely grow it. Bouncers and all sorts!
HM: So who's in it? Who did you set it up with?
CC: It’s me and Johnny who's my partner and guitarist. The bassist is our friend Gav who we've known for years and he's a proper psych master! He's in a great psych band called Asteroids of Luck. And then we've our drummer Dave who's been with me pretty much since the start of the EPs so that's been about six or seven years now. Robbie who's our keys player, he's a jazzer who studied at Birmingham Conservatoire, and he's awesome as well. And the singers change depending on who's available but mostly it's just people from in and around Cardiff. A couple of singers who I did a project called The Last Mermaid with.
HM: Did you choose the songs yourself? Or did everyone chip in?
CC: Everyone has their say and everyone can put songs into the mix and see what we're going to rehearse but mainly it’s me and Johnny. Basically we sit in the kitchen, drink copious amounts of wine and go through all of our favourite songs. And then decide which ones we think will work as a band and which ones not. We run it like a DJ set.
So for example we've got a bit of our En Vogue cover Don't Let Go and we've got a bit of King Crimson 21st Century Schizoid Man, and then when we do Overload by the Sugababes we go into a little bit of White Rabbit by Jefferson Airplane, so it's sort of like we mix and match and we do little skits in between. We just try and keep it so it's constantly rolling along and people are constantly surprised and, hopefully, enthralled by the choices.
Trolling and having an opinion
HM: People must say it a lot, but you seem pretty brave. Before I met you I was a bit worried if I'm honest! That week I think I'd turned down three panel shows to do with politics and things, and also gigs where I was asked to do stuff with a band, which is bit out of my comfort zone. I turned them down because, basically, I'm worried about sounding stupid on the radio and then I was reading about you, like a lot of us were, crying when the Tories got in and finding it hard to get other people to stand up in terms of politics. And then I was like, 'Aw that's me. That is me.'
I mean I do it a little bit. But it's really frightening. I get frightened because of stupid stuff, because of getting hate mail and trolling. I get worried that if I say something else then can I deal with that backlash? And then I do it and it's fine because people do just sit at their computer and write nasty stuff.
CC: Yeah, and also it's just like, d'you know what, I feel sorry for those guys at their keyboards. I feel sorry for their lives and what it must have come to. But it's not always bad, it’s sometimes just people who aren't necessarily trolls or nasty or mean – they just really really disagree with you. You know, we all get to say what we think.
I used to be exactly the same. I've done Question Time twice, and I used to be like, 'Oh my god! I'm going to say something stupid or it's all going to go horribly wrong.' And then I did say something where everybody said that I was stupid which was about the Syrian civil war and how the drought that was attributed to climate change possibly contributed to the unrest in Syria and hence the rise of terrorism. I said that on Question Time and there were lots of column inches and internet people who dedicated the next couple of days to how stupid I was. Then NASA came out with a study about it, as did various other people, all saying the same thing.
So sometimes, even though you're made to feel stupid about the stuff that you say, you've just got to say it anyway. Sometimes it's just important to say, no matter how it comes out of your mouth. I'm not the most eloquent person, I mean the majority of the time I don't even finish my sentences, my thought train runs off! But it's still worth saying and I feel just like you. I get really scared and I try to do as much research as I can so I'm as prepared as I possibly can be. It's important.
HM: It is, isn't it. I don't mind at all the people that strongly disagree. On some of the videos I've put up that have had lots of hits, people are shouting or saying whatever, I ignore the bitchy ones and then read a lot of the ones that are disagreeing or look at the links they've sent because it's quite a good way to learn as well I think.
I find it funny how people don't expect you to be human! I've put up a few posts on Facebook (I’m a bit more wary about it now as it's 30,000 people that are going to get it in their inbox or wherever it is it goes to) and then someone's been like, 'Hollie, that was last year,' or I've put something about the government and I've got the voting date wrong or whatever. But, after a few of them, I feel a bit less stupid and a bit more like, 'Everyone makes mistakes' and that actually, it's alright to say, 'Alright I didn't know that. Thanks!'
CC: Absolutely! It's good to learn. 'Thanks for letting me know.' And, do you know what, it's my time on the earth and I'm going to learn all I possibly can. But if I am wrong, absolutely pull me up. Thanks for letting me know!
