Gabriella Cilmi Issue #39

Sweet Seventeen

By Joel Cusumano
Published: March 1st, 2009 | 10:00am

Seventeen is a treacherous age to become a megastar, especially in this modern epoch of disposable celebrity. But when Venus Zine spoke with Australian teen-pop phenomenon Gabriella Cilmi on the phone from London, the megastar-in-the-making expressed no regrets about her overnight media ascent.

“If I wasn’t (playing shows), I’d probably be home looking after one of my little cousins,” she says. “I just played a gig in Moscow yesterday … No, I don’t really regret anything.”

You can’t blame her. Just four years ago, Cilmi was just your average starry-eyed teen playing Silverchair songs (it’s an Australian thing, trust us) in her mates’ garages. This year she made her musical debut with a platinum-selling single and won a record-breaking six Australian Recording Industry Awards (ARIAs). Cilmi’s big break hit like something out of an ‘80s teen flick — you know, girl grows up idolizing rock stars and singing in the shower, girl gets huge one-in-a-million shot at fame and fortune, girl scores big. Only this was all true — and it all started at a festival for Italian-Australians (Cilmi is a proud one) in Melbourne.

“We go to this festival, and my uncle got me to get up and sing that night. I didn’t really want to,” Cilmi explains. “I went up and sang ‘Jumping Jack Flash.’ There was this whole crowd of people just staring at me, the kind of people who auction off their cheeses and wine for charity. I just remember the crowd not really liking it.”

There was one person in attendance digging her sound: Michael Parisi, a Warner Brothers executive. He was so taken with the 13-year-old’s performance, especially her soulful, wise-beyond-her-years voice, that he decided to help her secure a record deal. Parisi precipitously hooked Cilmi up with the songwriters who would help produce and co-write her first album: Brian Higgins and Miranda Cooper. Also known as the pop production-writing team Xenomania, the two have written and produced music for Annie, Kylie Minogue, Franz Ferdinand, the Sugababes, and perhaps most notoriously, Cher, who for better or worse made the group’s work ubiquitous with her hit version of Higgins’ “Believe.”

Since then, Cilmi has been growing up more rapidly than her peers, juggling the responsibilities of a professional musician with those of an everyday teenager. She went from singing into a comb in her bedroom to auditioning for dozens of record executives almost overnight. School has been postponed, and perhaps Cilmi’s biggest instructor lately has been the stage. “I never really get used to [performing],” she admits, “I always feel like I need to puke and have heart attacks before I get on stage!”

Although Cilmi’s musical roots were solidly planted in garage rock and the singers she calls her heroes — classic rock vocalists such as Janis Joplin, Marc Bolan, and Robert Plant — the pop tag is apt for her debut album, Lessons to Be Learned. It’s at once an archetypical pop debut album — encompassing all of the struggles of love, relationships, and teen angst in songs such as “Save the Lies” and “Don’t Wanna Go to Bed Now” — and an atypical one, owing mostly to Cilmi’s assured, tonally varied vocals and her carefree approach to lyrics.

“There’s nothing sweet about me” Cilmi pours out somewhat disingenuously on “Sweet About Me,” though it remains to be seen if perhaps this sweet girl has a dark side. There’s a verdant seed in Cilmi’s voice and attitude that could potentially break beyond the confines of Top 40 pop. For one, the girl has taste. “I was listening to some old Velvet Underground demos,” she mentions, “and there’s something about recording whole takes in one that is very special.” She’s also got a label that’s going to be fairly responsive to any liberties she’d like to take with her next album after her debut’s massive hit.

Comparisons to another soulful young singer, the perennially trouble-plagued Amy Winehouse, are probably something to be avoided at all costs, but like it or not, the two singers are quickly being lumped into the wave of Anglo-soul revival that includes singers such as Duffy, Adele, and Leona Lewis. So far the bubbly Cilmi has learned to keep a healthy distance from the toxic world of personality and persona surrounding stardom. Cilmi insists the girl singing the songs isn’t exactly the girl behind the microphone — she claims she hasn’t really experienced love or much of the complicated relationships that some of her songs may suggest. “I mean, I don’t know much about love or heartbreak, but I can guess about it,” she admits, adding that her stage identity can be a bit deceiving. “I like to call it an extension of myself. I’m pretty much like a teddy bear on the inside.”

But this teddy bear has teeth: thus far in her short career, she’s successfully taken on some pretty tough competition. Cilmi’s first casualty was Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan, who she one-upped last spring by becoming the youngest Australian ever to reach number one — and when Lessons to Be Learned is finally released stateside this March, she hopes her next conquest will be the bland American pop charts.