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Katie Melua
Melua in 2004.
Background information
Birth name	Ketevan Melua
Also known as	Katie Melua
Born	16 September 1984 (1984-09-16) (age 24) Kutaisi, Georgian SSR, USSR
Origin	London, England
Genre(s)	Blues, jazz, folk-pop
Instrument(s)	Guitar Piano Violin 1 Vocals
Years active	2003–present
Label(s)	Dramatico
Associated acts	Eva Cassidy Molly McQueen
Website	www.katiemelua.com

Ketevan "Katie" Melua (Georgian: ქეთევან "ქეთი" მელუა, English pronunciation of surname IPA: [ˈmɛluːə] listen (help·info); born September 16, 1984) is a Georgian/British singer, songwriter and musician. She was born in Georgia, but moved to Northern Ireland at the age of eight and then relocated to England at the age of 14.² Melua is signed to the small Dramatico record label, under the management of songwriter Mike Batt,³ and made her musical debut in 2003. In 2006, she was the United Kingdom's biggest-selling female artist⁴ and Europe's highest selling European female artist.⁵

In November 2003, at the age of 19, Melua released her first album, Call off the Search, which reached the top of the United Kingdom album charts and sold 1.8 million copies in its first five months of release.⁶ Her second album, Piece by Piece, was released in September 2005 and to date^[update] has gone platinum four times.⁷ Melua released her third studio album Pictures in October 2007, which has been announced to be the last of her albums in collaboration with Mike Batt.⁸ According to the Sunday Times Rich List 2008, Melua has a fortune of £18 million, making her the seventh richest British musician under thirty.⁹

Life and career

Early life

Ketevan Melua, known as Ketino (Georgian: ქეთინო) to her family,¹⁰ was born in 1984 in Georgia, then part of the Soviet Union, either in Kutaisi¹¹ or in Tbilisi¹², where she spent her first years with her grandparents. Later she moved with her parents and brother to the town of Batumi, Ajaria where her father worked as a heart specialist.¹³ During this time Melua sometimes had to carry buckets of water up five flights of stairs to her family's flat¹⁴¹⁵ and according to her, "Now, when I'm staying in luxurious hotels, I think back to those days..."¹²

In 1993, in the aftermath of the Georgian Civil War, the family moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where her father took up a position at the prestigious Royal Victoria Hospital. The family remained in Belfast, living close to Falls Road, until Melua was thirteen. This is where Melua learned most of her English. Then they moved to Sutton, London, and some time later moved again to Redhill, Surrey. Melua recently moved just a few kilometers away from her parents' home in Maida Vale to an apartment in Notting Hill¹⁶ where she transformed the spare bedroom into a recording studio. Melua speaks Georgian, Russian and English and is partly of Canadian¹⁷ and Russian ancestry.¹⁸¹⁹

During the South Ossetia War in 2008, Melua's brother and mother were staying with relatives in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Melua was due to travel to Georgia herself just two weeks later.¹⁰

First television appearance

Because of her upbringing in politically unstable Georgia and troubled Belfast,²⁰ Melua initially planned to become either a historian or a politician.²¹ This changed in 2000, at the age of 15, when Melua took part in a talent competition on British television channel ITV called "Stars Up Their Noses" (a spoof of Stars in Their Eyes) as part of the children's programme Mad for It!.²² Melua won the contest by singing Badfinger's "Without You". The prize was £350 worth of MFI vouchers, with which she bought a chair for her father.²³ Had she lost the contest, she would have been gunged.²⁴

Education

Although she is a baptised Orthodox Christian,¹⁶ whilst living in Belfast, Melua attended the Roman Catholic schools St Catherine's Primary School and Dominican College, Fortwilliam, while her younger brother attended Protestant schools.² After completing her GCSEs at the all-girls' grammar school Nonsuch High School in Cheam, Sutton, Melua attended the BRIT School for the Performing Arts in the London Borough of Croydon, undertaking a BTEC with an A-level in music. She began to write songs when at the school.²⁵ Melua first met her future manager, producer Mike Batt, when studying at the school.

Melua didn't attend University, though she has often stated her desire to do so, saying that English literature, history and physics would be her courses of choice should she get the chance to go to University.²⁶

Personal life

Melua met Luke Pritchard, lead singer of The Kooks, when they were both studying at the BRIT School where they began dating. Melua and Pritchard rarely speak of the relationship, but what is known is that the couple dated for three years and discussed marriage. However, as Melua became more successful, the relationship came into difficulties and they split up in March 2005.²⁷¹⁴

Melua is occasionally referred to as an 'adrenaline junkie' because she enjoys roller coasters and fun fairs and often paraglides and hang glides.²⁸ She has skydived twice and taken several flying lessons, and in 2004 she was lowered from a 200 metre building in New Zealand at 60 mph. When asked about Melua being an 'adrenaline junkie', Mike Batt said, "she enjoys extremes, but in life her emotions are always in check."³

British nationality

On 10 August 2005, Melua became a British citizen with her parents and brother. The citizenship ceremony took place in Weybridge, Surrey.²⁹ On gaining British nationality, Melua was eligible for a British passport, which makes it easier for her to travel around the world.³⁰ Becoming a British citizen meant that Melua had held three citizenships before she was 21; first Soviet, then Georgian and finally British. After the ceremony, Melua stated her pride at her newest nationality. "As a family, we have been very fortunate to find a happy lifestyle in this country and we feel we belong. We still consider ourselves to be Georgian, because that is where our roots are, and I return to Georgia every year to see my uncles and grandparents, but I am proud to now be a British citizen.

