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Clare Maguire - Light After Dark - MTD
Type:
Audio > Music
Files:
16
Size:
64.24 MB

Tag(s):
Clare Maguire - Light After Da
Quality:
+0 / -0 (0)

Uploaded:
Feb 25, 2011
By:
Anonymous



MTD Proudly Presents

Artist: Clare Maguire
Album: Light After Dark
Label: Polydor
Genre: Pop
Street date: 2011-02-28
Quality: 195 kbps / 44.1kHz / Joint Stereo
Encoder: Lame 3.97 -V2 --vbr-new
Size: 67.28 MB
Time: 45:16 min
Url: http://www.claremaguire.co.uk
1. Are You Ready? (Intro) 0:58
2. Shield And Sword 3:32
3. Last Dance 3:34
4. Freedom 3:21
5. I Surrender 3:45
6. Bullet 3:28
7. Happiest Pretenders 3:56
8. Sweet Lie 3:56
9. Break These Chains 3:34
10. You're Electric 3:57
11. Ain't Nobody 3:56
12. Light After Dark 3:58
13. This Is Not The End 3:21

My voice was always the loudest one in the room, laughs
Clare Maguire. I loved performing at family parties, and at
school when I was bored, Id get up on the desk and sing. The
teachers thought I was mad, but its how I connect: telling a
story in song, and seeing people react to that. When Im
talking, its far harder for me to express myself

She wrote her first song at the age of seven, and never
remembers wanting to do anything else. For her, music wasnt
a career choice, or a fast route to fame. It was a calling

Her paternal grandparents settled in the Midlands and built
up a construction business. Her mums parents ran clubs and
booked bands in Birmingham. Both had five children apiece, so
Clare has some 50 cousins across Birmingham and southern
Ireland

Its a massive family, which means massive parties a lot
of drinking, and loads of music. Everybodys got some sort of
creative gene: music, mainly, but also performing, telling
stories, acting and writing

Her dad liked to play the same cheesy pop tunes again and
again while driving, and sitting in the back with her older
brother and younger sister, Clare absorbed it all. She also
grew up listening to her mums traditional Irish music, which
influenced the darker, more poetic side of her own songs now

By the age of 13, she was a regular in city centre record
shops, where she discovered Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan, John
Lennon and Howling Wolf, plus her heroine, the feisty gospel
star Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I had a paper round, and would
spend everything I earned on whatever CDs the staff
recommended. Thats where I started my love for music. My
passion

When she was 17, a teacher told her it was time to give up
her dreams of being a singer, and start concentrating on exam
results. Instead, Clare stomped off to the headmaster to
complain, then dropped out of school. To her, it was the only
thing that made sense: she knew where she was headed, and she
was willing to work hard to get there

By day, she worked in shops, bars and restaurants in order to
earn enough money to move to London and work on her music. By
night, she sat up making connections on MySpace, eventually
pulling in an extraordinary 1.5 million hits to hear the
rough demos she had posted on her page

After a few months of obsessive all-night clicking, producers
and artists began to get in touch, asking her to work with
them, and she began to commute to the capital, staying in
grim B&Bs, sleeping on floors, making contacts and learning
her craft as a writer and a singer. It was lonely at times
she says, and depressing. But never once did I think
Thats not going to happen. Ever since I was a child, this
is what Ive been going to do

Once they began to hear that soaring powerhouse of a voice
the music industry agreed with her. After fierce competition
from other labels, she signed to Universal Music at the age
of 20. In fairy tales and TV talent shows, this is where the
story ends: with a single in the charts a week later. In the
real world, for an artist who wants to do more than just sing
along to pre-recorded backing tracks, this is where the hard
work really starts

What followed were two years of travelling, writing
recording and searching for a sound that felt right for her
In LA, she met Rick Rubin, who played her unreleased Johnny
Cash demos and invited her to come with him to watch Leonard
Cohen in rehearsal. In New York, Jay Z invited her for drinks
in his restaurant and told her she had star quality: he could
see it in her eyes

Other people offered her songs Jarvis Cocker, for instance
and Plan B. Though grateful for all of it, she continued
working on her own music, looking for partners who would
allow her to express her own voice. It was all very
flattering, and I loved meeting all these people. But in the
end, I needed to do what I felt was right for me. Its
important to be yourself

When she eventually found the right collaborator in Fraser T
Smith (whose credits includes Britney, Cee-Lo, Tinchy
Stryder, Ellie Goulding and James Morrisson), the songs on
Light After Dark came quickly. Most took just a day to write;
in some, the vocals were recorded in the first take
capturing them while they were still raw and real

For me, its all about emotion, says Clare, who ended up
co-producing the tracks with Smith. I wanted an album where
you felt each of the songs in a different part of your body:
in your head, in your heart, in your feet when youre
dancing. I wanted something that really connected with
people, so everybody felt something from it

Inspired by everything from the death of her hero Michael
Jackson (The Last Dance) to the magic of childhood (The
Happiest Pretenders) or the loneliness of her first few
months in the capital (the uplifting, gospel-inflected Break
These Chains), these are torch songs for the 21st century
both completely contemporary and utterly timeless

Youll hear mournful echoes of the Irish music Clare grew up
with on this album, hints of all the artists that influenced
her: the Celtic vibes of Sinead OConnor, the powerful vocals
of Annie Lennox, the quirky innovations of Kate Bush, the
soul of Johnny Cash. But mostly, youll hear a iconic new
singer with a sound thats all her own. As shes always said
its all about the voice

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