Amy MacDonald

Source: of the picture  meninasnorock.blogspot.com


Source: www.speakup.com.br
Standard: British Accent
Speaker: Justin Ratcliff
Language level: C1 Advanced


Amy MacDonald

FOR THE RECORD

      A few months ago Speak Up featured an interview with the pop star Paolo Nutini. Nutini was born in Scotland in 1987 and so as Amy MacDonald, who has similarly taken the music world by storm.

      Both artists grew up near Glasgow. Nutini is from Paisley, while MacDonald is from  Bishopbriggs. The difference is that Nutini is a Catholic and so his favourite football team is Celtic. MacDonald on the other hand is a Protestant and support Rangers, while her English boyfriend, Steve Lovell, used to play for relatively minor Glasgow team, Partick Thistle.

MONEY AND MUSIC…

      In terms of music, Amy MacDonald made her recording debut in 2007 with the album This is the Life, which contained the hit single of the same name. The album sold three million singles. This is a remarkable achievement at a time when the music industry is clearly in crisis. And her sophomore album. A Curious Thing came out in March (2010). And yet, in spite of her commercial success, Amy MacDonald is reported as saying that she “hasn’t seen a penny” of the revenue, from her sales. We asked her to put the record straight.

AMY MACDONALD

(Scottish accent):

People reported that completely differently from what I said. It was actually a conversation on Twitter that I was having with fans, just people that were asking questions. And I was just answering them. And they were asking about album sales, and I never said that I’d never made a penny. What I said was that I hadn’t made any money from selling the actual CD. And that’s very normal, because the massive amount of cost that it requires to release an album. So, before you’ve even put it in the shops, you’re in a huge amount of debt to your record label, because they so kindly give you the money, so that you can live for the next year! So you’re in that debt, you’re in the debt of every penny that they spent on advertising, promotion, which obviously stacked right up. So you have to sell, I think about three million before you start earning on the album sales. So I think I’m like dead even now, like I don’t owe them anything, but obviously things are slowing down now, so there’s not really any album sales, happening. So that’s what that meant: I never meant that I was poor, or anything like that!

CELEBRITY

And how she is handling her celebrity?

Amy MacDonald

To be honest, I don’t see myself as a famous. And the whole fame thing I could take it or leave it. I’ve not really any interest. I just like music, and I like being a musician, and, for me, I think that it’s good that I’ve managed to have this very successful album, but I can still be completely anonymous because I don’t have the big beehive or I don’t flaunt myself in magazines, so people don’t really know what you look like. I think that’s a good way to be. I think they can have the voice and see the CD, but they don’t really know what you look like in a real-life scenario. So it’s good for me!

AS FOR LADY GAGA…

And she doesn’t seem to have problems with paparazzi!

Amy MacDonald:

But I think that  a lot of people actually court it. The one example that I know of was I was on a tiny flight with Lady Gaga, towards the north of Sweden. So there was, one flight a day to his place from Stockholm, and it was a festival. So everyone that was playing was on the same flight. So she was on the flight, and it was like she changed her wig three times in a hour flight, right? And it’s like: “Why else are you doing that? “Like and this is the thing. Like if she was wearing what I wearing what I was wearing, i.e. a hat and a pair of scruffy trousers and a jumper, nobody would have known who she was! But because she came out with three different wigs, one which was up to here, basically a bra and a pair of leather trousers and like boots that are that high, people know who she is instantly. And it’s just like: “Well, don’t moan about people following was wearing, nobody would even recognize you!”