The Big Interview: Charlotte Church

Charlotte Church is chatting with characteristic candour while standing guard over her two children as they play in the garden of her home. “My dad has come up and built them a sand pit...” she laughs nervously, then quickly breaks off from our interview to scold her daughter “That’s enough now, stop throwing sand...sorry about that, where was I?”

Whether she’s talking about the Leveson Inquiry, the state of the UK music industry, the curse of celebrity or just the tabloid circus that’s been her life for the past 14 years, Church has to continually stop mid-sentence to keep her children in line.

“Ruby is four and Dexter’s three now,” she says. “And they’re at that really mischievous stage, mischievous but amazing. So I’m fitting what I do around their routine – my babies always come first, even before work. That’s just a given.”

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Unlike many a famous mother, Church doesn’t just claim to prioritise her family, she’s actually tailoring the launch of a new chapter in her career around them – and that includes interviews. Wherever possible the children will also be travelling alongside her on her UK tour, which launched last month and arrived in Leeds last night for the first of three dates in Yorkshire.

Church is at pains to point out just how important the intimate gigs are to her. For a start this is the first time, save for a few sporadic concerts, she’s ever taken her own music on the road. It’s difficult to believe, given that she first entered the public consciousness back in 1998 as a 12-year-old from Cardiff.

Although she became a superstar in the space of a few months and her début album, Voice of an Angel, sold millions of copies worldwide, the record industry moguls never saw long tours as a lucrative option. It’s something she clearly resents.

“When I was younger and doing all the classical stuff the emphasis was always on doing TV,” says Church, now 26. “That was in the days when albums made money, so they just wanted me to keep promoting and selling records.

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“But I’m not anybody’s commodity any more. I’ve always been quite aware that I made a lot of money for corporations and, inevitably, they have a certain amount of control over you. It’s lovely to be free from that.”

Even when she took a change of direction with her pop/rock album Tissues and Issues in 2005, she now claims to have felt continually uneasy about the way record labels would try to mould her career.

That discomfort can be traced from her début signing with Sony right up to last year when she terminated a £2m contract with Power Amp Music.

Exploiting that new-found freedom, there are no intentions to follow convention and put out an album. But she does have a raft of new songs she’s been busily preparing with her band, which includes her current partner, Jonathan Powell. Instead, the tracks will be released piecemeal on a series of EPs, the first fairly soon.

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This new approach is intended to draw something of a line under Church’s previous public images – first as the angelic soprano, then the fallen angel – and introduce audiences to Charlotte Church: singer/songwriter and live musician.

“It’s massively important to prove your worth,” she says. “Especially for me as I’ve had so many different incarnations. My new material is completely different musically and lyrically. For me now the focus is on artistry and credibility.”

Church clearly feels she has much to prove and, perhaps, a career to salvage. During the Leveson Inquiry into media standards in February, Church, who gave evidence of her mistreatment at the hands of the Press, specifically sited the endless tabloid attention as a damaging distraction from her music.

And it wasn’t merely a hollow tantrum. When News International made a £600,000 payout after admitting she was one of hundreds of phone-hacked targets, Church took a stand while other compensated celebrity victims took their money and ran.

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“In my opinion, they are not truly sorry,” she said at the time, crystallising most observers’ sentiments. “Only sorry they got caught.”

Five months later and she still doesn’t hold back. “It’s gone too far,” says Church “I think everyone knows that and can see that, regardless of any argument as to whether you think the Leveson Inquiry is a good or a bad thing. It was horrific illegal activity prying into the private lives of people, not just famous people but people just affected by circumstance or by a crime. I think only now do people see the scale of it.

“In my case I think people felt I was a child star, so I was almost a part of their family. And, of course, I’ve been around for so long. But the trouble is people in power, in corporations, don’t distinguish between what the public is interested in and what is in the public interest. A lot of what is in the public interest isn’t reported because it has to make way to create space for stories about what the public are interested in. That’s wrong and it’s still happening now.

“The reason I got involved in the Leveson Inquiry was because I do think that there will be other children in the spotlight for whatever reason. What was more important for me than anything was that those children should be protected in some way, because, as a teenager, you don’t have a clue about yourself or life in general. To be under that scrutiny – often negative or sexed up – it’s really unhealthy. I just wanted, if nothing else, for people under 18 to be protected from that kind of intrusion.”

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And she really does speak from experience. The constant pressure of tabloid interest in Church and her family was almost unbearable as she navigated her way through adolescence. She admits she didn’t always do herself many favours, the zest of youth often saw her speak a little too candidly, often hoping interviewers might pick up on any tone of irony or humour which, predictably, they ignored in favour of garnering juicy quotes.

Then, of course, came the ladette years in which Church was portrayed by the tabloids as a drinking, smoking, kebab-eating rebel with one or two suspect choices of boyfriends. That attention only intensified when, at 19, she began a relationship with Welsh rugby star Gavin Henson (the couple split two years ago after a brief engagement) who’s the father of Ruby and Dexter.

“I’ve never intentionally ordered my life like other celebrities do, effectively selling your life as a career” she says, defending her decision to date Henson “What can you do about circumstances? I don’t regret anything.

“Besides, the most important thing was that I was a totally reasonable teenager. I never did anything illegal, never got in trouble with the police. You know, I’m a pretty good human being. The truth is my image in the media was just a caricature they created, a little soap opera of my life they boxed me into.”

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The biggest silver lining, Church admits, is that the last 14 years of ups and downs have given her plenty of life experience to inspire her music. The direct inspiration is obvious too. One of the songs due out on a later EP is Mr The News. No prizes for guessing the subject matter, but she stops short of confirming whether or not the song’s title is a direct reference to Rupert Murdoch. “It was written as I was a part of the Leveson Inquiry,” she says. “And it’s about all of the challenges and memories that came out of that, also how much journalists have been able to get away with.”

Then there is Beautiful Wreck, due out on the first EP. She says: “That track is all about the state of the music industry which is now in a hell of a pickle. There are no A&R people any more, so much of it has become about being a commercial success and people in the industry are scared to take risks. And stuff that pushes through into the mainstream, well, some of it’s good, but some of it is just ridiculous.

“The problem is we’re in the age of the internet where there is every option open to you. With that competition, the conventional music industry has less money to take risks. Previously people in the industry would say, ‘Okay, I’ve got this artist who’s going to make me so many millions, and I’m going to take on these four other artists who might sell a few thousand records, but they should be heard!’ But these days that doesn’t happen. Instead they just skim the surface.

“Also it’s because of The X-Factor age of reality TV, which, generally, just isn’t the best way to find creative talent. You might find some pretty voices or what not, but that’s not what necessarily makes an artist. You never would have found someone like David Bowie through The X-Factor.”

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Church wants to continue making music, but she’s no longer willing to sell her soul.

“No artist will ever say, ‘I don’t care if I don’t sell any records at all’,” she says, laughing. “But at the same time there are things which are much more important to me now. I’m not really expecting to sell a lot of records to be honest, though it would be great if that did happen.

“What’s more important to me is being seen as an artist and having more to sing about than just the usual ‘Hey DJ play that song again so I can shake my backside even harder!’ you know? I want to sing songs which have real content and are a commentary.

“Things have been horrifically hard for me at times but I think all those experiences have made me a more rounded person. Best of all I have two beautiful children and I’m finally doing what I want to be doing in my career, in fact this is probably the happiest and most content I’ve ever been in my life.”

Charlotte Church plays Fibbers in York tonight and The Leopard in Doncaster on August 4.

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