Feist Speaks About 2007

12/19/07 3:30pm

by Noah Love (CHARTattack)

Chart's artist of the year for 2007 is Leslie Feist. The ubiquitous chanteuse was larger than life this year. Her videos for "My Moon My Man" and "1234" launched her into superstardom in a few short months.

It didn't hurt that the latter was featured in an iPod commercial and Perez Hilton, the internet's infamous gossip king, embraced her, causing a groundswell that led to appearances on every major talk show and sold out shows around the world and four Grammy Award nominations.

We caught up with Feist in the middle of her west coast tour for the artist of the year profile, which you can read in Chart's December issue. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

ChartAttack: Is it hard to process everything that happened this year?
Feist: Yes. It's the end of a year and, thus, a time of summaries. For me, it's like the bow has not been tied. There are still a lot of loose ends.

When exactly does your year for The Reminder wrap up?
If you want to know what I'm doing Christmas of next year, I could probably tell you in about 10 seconds. Yeah, 2008 has all been drawn up on a napkin. We drew 12 squares on a napkin and mapped it out. That means all the wheels are turning.

You were on the last Saturday Night Live before the writers' strike started. What was the experience like?
It was just great. It was like a supernatural, warm and fuzzy potluck dinner. Our touring entity and all the people who make up that world, and then the equivalent group of people who work together all the time — that being the cast and crew of Saturday Night Live. There's a couple dozen of them, there's a dozen of us, and we got together to do this really strange, amazing thing. It was just really easy. There was just so much more time than when you do other shows. We got Thursday to rehearse, Friday to work out loose ends, and then Saturday they do an entire dress rehearsal where they have an audience. They do the whole show to work out camera blocking and then they do the real show. So by the time it really is happening, there's no more wild card, no aces up anyone's sleeve. Nothing of what normally happens to me on television was able to happen, which is, like, some technical debacle.

How do you top the "1234" and "My Moon My Man" videos?
You just wait and see, because Patrick [Daughters, the director of both videos] and I are filming the "I Feel It All" video in December and... you'll see. There are many ways to top it.

I was surprised that wasn't one of the first singles from the record.
For us, it's always been a mainstay. It's a cornerstone for me in our live set in terms of comfort and ease, and it makes sense and we play it well. But I guess there's always a million opinions bandied about when you're finally on a label with that kind of, what's the word, agenda? A label's like a switchboard. Like it's the 1930s when there were those people sitting in front of the enormous switch with 30,000 different holes and they're connecting the calls. They're like that. They're like, "We have to take this song out into the world." They all have conflicting opinions. And for me, the record is a record. I don't think about singles and I don't come from that world at all. I didn't want "1234" to be the first song because I thought the danger would be that it would stop there because it's sort of spoon-feeding-style. It's easy for them. That's of the language they speak, label people. And I'm not necessarily talking about Arts & Crafts, I'm talking about the major labels and the rest of the world. I asked if we could start with something other than "1234" so they would have motivation to end up there eventually.

Perez Hilton has certainly been kind to you this year.
Yeah! When will that dime turn? You know Dragonette? I was having drinks with them in London, which is where they live now. And Dan Kurtz actually produced my very first record in '98. So we're old, old friends. So I went out for a drink with him and Martina [Sorbara] and they had some friend there and we're all just hanging out. And after about an hour I said to the friend, "Hey, what do you do?" And he said, "Oh, well, I have this blog, this gossip blog." And he asks me what I do and I say, "I'm a singer, I've got some records out." I didn't know who he was from a hole in the ground. I'd never heard his name before and he had never heard mine. But the next day, I heard from about 70,000 people going "Oh my God!" and all of a sudden I understood the context of who this guy with green hair was. And that was Perez Hilton, of course. The next day, he did a blast saying "Check out this girl's video," and that was six months ago. I'm bemused and grateful that stuff is on some people's radar. It's certainly not on mine. But I can understand it means something to someone.

Will you do another Open Season-type release?
Open Season was a mistake. I wish I'd never put it out. It was a label decision and I just shrugged. I was busy making a new album. I like a lot of those songs. I just don't think it's necessary they came under the guise of being a record. Someone had the idea and I just didn't have the presence of mind to say, "Uh, that's not necessary. They're just little B-sides out floating around the world. If people want to find them, they can." But, I'm definitely not going to do that. Let It Die also had an amazing amount of remixes come back from the universe. And it just happened so organically, there was just so many people who wanted to remix that record and they did it without the tracks, even, just taking the song and toying with it, guerilla style. But that hasn't really happened with The Reminder.

Do you get any writing done on the road?
I guess I've always got the butterfly net out catching the odd idea. I don't really ever stop. It's sort of just a matter of collecting enough ideas.

What are your plans for 2008? Any recording?
Recording at some point, for sure, but I also have to take a deep breath. I just did two records back to back, so maybe I'll take a deep breath and wait to see when the next one is ripe, then I'll pick it off the tree. [laughs]