Sydsvenskan 100409
By: ALEXANDER AGRELL
Helen Sjöholm has released her second solo album, full of Billy Joel’s songs. With Sydsvenskan she talks about Joel, how she interprets a song, the people’s love and how it affects her.
Is Billy Joel an old favorite, or a new love?
– Both. I’m not a Billy Joel-connoisseur, but many of his songs were there in the 70 – and 80’s when I was growing up: “Uptown Girl”, “Tell Her About It” and the others. “She’s Always a Woman” is an old favorite that I hadn´t listened to in a while when I heard it again this winter. The song was the starting signal for “Euforia”, then I started listening to everything he did.
What makes Billy Joel so good?
– He writes strong melodies that get my vocal cords to want to start singing. The lyrics are good, Billy Joel always tells a story, more or less. I like that the songs are simple and takes unexpected ways. He is not complicated, but there is always a sidetrack of the songs that you haven´t expected: an additional pace, a variation on the chorus, a line of text that followed, but in new ways.
Billy Joel is a superstar in the U.S, but has never become that big in Sweden?
– No, not like in other countries, even if people know some of the songs. It probably depends a lot on that you don´t always hear that it’s him. His voice has changed over the years, he has sought out new means of expression.
This is your second solo album, eight years after your first album, “Visor”, which was completely different. When you did your second CD it must have been significant that Joel isn´t so well known and that his songs haven´t been heard so much in Sweden?
– Yes. But the most important thing was that I now both rediscovered songs that I like, such as “Honesty”, and found new ones that I had never heard and really like. It was a key when Tomas Andersson Wij, one of my favorites, said yes to translate the songs, then I felt that a Joel CD would be absolutely right.
To sing the songs in English was not an issue?
– No, I thrive on the Swedish plateau. The texts were written by a man in the 70 – and 80-century world, but here I sing them from a woman of today.
Why did it take eight years between your two solo albums?
– So many funny things have appeared. I see myself not as a recording artist in the first place. I like it best on stage, where I’ve been able to go into different roles and in different parts of myself. And, it takes a little time to wrap up a disc in your own way. We need keys: Billy Joel’s songs, Tomas Andersson Wijs texts.
You have been involved in a number of different kinds of projects and music through the years. Do you have your roots in a lot of different music styles?
– No, no heavy shoes of something special. But great storytelling has always been there, even from childhood. Then it was about songs with long texts. Inside me, each song has its own box, a little imagination. It is what inspires me, a clear picture of a fate, a situation, a person. The mechanism has tied up all the bags, and my curiosity on where my voice can take me.
– I work with other people, and they get things in me that either blossom or attenuated. Of course you become different, changed. I don´t think “this song I will sing like this”, it just happens.
– Maybe I should limit myself more. But the scene has been my alibi, where I can be anything.
One track of “Euforia” is “Honesty”, which makes – Yes. But the most important thing was that I now both rediscovered songs that I like, such as “Honesty”, and found new ones that I had never heard and really like. It was a key when Tomas Andersson Wij, one of my favorites, said yes to translate the songs, then I felt that a Joel CD would be absolutely right.
To sing the songs in English was not an issue?
– No, I thrive on the Swedish plateau. The texts were written by a man in the 70 – and 80-century world, but here I sing them from a woman of today.
Why did it take eight years between your two solo albums?
– So many funny things have appeared. I see myself not as a recording artist in the first place. I like it best on stage, where I’ve been able to go into different roles and in different parts of myself. And, it takes a little time to wrap up a disc in your own way. We need keys: Billy Joel’s songs, Tomas Andersson Wijs texts.
You have been involved in a number of different kinds of projects and music through the years. Do you have your roots in a lot of different music styles?
– No, no heavy shoes of something special. But great storytelling has always been there, even from childhood. Then it was about songs with long texts. Inside me, each song has its own box, a little imagination. It is what inspires me, a clear picture of a fate, a situation, a person. The mechanism has tied up all the bags, and my curiosity on where my voice can take me.
– I work with other people, and they get things in me that either blossom or attenuated. Of course you become different, changed. I don´t think “this song I will sing like this”, it just happens.
– Maybe I should limit myself more. But the scene has been my alibi, where I can be anything.
One track of “Euforia” is “Honesty”, which makes me think of honesty in song interpretation. You touch your audience strongly and convey much. How does it work when you interpret a song? What are your thoughts when you are going to sing it?
