I had it all… and then I had a mental breakdown
A young Katie Melua had the music world at her feet, but then it all fell apart. She tells Craig Mcclean how she survived
At 34 years young, Katie Melua has spent half her life in the music industry – and a quarter of her life recovering from the sudden success, which saw album sales in the multi-millions and back-to-back world tours, and culminated in an acute psychotic breakdown that left her hospitalised for six weeks and on medication for two years.
For sure, she hasn’t gripped the headlines like her near-exact peer Lily Allen, but the Radio 2-friendly singer-songwriter has, needless to say, had her own ups and downs. And she’s come out the other end sober, smiling and with a greatest hits collection of 32 tracks (including her breakthrough hits, such as Closest Thing to Crazy and Nine Million Bicycles) to remind everyone, herself included, what it was all about in the first place.
Signed to a record deal aged 18, the singer-songwriter – who was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and raised in the UK from the age of eight – had vertiginous lift-off from the start: her debut album, Call Off the Search, was the biggest-selling album of 2004. It was the start of a run of seven top 10 albums, the first six with producer/writer Mike Batt (yes, he of Wombles fame).
“When it (her first album) did so well, that blew me away. Eleven million albums,” she says, big eyes widening. We’re talking on squishy sofas in a lovely house in a lovely street in very lovely Holland Park, west London. Melua bought the home for her family at the height of her success.
“To have been able to buy my parents a house in London is something no one can imagine.
Especially this bit of London.
It’s incredible.”
She lives in equally chichi Barnes, southwest London, with her husband of six years, former superbike champion James Toseland. Ten years ago, The Sunday Times Rich List had the then 24-year-old musician as being worth £18 million.
“I did not expect to make that amount of money. I just loved performing, the singing, the songs. And then things got really tough.”
The record sales started to go down and suddenly it was like: “OK, we need to use your touring work to sustain that as well.” But it quickly became unsustainable. “It became crazy – don’t know how many people on fees all the time, people constantly being hired, people on retainers.
“The success was amazing,” she reiterates, grateful for the songs Batt wrote for her, and the wisdom he imparted after 50 years in the business. “But the timing of how
‘I loved performing, the singing, the songs. And then things got tough’
much we had to put out, that was the bit that I struggled with. It was album, tour, album, tour…” Melua remembers a “hilarious” meeting where she was presented with an actual picture of “the person who is your average fan: a guy in his forties or fifties with an Asda carrier bag – and they drive a Volvo!” she laughs. “I was like, ‘Brilliant, what am I supposed to do with that?’ ” Apart from being creeped out, that is. “It’s really creepy!” she laughs again. Then, in the midst of it all, eight years ago this month, the wheels fell off.
“I had spent a year going to hypnotherapy sessions. When I wasn’t touring I’d be really down, then