Recording career

Mike Batt

It was when performing at a Brit School showcase that Melua caught the eye of Mike Batt, an English songwriter and producer who was originally looking for an acid-rock band, bass player³¹ and a singer capable of singing "jazz and blues in an interesting way".³² After hearing Melua sing "Faraway Voice" (a song she wrote about the death of her idol Eva Cassidy) Batt signed the 18 year-old Melua to his small Dramatico recording and management company and sent her into the studio.³³

Call off the Search

Main article: Call off the Search

Call off the Search featured two songs written by Melua: "Belfast (Penguins and Cats)", a song about Melua's experience of her time in the troubled capital of Northern Ireland, and "Faraway Voice", a song about the death of Eva Cassidy. Melua also covered songs by Delores J. Silver ("Learnin' the Blues"), John Mayall ("Crawling up a Hill"), Randy Newman ("I Think it's Going to Rain Today") and James Shelton ("Lilac Wine"). A final six songs on the album were by Mike Batt.³⁴

It was initially difficult for Melua and Batt to get airplay for the album's lead single, "The Closest Thing to Crazy". This changed when BBC Radio 2 producer Paul Walters heard the single and played it on the popular Terry Wogan breakfast show.³⁵ Wogan played "The Closest Thing to Crazy" frequently in November and December 2003 in an attempt to make it that year's Christmas number-one. The single only reached number 10, but Wogan's support raised Melua's profile and when Call off the Search was released it became an immediate hit, reaching number one on the UK albums chart in January 2004. Call off the Search reached the top five in Ireland, top twenty in Norway, top thirty in a composite European chart and top fifty in Australia. In the UK, the album sold 1.2 million copies, making it four times platinum, and spent six weeks at the top of the charts. It sold three million copies worldwide. Subsequent singles did not reach the success of the first — the second single and album title track, "Call off the Search", reached number 19, and the third single, "Crawling up a Hill", got to number 41.³⁶

Piece by Piece

Main article: Piece by Piece (album)

Melua's second album, Piece by Piece, was released on 26 September 2005. Its lead single was "Nine Million Bicycles", which was released a week before the album on 19 September. The first UK airplay for the single was on the Terry Wogan show on 1 August. The album contains four more songs written by Melua herself, four more by Batt, one Batt/Melua collaboration and three more songs described as new versions of "great songs". The band line-up was the same as on the first album. The album debuted at the number-one spot on the UK Albums Chart on the week of 3 October 2005.³⁷

On 30 September 2005, Melua came under criticism in The Guardian from writer and scientist Simon Singh for the lyrics of the track "Nine Million Bicycles". Melua's disputed lyrics were:

They were interpreted by Singh as an assault on the accuracy of the work of cosmologists³⁸ which sparked a series of letters from other Guardian readers, agreeing or disagreeing.³⁹ On 15 October, Melua and Singh appeared on the BBC's Today programme, and Melua unveiled a re-recording of the song which included Singh's tongue-in-cheek amendments to the lyrics:

Both sides amicably agreed that the new lyrics were less likely to achieve commercial success, amidst a discussion about scientific accuracy versus artistic licence. Melua said that she "should have known better" because she used to be a member of the astronomy club at school.⁴⁰

Katie Melua at Cambridge Corn Exchange, as part of her UK concert tour, 2006.

A double A-side of the Melua-penned "I Cried for You" and a cover of The Cure's "Just like Heaven" (1988), which is the theme song to the film Just like Heaven,⁴¹ was released in the UK on 5 December and peaked at number 35. "I Cried for You" was inspired by a meeting with the writer of Holy Blood, Holy Grail.⁴²

A third single, "Spider's Web" was released on 17 April 2006 and peaked at number 52 in the UK. Melua embarked on a concert tour in support of Piece by Piece, the UK leg of which started in Aberdeen, Scotland on 20 January 2006.⁴³

Towards the end of 2006, Melua released the single, "It's Only Pain", which was written by Mike Batt.⁴⁴ This was followed by the release of "Shy Boy", also written by Batt.