– It’s hard to look at it from the outside and explain it. I have no routine method, although I find myself doing quite the same from time to time.
– For me it is very important to obtain an instant picture of what I experience with a particular song. Maybe I’m thinking of a special man who I have met, or I´m pissed off at something, that may come out in song. “Ärlighet” had a frustration I could work with, it is a kind of straightness that I may lack, both in work and at home. Straightness becomes more and more important, you have no time for bullshit and empty phrases.
– The text of “Ärlighet” can be sung both with full energy and with a dejected feeling. I think I have very strong emotional pictures when I make songs.
Have you received any coaching to get into a text and lifting it over to us?
– Yes, a bit, I have received. But really, it has been with me ever since I was really little and sang in the choir. We had a great choir director, she didn´t give up. We were thirty forty girls between eight and fourteen, fifteen, but she teached us that you must know what the music means, what the song is about. You have to have an expression of the concerts and a willingness to tell the audience something, otherwise the whole thing becomes totally uninteresting. “You are forty girls, but right now the crowd is watching you. Remember that someone is always watching you, you have responsibilities. You must show your energy, otherwise the music dies.” To talk like that to eight-nine year old girls is quite courageous.
Something else that influenced the way you sing?
– Theatre interest also meant a lot, I always wanted to portray something a bit more and felt an attraction to acting. That part of me has influenced my singing a lot.
– Anders Ekborg, Marianne Morck, and all those I’ve worked with for a long time, had a significant impact. I have received many tips, both practical advice and by watching and listening to others. Tommy Körberg has said some good things.
– Malmö was important, of course, all the years of “Kristina from Duvemala”. I learned a lot about myself, about what´s happening when I work a lot, about how to survive mentally and with my voice in the situation. There was so much focus on me and I got so much time on stage. The journey I had to make in almost five years, to work as long with a single role, is a rare luxury.
– As soon as you start to intellectualize too much about what you do – look for numerous pictures of yourself on stage or listening a lot to yourself – it will be difficult. So I don´t do that.
What is the thread running through all your different roles? What makes you want to take part in a particular project?
– That I will be interested myself. Prior to “My Fair Lady” at the Oscar theater was my first thought that the musical is mossy and has been played a thousand times. But I knew I had something to give as Eliza, there was something that appealed to me in the role. Then Tomas Alfredson became the director and it was decided that music would be rearranged – a couple of steps which let us do our own thing of “My Fair Lady”.
– So there will be an opening for me to be who I am and not have to repeat what someone else has done. Plus songs that speak to me. I can also choose to be in a context because I haven´t worked with the very people before and are curious about them.
You are an extremely much-loved artist. Is this something you’re thinking about? Do you feel any responsibility towards the audience?
– Yes, I do, I’ll do my best in every situation. But I feel an even greater responsi…bility to keep my own pleasure. I’m no good when the urge is not there. Has sung so a few times and felt “this sucks”. I think I’m pretty much an amateur topic still!
– Sure I can think about how something will be received. But I’m not tied to how it should sound to respond to something old or the audience’s perceptions. It always comes to a phase when I wonder “Gosh, where will this land?”. But the music or the role takes over and it becomes what it becomes.
Do you feel much pressure when you do different things? Do the audience’s expectations affect your performance?
– Not so much in the job, where I become easily seduced, engrossed. You have the feeling that comes from them you work with. Private perhaps I feel a bit more, when I talk about what I do or look at it from outside. But as I stand there and do things, something else takes over.
– It is both a shelter and a nice feeling.
Euforia is:
Helen Sjöholm’s new album, with songs by Billy Joel interpreted into Swedish by Tomas Andersson Wij. Billy Joel is: American singer, songwriter and pianist. Among the hits: “Piano Man”, “New York State of Mind”, “Just the Way You Are”, “It’s Still Rock’n’Roll to Me”, “We Did not Start the Fire”.
Helen Sjöholm is: Singer, actress.
Lives in: Nacka.
Family: Husband and three-year old son.
Current: Has released her second solo album, “Euforia”, and takes the songs on tour this winter. Visits Malmö Concert Hall on February 19 and Helsingborg ditto the day before.
Right now: Playing the blind poetissa in “Aniara” at Stockholm’s City Theatre.