FAITH HEALING
After a tough couple of years, Paloma Faith is looking forward to her second baby and an uplifting album. She chatted to MARION McMULLEN about children and lockdown creativity
‘IT is so great being a mum and I feel very lucky” says Paloma Faith. “The lockdown meant that we’ve spent a lot of time together as a family, which has been a positive. Usually, it had just been one or the other of us looking after our daughter, who has now started really learning about family.”
The singer’s daughter with French artist Leyman Lahcine is now three years old and baby number two is on the way for the couple. Paloma has endured a lot in recent years, including six rounds of fertility treatment and dealing with postnatal depression.
“I’d pretty much resigned myself to giving up with this latest treatment, and I thought that this just wasn’t going to happen. It felt like it was the last chance saloon and I was thinking to myself, where am I am going with this?
“With IVF, I think it’s sad that men don’t really talk about it in public, and it’s one of those things where society always assumes that it is a female issue. It’s something that can be hard on relationships,” she admits.
She and Leyman split childcare duties as evenly as possible and the Brit Award-winning singer’s forthcoming new addition to the family also happily coincides with her latest musical baby in the form of her fifth studio album Infinite Things.
Recording amid a global pandemic and being pregnant made working on the album a very different experience for Paloma.
“I think being at home meant I was completely uninhibited with wild abandon, in a way that I am not when sound engineers are looking at me,” she says. “Also, I wasn’t afraid to make mistakes, and sometimes those mistakes land in places that are wonderful, and I wouldn’t make them if someone else was there. So, I feel like there’s more intimacy in this record, and that there’s more truth in the way that I am singing.”
She says the album is very much focused on motherhood and the pressures, hopes and expectations that it brings. The 39-year-old singer has been frank in the past about the challenges she endured to bring her daughter into the world, and an understandable desire to shield her child from public attention, which meant she did not immediately reveal the gender, was misinterpreted in some quarters as being a conscious decision to raise her daughter as ‘gender neutral’ for which she was targeted by online trolls.
Since her last release, The Architect, went to number one, Paloma has featured as a coach on ITV’s The Voice Kids, seen herself nominated for a clutch of industry accolades and has explored new territory acting in the Batman spin-off prequel Pennyworth.
The enforced downtime caused by the coronavirus crisis gave her a rare chance to take stock after an intense period of work and she says having a toddler to take care of has required greater time management.
“It’s made me go for the jugular more,” she says. Material soon flowed while at home completing her latest album and it features everything from Paloma’s trademark soulful pop through to sweeping orchestral ballads. “We live in a very volatile world that now seems as if we only get one chance, so I have been lucky that I’ve been able to put releases out there and put myself on the map,” she says.
It has been a far from straightforward journey for the half-Spanish East-London born singer, who holds a degree in contemporary dance, and an MA in theatre directing that saw her initially consider other artistic directions. She had early stints in cabaret, bar tending and modelling before she gravitated to singing. She’s been doing things her own way ever since.
There have been pressures along the way, including offering a ‘showbiz age’ several years younger than her actual years for fear of not being given a recording contract.
Her debut album provided plenty of vindication by reaching the top 10 in 2009, and it was followed by multi-platinum sales and a friendship with the late Amy Winehouse, to whom she penned a tribute on her last album.
Paloma says the title track of Infinite Things is about her daughter. “It’s about seeing things through my daughter’s eyes and is about becoming a parent, how that it is all about continuing humanity,” she explains. “You experience the worst heartache with it. The album is also a commentary on society as well, in respect of issues raised by living in the pandemic, and also knowing people who have lost loved ones.
“It’s about enduring love. We’re most used to hearing about the initial parts of a relationship, that first spark, so it’s an area that that’s under-represented. I think there’s a big cultural hole there that I’m aiming to address.”
Paloma is aiming to head out on the road again for another UK tour next autumn and is still finding time for her work as an ambassador for Oxfam and Greenpeace.
“It’s easy to lose sight of the reality about the world.
The truth is, there are a lot more pressing things going on out there than singing a pop song, so if I can use my platform for the greater good then I absolutely should and intend to.”
New album Infinite Things, pictured left, is released on Friday and the 2021 tour starts on September 16. See palomafaith.com for details.