AT JUST 15 Dublin schoolgirl Laura Izibor won the 2FM/Jacob’s Song Contest and her winning song ‘Compatible’ received significant airplay. Hotpress chose her as its ‘Hot for 2006’ artist and she became the first unsigned artist to win a Meteor Award.
The plaudits just kept coming and a record label bidding war for her signature ensued. She eventually signed with New York-based label Jive Records just after her 17th birthday and moved to the US to begin recording demos for her debut album.
As Laura began work in the studio she increasingly found her soul sensibilities did not sit entirely well with the pop ethos of the label and she was left with a very stark choice to make in order to save her career.
“Most of the artists on their roster were very pop-orientated and they didn’t really have anyone I could relate to,” Laura tells me. “I was sort of afraid Jive wouldn’t get what I was doing and that I was going to get dropped.
The A&R guy who signed me had come to the end of his contract and he left the label and they assigned a new A&R person to me but it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t happy and so eventually I went to see the head of the label and told him I didn’t want to be with them any more. I was only 18 at the time and it was a big risk but I was sure I could get another deal and pay them back some of their money.”
In her efforts to find a new label Laura went with her instincts and followed her mentor Steve Lunt to Atlantic Records - the label of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles.
“Steve had always believed in my music and he was a real old-school soul guy,” Laura says. “I had all these songs and didn’t know what to do with them but he had a vision of where my music could go. I was sort of terrified I wouldn’t get another chance to make my mark. Once I signed on the dotted line with Atlantic though I knew it was the right home for me. So far they’ve been really great and they’ve actually been noted for their artist development.”
The time and effort that Atlantic has spent in promoting Laura Izibor and her soulful music is beginning to pay off. Last year Rolling Stone chose her as one of its ‘Artists To Watch’ and compared her to Alicia Keys.
The comparisons with Keys are not entirely accidental. Recently Izibor has been working with some of the production team behind that artist’s Grammy-winning Songs In A Minor.
“In America at the moment there’s a big push behind the single ‘If Tonight Is My Last’ and hopefully that’ll break me into the mainstream,” Laura says. “I’ve recently been in the studio with the producer Krucial (Keys production partner ) and we’ve just pumped up the song a little bit more. I’ve got another six to nine months to build on the success I’ve had and in-between I want to start recording new songs.”
Laura’s debut album Let The Truth Be Told was released in Ireland in May and shot to Number 2 in the charts, helped in no small part by the inclusion of the song ‘Shine’ in a TV advertising campaign.
“I didn’t realise that it was going to be as big a song as it became,” says Laura. “I came home for a week and it was everywhere! It was on the radio every five minutes and then I turned on the TV and there it was playing.
“It kind of got to the stage where I was going ‘I’m getting sick of hearing that song’ because I just couldn’t escape it. It was great though when I played a few festivals in Ireland and all I had to do was sing the first couple of lines and the whole crowd started singing.”
There is no doubt 2010 could be the busiest year to date for this Irish soul songstress but she is unlikely to let fame go to her head.
“In Ireland we don’t have the celebrity platform and people don’t really buy into the whole ‘famous face’ thing,” she says. “The most famous figures in this country are people like Colin Farrell and Bono and they just come home and they’re ordinary Joe Soaps. I like that.”
Laura Izibor plays the Róisín Dubh tomorrow at 8pm. Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