Pictures

Main article: Pictures (Katie Melua album)

Melua's third album, Pictures, in the U.K. was released on 1 October 2007.⁴⁵ and has been announced to be the last of her albums in collaboration with Mike Batt as a creative team.⁸ It also features Melua's friend Molly McQueen, the former frontwoman of The Faders, as co-writer of "Perfect Circle".

The iTunes version of the album includes a cover of the Prince song "Under the Cherry Moon" as a bonus track.

Pictures in the first eight months after the release has sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide and over 450,000 copies in the UK alone, being certified Platinum and becoming the 49th Best selling album in 2007.

Charity work

In November 2004 Melua was asked to take part in Band Aid 20 in which she joined a chorus of British and Irish pop singers to create a rendition of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" to raise money for famine relief in Africa. This was in celebration of the twentieth anniversary of the original Band Aid.⁴⁶

On 19 March 2005, Melua sang "Too Much Love Will Kill You" with Brian May at the 46664 concert in George, South Africa for Nelson Mandela's HIV charity. Melua had been a fan of Queen since her childhood in Georgia when her uncles played the band's music, so performing with May was a realisation of a childhood dream.⁴⁷¹⁵

Melua is a goodwill ambassador to the charity Save the Children, and in 2005 she went to Sri Lanka to see the work the charity was doing for children in the area after the civil war and Indian Ocean tsunami.⁴⁸ In 2006 Melua donated all the proceeds from her single "Spider's Web" to the charity.⁴⁹

Melua is a supporter of the Oxfam charity shops, using them frequently to buy her clothing.¹⁴ However, she has stated that this is related as much to her dislike of spending and glamour as it is to her support for the charity,¹⁵ admitting that, when out in public, she looks "like a tramp" and that her hairdresser playfully calls her look "the Romanian window cleaner".⁵⁰

On 7 July 2007 Melua performed at the German leg of Live Earth in Hamburg.⁵¹

In December 2007, Melua released a cover of the Louis Armstrong song "What A Wonderful World" in which she sang with a recording of the late Eva Cassidy. All profits from the single, which entered the UK singles chart at #1 on 16 December 2007, went to the Red Cross.⁵²

World record holder

On 2 October 2006, Melua entered the Guinness Book of Records for playing the deepest underwater concert 303 metres below sea level on Statoil's Troll A platform in the North Sea. Melua and her band underwent extensive medical tests and survival training in Norway before flying by helicopter to the rig.⁵³ Melua later described achieving the record as "the most surreal gig I have ever done". Melua's concert is commemorated in the DVD release Concert Under the Sea, released in June 2007.

Musical taste

In April 2006, for the Sun newspaper, Melua chose fourteen pieces of her favourite music that she enjoyed and had the biggest musical influence on her. The pieces she chose were Paul Simon's "Hearts and Bones", Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", Joni Mitchell's "Marcie", Bob Dylan's "Masters of War", James Taylor's "How Sweet It Is (to Be Loved by You)", Chuck Berry's "No Particular Place to Go", Portishead's "Glory Box", Björk's "The Pleasure Is All Mine", Camille's "Au Port", Rage Against the Machine's "Killing in the Name", Bobbie Gentry's "Fancy", Finley Quaye's "Even After All", Suzanne Vega's "Caramel" and Babyshambles' "Fuck Forever".⁵⁴

Melua has said on numerous occasions how Queen were a huge influence on her as a child/teenager, with one of her memories being buying Queen's Greatest Hits II and singing along to "Radio Ga Ga" in her home country Georgia.⁵⁵

Melua appeared on the BBC's The Culture Show in November 2006 advocating Paul McCartney as her choice in the search for Britain's greatest living icon.⁵⁶⁵⁷

Acting

In 2007, Melua announced that she would be appearing in a segment of the movie Grindhouse. The segment entitled "Don't", a faux trailer, was directed by Edgar Wright.⁵⁸⁵⁹ In Melua's role, she and a group of friends open a door to find a crazy hatchet wielding man who kills one of her friends.

Discography

Main article: Katie Melua discography

Filmography

Soundtrack

Acting roles

Honours and awards

• Melua was the best-selling UK female artist of 2004 and 2005.⁴
• In 2006 Melua had a tulip named after her.⁶⁴
• According to VH1, Call off the Search is the 87th best-selling British album in history.⁶⁵

• At the 2005 Brit awards, Radio 1's Scott Mills tried to cause fights backstage during the build up coverage on his show by telling other artists including KT Tunstall, The Kaiser Chiefs and Hard-Fi that Katie Melua had been slagging them off.⁶⁶

References

External links

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Katie Melua

• Official website
• Dutch website Katie Melua
• Katie Melua at Allmusic
• Katie Melua discography at MusicBrainz
• Katie Melua at MySpace
• Katie Melua at the Internet Movie Database
• My Secret Life: Katie Melua, singer/songwriter, The Independent, 24 November 2007
• "Songstress Katie Melua: Brighten My Northern Sky", interview with Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti
• a fan page
• Katie Melua collection