HM: Yeah. And there's nothing else you can do, is there? I feel like that. That's sort of the point isn’t it. The point is to learn as much and do something helpful, if possible, I think. While looking after your kids!
CC: Absolutely!
The Last Mermaid
Charlotte Church’s musical reinterpretation of The Little Mermaid was staged in Cardiff’s Festival of Voice earlier in the year.
HM: Alright, I've just got a couple more things and then I'll let you get back to life. The Last Mermaid looked brilliant; I think I remember you saying that your kids had an input, that you used them as a test to see if they liked certain bits?
CC: Yeah, some of the bits, like for instance in the first scene we see this beautiful, utopic, shimmery glittery Mer Kingdom, and in the second scene there's a poison into the sea. Take that as whatever you want it to be, whether it’s an oil spill or whatever, and the whole of the Mer Kingdom dies, all life in the ocean is wiped out. I did the music with a guy called Sean Trevor, and the music that we had at that juncture was pretty horrendous, really atonal, high strings and horns and it had this like low pulsing alarm-ish sort of bass – it was pretty terrifying [laughs].
HM: It sounds it!
CC: So I played it to my kids, like, 'How does this make you feel?' and Dexter was like, 'I hate it! I hate it! It's horrible!' So I thought, coupled with the visuals, it might be a bit much. We might just have traumatised kids running screaming! So we toned it down a little bit.
So, yeah, I tested it on my children! But they were fine because at least they didn't have the visuals at that time.
HM: I sort of use my daughter to test my work, but I've found that she only likes my poems with swearing in so it doesn't work as well.
Kids and creativity
CC: [The kids] are a constant source of inspiration. Ruby is always walking round the place, singing her own songs. About the moon or about whatever's going on, or friendship. She's got a beautiful little voice. I'm constantly trying to stop myself from nabbing her songs!
HM: Little ones are pretty genius aren't they?
CC: Yeah. There's a really interesting talk by a guy called Sir Ken Robinson, Changing Paradigms in Education. He talks about this study that was done into divergent thinking; basically about the ability to have original thoughts and to have creativity. When they did a longitudinal test on kids, they tested kids who were kindergarten age and 98% scored at genius level.
And then as they got older (they were tested up to about 16) that only decreased and he was saying that could be for a number of reasons – what's going on at home, the individual or one of the most important things that had happened to them since that time was they had become educated.
I think it definitely shows that we've all got this immense creative power. There's a beautiful Kurt Vonnegut quote which goes around Facebook and the like which is just like, just create! It doesn't matter how good or not good it is, just write a poem or draw a picture, sing a song, strum some stuff on the guitar; it’s just important to do it because you will have created something and that gives you such an immense satisfaction. That's not the exact Kurt Vonnegut quote! It's much more erudite! [Laughs]
HM: You're right! Kids' creativity is so lovely and it’s also kind of scary. I keep thinking that my daughter’s so open minded and so fascinated by things and so comfortable with stuff and with herself and her body and making things and then slowly [that’s eroded] from going to school. 'Oh this isn't good' or 'This one isn't good' or 'I'm not going to do this because I'm not good at it.'
CC: It's a human thing as well though. Obviously the modern world doesn’t help with consumerism and capitalism and the way that it pays to make people feel bad about themselves, as that's sort of what makes the economy go round. But, in a certain way, even if we were all cavemen, when we go through puberty and everything changes, it was always meant to be a bit shitty! So I think it's about us trying to help them through it and manage it rather than being so dictatorial about it. I saw another interesting study the other day saying that stricter parents make their kids better liars.
HM: I will look that up. Because everything's helpful – I've never done this before!
CC: Absolutely! It's all a stab in the dark, isn't it, really?
HM: Yeah, everything is really; everything you do! And as you say, just give everything a shot and it might be terrible and you might not be good at it, but if you don't try and you don't do it then there's no point really, is there?
Neu! Reekie! Celts featuring Charlotte Church's Late Night Pop Dungeon, Liz Lochhead, Ette, Loki & Becci Wallace, Lyre, Lomond Campbell and Bark Collective. Fri 23 Sep, National Museum of Scotland, 7.30pm, tickets from £14