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Our show will knock years off you
As they team up on the panel for an uplifting new series of The Voice Kids, pop singers Pixie Lott and Paloma Faith on love, loss and leg waxing in lockdown – and why...
Singers Paloma Faith and Pixie Lott appeared on the music scene at a similar time – both had their first singles out in 2009, so they qualify as industry veterans. Between them they’ve recorded seven albums, 44 singles and 47 music videos, so you may think the technical side of things holds no secrets.
Wrong! Paloma, 38, reveals that during lockdown she attempted to continue working on a new album. Deprived of the usual studio and team of producers, she bought some professional recording equipment. And she has a message for other female artists: women can actually do the twiddly technical bits too!
‘It’s not as hard as everyone made out it would be. I feel sort of like a fool for believing all these men that run the industry,’ she says. Meaning (male?) record producers had told her it was too tricky? ‘No one says that out loud, but you have that feeling – this is a man’s job. It isn’t. You literally just press record. I set up a whole studio by myself, with a microphone, an interface, a laptop and the software. Then you do just press record, and send it to an engineer, which is what all the producers do anyway.’
Pixie’s jaw has dropped. The three of us are on a Zoom call, and the younger woman (she’s 29) is desperate to know all the nitty-gritty. ‘I’m coming round,’ she says, and they joke about how Paloma can knock out a new album for her too. Oh, and while she’s at it, she can have her legs waxed as well. ‘I also learned how to do that in lockdown,’ says Paloma. ‘I bought the whole kit. It’s actually less painful if you do it yourself.’ Ouch, says Pixie, politely declining.
So if they’ve been in the industry for more than a decade, how many female record producers have they had? ‘Not a single one,’ says Paloma.
‘None, never,’ says Pixie. ‘I don’t know what the statistics are, but it’s something like only five per cent of record producers are women.’
Indeed, Paloma is considering a career change. ‘I might move into the production side.’ Or become a waxing queen? Really, nothing would surprise me with her.
The pair are teaming up as part of the coaching panel on The Voice Kids, the ITV talent show that gives the under-18s a shot at the big time. Pixie has been a part of the furniture for the past three series with Will.i.am and Mcfly’s
Danny Jones. Jessie J joined last year, but she’s now moved on and so Paloma is replacing her.
She knows the ropes though, having been a coach on the grown-ups’ Voice for one series in 2016. ‘But I always had my eye on the kids’ version,’ she says, adding that it has a warmer vibe. Didn’t she hate The Voice? She was quoted (after quitting) as saying she only did it for the money. There is slight back-pedalling here. ‘That was taken out of context. I did it because I was pregnant and it paid for my maternity leave. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to make money.
‘When you’re self-employed, it’s hard. I didn’t want to lay anyone off because I wanted a baby, so it was a perfect bit of timing. But I always had my eye on this because I wanted to be a teacher. My mum was a glamorous one. I met someone recently who said they had been taught by her and that she was like a film star.’
So why is there a different feel on the kids’ show? She says it is ‘less competitive’. Meaning the kids, or the coaches? ‘The coaches. On the adult one people say things to bring you down. To get someone on their team they’ll say, “I sell more records.”
I want to crawl into a ball at that. I am competitive, but only with myself. With the kids’ version it’s about positivity and the kids, it’s not about us.’
She says the coaches on the kids’ show are warm and genuine, so does this suggest the ones on the adult version were not? ‘In this industry everyone is creative, aren’t they? And creativity is next to madness. Sometimes you get people who are so lovely and genuine, but that isn’t always the case. It doesn’t necessarily feel like people are always as gorgeous as they come across.’
Old-hand Pixie says the show is a joy to be involved with because it gives performers like her the chance to revisit their own youth. ‘I was doing auditions at their age. I know exactly what they’re going through. I get very nostalgic about it.
‘The kids are amazing. They’re so inspiring and hard-working. It spills over to the coaches too, and we’re all messing around in the breaks. It’s great to see that pure love of performing, which is why we all got involved in the industry.’
On first impressions, Pixie and Paloma could not be more different. Pixie, who grew up in Bromley, Kent, as one of three children born to a stockbroker father, is sweetly sensible and has the air of someone who would
‘My grandad died and I couldn’t even hug my mum’ PIXIE LOTT
have been head girl at school. She was actually a stage-school kid and performing in the West End by 13.
