To Kakki and other fans of Julia Fordham and/or India.Arie. This is exciting news.
Music News Fordham, Arie Share the "Love" March 28, 2 p.m. ET, RollingStone.com It's been five years since fans of British singer-songwriter Julia Fordham have heard new material. She followed up her last album, 1997's East West, with a greatest hits album, Collection, in 1999. Her upcoming record, Concrete Love is due on June 18th, and it may be the most hard-earned success story of Fordham's fourteen-year career. The album features a duet with acclaimed Americana singer-songwriter Joe Henry on the track "Alleulia" as well as a duet with India.Arie on the title track, completed just a week ago. "She's like this beautiful little angel who wafted in and sprinkled her fairy dust everywhere," Fordham says of Arie. The two singers originally met at a Sade concert. Fordham, who was already a big fan, gave Arie a copy of her record and Arie immediately took to the song "Concrete Love." "She said she loved the song and was always singing along," Fordham says. "And she came to my house and asked me to sing the song, and she sang this unbelievable, exquisite harmony along with me." At the eleventh hour, Arie made it to a Los Angeles studio and added her vocals to the song, which Fordham describes as a "sultry and soulful" love song. "She just opens her mouth and a selection of gems falls from it," Fordham says, "but I didn't feel like she came in and dominated the track. She's woven a golden web around the song. India is one of the most innately musical human beings I have ever encountered in my life. I knew that from hearing 'Brown Skin' on the radio and ran out and bought the album and had that confirmed. She has the most exquisite natural tone vocally and superb instincts musically." But the addition of Arie's vocals goes beyond making a good song better. For Fordham, Arie's enthusiasm for the track and collaboration on it have re-energized her attitude for a record that was almost never released. After six albums on Virgin Records, Fordham, while enjoying her time there, decided that her next home would be on a smaller label. Division One, an imprint of Atlantic Records, seemed like the perfect match. Concrete Love was set for release on January 29, 2002 and a small number of advances had been sent out, but a month before the release, Time Warner and AOL merged. Several Atlantic (a division of Time Warner) subsidiaries -- Division One among them -- were closed. Meanwhile, the advances of the album had been reviewed, garnering glowing press in several publications. "I didn't assume that just because it was a strong record and because I've had a long career, that -- especially in the current climate -- I would get picked up quickly somewhere else," Fordham says. She did, however, signing with Vanguard records. "I literally hadn't heard [Concrete Love] for six months," she says. "I had moved on to other things. It was dormant, and now it's sprung back to life in a bloody flame of glory [laughs]. It's fantastic, and there's an energy around it. I felt this energy in January, with this unexpected wonderful press reaction, and then not to have a deal, not to have it available, I was low as shit. And then I just sort of thought, 'Great, it's coming out on Vanguard on the 18th,' and now India's brought a beautiful last-minute addition. I just sort of feel through the roof." Fordham is equally satisfied with her duet with Henry. "I absolutely loved his album Scar," she says, "and he came in and incorporated some of my ideas with his own flavors that he wanted to add and it was wonderful. He's almost like an instrument. Larry Klein [the album's producer] said he's like this really classy clarinet player, and the flavor he added to his track was just divine in its own way." With six albums behind her, the seventh on the way and two record deals in less than a year, Fordham finally feels settled and is looking forward to the album's release. "It's a really good life," she says. "I've had this incredible musical journey." CHRISTINA SARACENO (March 25, 2002)
