Bic Runga has tasted fame in New Zealand. It's hardly a drag, she tells Tony Clayton-Lea, but she prefers to focus on music.
It's hardly a name that trips off the tongue, but in her native New Zealand Bic Runga is so well known that her music is whistled along to everywhere from mini-markets to expensive restaurants. She is now officially the biggest-selling solo artist in New Zealand's history.
The land of Gollum, Gandalf and that cursed ring is too small, however, to gauge what Runga terms as real success. Making a big noise in a small country is something that Irish bands have been doing for some time, ultimately to their loss. Runga, who sold out two performances in Dublin last week, is aware that to make a longer-lasting impression on the listening public she needs to get out of the place that recognises her the most.
Clipped speech and a staccato train of thought make the quite beautiful 28-year-old, in whom Chinese and Maori genes have blended to produce one of the most beguiling faces in rock since Björk's, initially come across as a bohemian accident waiting to happen. Gradually, staccato becomes smooth, clipped becomes undone - and then there's no stopping her.
"Dublin and Auckland are similar in that there are a lot of musicians making music for the right reasons," she says when asked about the creative thrusts of the two cities, the latter of which she calls home (although she was raised in Christchurch). "Dublin doesn't seem like a corporate industry [in the way\] that maybe London or Los Angeles would. It has a nice feel to it, a bit of soul. The New Zealand scene seems a bit more diverse, however: I haven't noticed that much hip hop in Dublin, whereas at home Polynesian hip hop is all over the place."
A new name, even one as unusual as hers - the full version is Briolette Kahbic Runga - often signifies an overnight success. ("I'm still quite dumbfounded by my name," she says. "When I was younger I used to hate it; I wanted to be called something else.") But Runga has been working professionally in music since she was 19, when Sony Music signed her. She's been on the road and in studios between New Zealand (Auckland, Wellington) and the US (Los Angeles, New York) ever since. Music, she says, is her life; she doesn't do much else but eat, breathe, work and sleep it.
"I don't think what I've achieved is exactly brilliant success, though. It means a lot in New Zealand but not much in the rest of the world. Which is nice; it's an interesting way to go about learning about various levels of success. I've had a taste of it at home and I can see it for what it is - which is to say it's not really that seductive. Glamorous and glitzy? Not by any means."
Equating numbers with success is something Runga doesn't like to do. Just because a city produces numerous musicians, she points out, doesn't make them all good. More and more she feels that wherever it's not so industry-driven is where the better music is made; where, she says in a drifty, almost faraway voice, you're almost meant to find it.
"It's different, say, in Manchester, where music is borne out of a lifestyle, where music actually happens because they want to make music. People in Los Angeles, it seems to me anyway, just want to get signed by a record label.
"I know the town I'm from, Christchurch, a lot of great bands have come from there. It was cold and boring enough to just want to hide away and make music. It wasn't as self-aware as, say, London. There was no possibility of getting signed by a major record label in Christchurch, so the remoteness of the place not only inspired you to do something creative but also made you aspire to what was happening in a bigger city, which in my case was Auckland. But I think by not having those levels of self-awareness you're actually doing something more honest. There is less pressure from outside influences, for instance; more of a team aesthetic and less self-consciousness."
Yet things have changed for Runga from the time of her first big success in New Zealand. Her début album, Drive, sped to the number-one slot; she now describes the CD of classy pop-rock as naive. "I'm not sure what I was trying to achieve," she says. "Nothing was difficult, because I didn't doubt myself; you don't learn about doubt until later on."
Her second album, the six-times platinum Beautiful Collision, spent more than seven weeks at the top of the charts. An even bigger success, then, but one that Runga recounts as "hideously self-conscious". Beautiful Collision took five years to record and release, making some people at her record company wonder what was happening to their investment and more people outside it mutter the dreaded words "one-hit wonder".
"Learning about doubt is when you learn about failure, I suppose," she reflects. "I was shipped off to America in the late 1990s. They were looking for a certain kind of female singer-songwriter and all that stuff. But it was more other people being involved in your music and that level of industry involvement carrying you away with it. It was an interesting experience but not much fun. That said, I had nothing better to do. There are worse things to be doing than living in New York for a couple of years.
"When you have your naivety severed from you it takes a few months to recover from that - which I have, and I'm happy about most things these days. I'm older, I know how to say no diplomatically and I know how to be myself. I've given up trying to be some other person, which is a nice lesson too. Things have fallen into place, and that's when you hit your stride. That's how I feel now, just coming into being me, which is pretty good."
Along with Runga's well-defined, occasionally superlative music is her lyrical gift for the language of romance, good and bad. She is, she says evenly, well schooled in the subject. "I've seen it turn to shit and I've seen it thrive. It's good fodder, and I can't really think of anything better to write about. It's a nice place to reside, that world. Romance is a bit of a dream, not quite real. I know I'm not the first person to describe love as a sickness or a temporary insanity, but as a subject it's better than the mundane."
Yet to her credit she never uses romantic involvement as a basis for her songs. Indeed, she looks startled at the idea. "Romance means a lot to me, and I wouldn't wish that kind of scenario on anyone. It happens the world over; we all know what heartbreak is, and it's not something to play with. It's far more serious than that."
Beautiful Collision is on Epic
