9. The FeelingTwelve Stops And Home
It has to be there really because when I met Richard, my husband and father of my many offspring, he was in my touring band. He said he’d started his own band and gave me a CD and I thought ‘oh God – what if this is rubbish, this will be awkward’. I played it though and thought, this is really good! It had so many songs that became the first Feeling album – Never be Lonely, Love It When You Call. All the progressions of him signing the deal, us having our baby, recording the album, it’s all so tightly woven with the fabric of our beginnings. They signed their record deal two weeks before we got married. I couldn’t untangle that from what was happening in our own lives.
Around this time you released ‘Me And My Imagination’, I’ve always been really frustrated with the British public for not making that a hit, and it was only in researching this piece I found out that there was actually a more concrete reason for that
Do you mean the whole iTunes thing? [iTunes failed to add the song until a week after it was supposed to be released – the song charted at number 23, instead of the top 10 hit it was projected to be]. That was painful. But do you know what, if I’ve learnt anything…this is why you get some artists who are incredibly precious about these things, if something goes well or goes badly it all falls on your shoulders. Nobody cares about the unsexy details about how you bring your music out – my eyes glaze over a bit when I hear about manufacturing and distribution, but with ‘Me And My Imagination’ it felt really harsh. I’d worked really hard on my third album, really took my time. When it happened, all the people at iTunes were over in America and you couldn’t get an answer. I’ve had a few moments like that in my career and you just have to be really resilient. Sometimes the wind is in the right direction, other times you’re going headlong into the wind and it’s pushing you back. You just have to keep going, actually. I didn’t lose my deal, I got to make another album.