Paloma had a more roundabout route to the top. Born in Hackney to an English mother and a Spanish father (they separated when she was a child), she studied dance but had a dizzying array of jobs ranging from life model to magician’s assistant. She’s the edgier one, I suggest, and the born rebel. She agrees.
‘I’m a witch,’ she says at one point during our interview, which is a startling admission. She means, it transpires, that she can ‘read’ people and suss out whether they’re genuine (Pixie gets her seal of approval).
Pixie is in the online meeting room first at the allotted time, poised, chatting about how she has used lockdown to potter about at home, ‘putting up pictures we’ve been meaning to for years’. Paloma pops up from her living room, which is a riot of colour. Then she’s heading down a hallway and into her bedroom, where the bed has a scarlet headboard. At first she’s texting furiously. ‘I’m seeing if my partner can get our daughter lunch,’ she says. ‘If he can’t, it’s Deliveroo.’
This is a shared habit. Pixie and her fiancé, the model Oliver Cheshire, ordered a Nandos for a lockdown picnic recently. No home cooking then? Pixie offers up her hand as evidence that she can’t cook. ‘I can heat up soup, but do you see this burn? I did that putting the carton in the microwave,’ she says.
Their home lives are quite different. Pixie and Oliver have been together for a decade and got engaged in 2016. They were due to get married this year but hadn’t set a date, and now it’s looking like the wedding will be pushed back till at least next year. ‘I don’t really want to have one that would involve social distancing,’ she admits. ‘So it’s easier to wait.’
Social distancing would be impossible with the number of bridesmaids she’s planning: 18 at the last count.
Although she’s enjoyed the latter stages of lockdown, the early ones were incredibly difficult because her grandfather passed away. ‘It was my mum’s dad, and I couldn’t even be with her or hug her, so that’s been very hard. We’re a big, close family. We will be having a big send-off for my grandad when this is over, but it has been hard.’
At the same time, she’s spent more time with Oliver than ever. ‘It’s been lovely. We have a little terrace that we’ve used for the first time. We put a sofa on it. My friends called me a hermit crab because I wouldn’t go out, so we called it “The Crab Shack”.’
Paloma lives with her partner, French artist Leyman Lahcine, and their little girl who was born in 2016. ‘Having a child has made things easier because it gives you a sense of purpose,’ she says. ‘Friends who don’t have kids have said they felt a little bit lost because they didn’t have a reason to wake up. If you have a kid, you have to have structure.’
She struggled with motherhood in the early stages, she admits, panicking about what to do for the best. ‘I’m better now. This is a nice age. I prefer children to babies. I was thinking, “Oh my God. There is no feedback.” You get to the first birthday and you aren’t celebrating that, you’re celebrating that you kept it alive.’
She’s hilariously honest. She does want more children, but says, ‘I’m having some problems with that, so nature will decide. I’m not panicking though. If I do end up only having one child, that’s OK, because I’m an only child and I know how to raise one who’s generous and shares.’
She has an eyebrow-raising parenting style, believing children shouldn’t have the world simplified too
much. ‘I’ve told my daughter about Black Lives Matter, and why I don’t like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson. I’ve explained about the virus. I said the world was crying because people were greedy and the world might be cross, and now we have to think about what we use and give back.
‘Some people would say these subjects are too grown up, but I don’t think any subject should be censored. I think kids are cleverer than adults.’
It will be interesting to see how she interacts with the children when The Voice Kids returns tonight, because she suggests she’s gone too far already. ‘I do speak to these children like I speak to my own child and sometimes I cross a line. I treat them like grown-ups, then they say, “We’re not really allowed to say that.”’
Interestingly, both women genuinely do have a childlike quality to them. ‘I think it’s because we’re both very close to our mothers,’ says Paloma. ‘We are daughters at heart.’
Pixie agrees. ‘This show lets you feel like a child again. The excitement of the kids is infectious, and I love that. Everyone wants to hold onto their inner child.’
‘Nothing should be censored but sometimes I cross a line’ PALOMA FAITH
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