Balance June 2018 - 25

Paloma Faith is having a bad hair day. No. A really
bad hair day. "I've gone to the same hairdresser for 10
years," she reflects in her unique Minnie-Mouse-onMogadon tones. "And for some reason, yesterday it
went mental and started going all burn-y. Now I don't
know how much hair I've got left."
How does she cope generally in a crisis? How is she
coping with this particular crisis?
"Always the same," she laughs, her hair now wrapped
in fabric and slathered with conditioner. "Humour. My
boyfriend [the French artist, Leyman Lahcine] sent me
a photo of a Barbie that a kid had chopped all the hair
off. That was while I was still in the hairdressers. You
bastard. It's humour that gets me through."
Hair notwithstanding, the singer, 36, has much
to be happy about. Her fourth album, The Architect,
reached Number 1 in the UK and she is about to
embark on the next leg of a tour which begins at
Hampton Court Palace Festival and visits a variety
of other festivals and racecourses, the nag-friendly
venues a measure of her bigger-than-all-but-Adele
popularity. She attributes the success of her performances
to a lesson learned from no less a figure than Prince,
who mentored her briefly early in her career.
"I made a lot of changes to the way I performed
live after that," she recalls of the Hamlet-esque time
she opened for Prince in Denmark. "First of all,
I made myself have a better band and then I took
the stance - I don't think everyone does in music
- which is that you have to play what people want
you to play. Prince always did that. That was a really
great lesson and I think that's why I can be four
albums and 10 years into my career and I'm selling
arena tours, because people know I'm going to give
them what they want."

PROTEST SONG
Her previous three albums all went double platinum
(sold over 600,000 copies) but The Architect was
her first Number 1 album and is on course to match
these sales. It represents something of a change of
direction for her, featuring multiple co-writers and
collaborations with Sia, John Legend, even Samuel

June 2018 BA LA N CE

RETRO SOUL

L. Jackson, whom she apparently annoyed by telling
him how to speak his lines. It's also much more, dread
word, political than previous offerings. For instance,
it features a song called Guilty, about a person who
voted Leave but has come to regret it. She says she
wrote it to show empathy for what that might feel
like. But its opening lines run, "I've been a criminal,
I made a mistake. / Believed in the fictional / Then
let everything slip away." I suggest, not that I have a
problem with this, that it might actually infuriate the
average Leave voter.
She pauses to consider this notion.
"I've got friends who voted Leave and we don't hit
each other or swear at each other," she says after
a moment. "Some of them regret it and that's why
I wrote that song. But there are some extremist
ones who stand by it even though it's obvious it
was a terrible idea and I think those people who are
holding those views are not doing it from a good
place. I think some of their beliefs on immigration
are a little bit right-wing."

SAME DIFFERENCE
Paloma has a disarming way of expressing strong
opinions in a non-confrontational way, which is
perhaps why she struggles with the idea of people
being at each other's throats, as they are, in the
modern world.
"I don't understand why people have lost the
concept of living harmoniously with people who are
different," she muses. "It seems quite strong to me
that you would be infuriated by someone having a
differing opinion to you. It's not like I'm stabbing
anyone to death. My memories of my childhood in
Hackney are quite harmonious, different cultures,
different classes living side by side. Mansions on the
same street as housing estates.
"I think social media is dangerous," she continues.
"Sometimes I forget and it's like I'm talking to a friend
and then it's, 'Oh shit'. But I've had people say the
most horrible things to me. Once, on The Voice, I said
I didn't like musical theatre. I had death threats,
people saying I'd condemned their whole existence.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Balance June 2018