TINA HITS RESET

After exploring her depths, Tina Arena soars to spectacular heights with a brand new original album – and she isn’t afraid to get intimate either, darling. Interview by Marc Andrews.

Tina Arena has covered a lot of territory. She began as a nine-year-old singing on the kiddie variety TV show Young Talent Time alongside Dannii Minogue. She ventured into superstar territory with the hit Strong As Steel in the early 1990s before she found her true calling as a singer/songwriter with the global hit, Chains. After a number of triumphant albums, she moved to Europe to be with her French husband and gave birth to her beloved son, Gabriel. Then came the French chanteuse phase of her career and, in 2009, she became the first Australian to be awarded Knighthood Of The Order Of National Merit for her contribution to French culture. In an industry poll earlier this year, the 46-year-old was voted Australia’s greatest female singer and after a 12-year wait for an album of new material, she has finally released Reset. It’s her magnum opus – not some fluffy pop album full of chart-hungry dance tunes. Reset is possibly the most honest, thoughtful and beautiful album an Australian female artist has ever produced. Taking stock of her life, loves and losses, Reset may make you fly with happiness and cry with melancholy – a Tina Arena album that lives up the beauty and warmth of her one-of-a-kind voice.

Tina knows it’s good, too, and is eager to talk it up, but she’s also one of the most interesting, amusing and quirky interview subjects in the industry. She loves a good dirty joke, can freely discuss both philosophy and clubbing, and always makes you feel like you are speaking to her intimately, which is a gift in itself. Oh, and she also has a very potty mouth. Love her!

DNA: Where are you based these days?

Tina Arena: Our family lives between France and Australia. We are a bi-hemispherial family [laughs]. We try and follow the sun, although I haven’t done a very good job of following the sun the last ten months. I’ve been really shit at it, but I’ll get there.

It’s been quite some time since an album has reduced us to tears!

[Shocked] What? Wow.

This is your magnum opus, isn’t it?

I don’t know, darling. It’s interesting because I’m not sure people are aware how completely illiterate I am about commercial music today. I really am not fluent in it at all. I know what I like and I am one of those girls who will gravitate to an old record that I love, but the last few years I haven’t really spent a lot of time listening to a lot of music. When I get into creative mode I don’t listen to any music at all. [Proudly] I’m chuffed with you saying that, and thank you, it’s really, really nice.

This really is a beautiful record and the sound of you putting your life on paper. Is every track a piece of you, essentially?

Yes, it is honey. The reason why I haven’t made a record for such a long time is that I wasn’t prepared to undress myself like that. I just thought that people were not that interested and I waited for the wheel to come round. I’m finding now that people are needing a lot of solace in music. It’s a mental planet out there. It’s just absolutely mad – every which way you turn. Everything you are subjected to just becomes more and more frightening. What I have to say I think a lot of people can relate to.

Was it a tough decision for you to be so brutally honest on the record?

It came naturally. I am not an incredibly calculated person. When people ask, “So what’s your record like?” I say that I am not a one-dimensional human being, so why do you want me to categorise what I do in a onedimensional sense? That’s something I cannot intellectualise. For me it is a body of different things that move me.

This album was given the go-ahead under your last record company, EMI, headed by Australia’s first gay record company boss, Mark Poston, right?

Yes. Mark and I are dear friends and I’ve had a very long-standing relationship with EMI. In 1990, my first signing was with them and then in 1994 I signed to Sony Music until 2002 when they dropped me. I laid low for a year and then went to Sony France for three years and decided to have a hiatus. Then I went to EMI in 2007 and said, “I would really love to do Songs Of Love And Loss” and they went, “Knock yourself out!” So I did and made two records and loved every moment of it.

Did you have many of these new songs sitting in your drawer ready to go?

I had a few of them, darling, but I didn’t have everything. A lot of songs I have written over the last few years. It’s a very eclectic musical bunch.

Does the title Reset on this album signify something for you?

It popped out and felt pretty obvious because the sensibility of the record talks about resetting things. We all have to reboot, consciously or unconsciously. The 1990s tangled an incredibly complicated web and I have tried very hard over the last few years to untangle that. The world around us is uselessly complicated and I just want to make my life as simple as I can. That’s one of the most difficult things to achieve nowadays because mankind has complicated everything. It’s like the fly in the web now – he’s caught. You either get eaten up or not and I don’t want to be eaten.

Speaking of complicated, how many different producers did you work with on the album?

Predominantly four and I co-produced half of the record. That was a really fun exercise and felt incredibly liberating.

When you listen to the record do you hear all of the intimacy that you’re sharing or not?

I’m close to it, so I need a bit of time to pull back and digest everything. I don’t want to get sick of it, or nitpick the shit out of it either. It makes me feel good when I hear the songs and that’s the most important thing. It’s not a cure for cancer, let’s face it.

Will there be a French version of the album at some point?

I doubt it. There will probably be some French songs if they are translatable. I have had an obscene amount of requests to record in French again, but I just wasn’t ready. I had an incredible urge to go back to my mother tongue and to reconnect with things.

Perhaps your greatest gay moment was when you filled in for Barbra Streisand on the duet with Donna Summer, Enough Is Enough, on her TV special.

Oh yeah, I did! I was absolutely in my element and very happy being there. When you grow up idolising somebody and then finally get the chance to share the stage with them, it’s breathtaking and surreal. That was a very joyous exchange and a wonderful memory I have of her.

Anyone else you would love to work or duet with now?

There are a lot of really interesting people. I love Chris Martin from Coldplay. He is so beautiful and such a beautiful melodist. I tend to be attracted to wonderful spirits.

You’ve always had a huge gay following, so what do you think they will make of Reset?

I certainly hope they take to it positively. It’s been a number of years where people in the homosexual community have told me, “Come on!” I’m not going to give you shit just because you think I have to give you something. If I’m going to give you something it’s going to be something tangible. I’m not interested in doing anything regurgitated. That doesn’t interest me in the slightest. There are some songs on this album that will appeal to the community and make them feel or dance. I hope it gives them a lot of happiness, that’s all.

Have you been out clubbing lately?

I’m a mother, but I’m in the middle of Dancing With The Stars! I’m having a really great time. Getting your head around tango, merengue and the Viennese waltz is something, I can tell you. I’m not a big clubbing girl, but when I do, I love to dance. I go for a great dance workout, have a few drinks, get tired and go home.

You did all that kind of stuff in your Young Talent Time days, though?

Yeah I did, although we had very limited time back then. I didn’t realise Dannii Minogue had just put out an album. Good on her. I saw her last week. She’s fantastic. She is lovely on TV, darling, and I am genuinely very happy for her. I love her, admire her and have watched her work her butt off for a number of years. The success she is enjoying she absolutely deserves.

Would you ever be a judge on one of the talent shows?

I’m obviously not interesting enough. I was supposed to be a judge on one, but I got knocked off by a blonde. Oh, dear. If they feel that’s credible then good for them. I don’t feel I missed out on anything and am very happy with what I am doing.

Reset is truly a major milestone for Tina Arena.

I appreciate that, because I’ve always been used to a hard slog, so for people to turn around and say something like that to me is mindboggling. Thank you sincerely. You have made my day.

more: Reset is released through Universal Music. Her autobiography Now I Can Dance is released through Harper Collins. Tinarena.com.