Laura's theme
Her record label thought it had signed the new Norah Jones. But Dublin teen chanteuse Laura Izibor is every inch her own woman.
Ed Power, 23 Jan 2007
Laura Izibor dissolves into schoolgirl giggles as she recalls the first time she played BB King’s Blues Club in New York. It was St Patrick’s Day; Manhattan was awash with Shamrock whimsy and green Guinness. Sensing an opportunity, Izibor’s manager printed up a batch of flyers promising “a soul singer all the way from Ireland”. Naturally, the audience – a boozy, misty-eyed rag tag of ex-pats and Irish-Americans – expected a freckled peasant girl with red curls and a Riverdance rictus in her smile.
“They just couldn’t get over it. Obviously, they turn up thinking there’s going to be pale skin, red hair, the lot,” laughs Izibor. “ I walked on stage. I didn’t say a word. And they were like, ‘She’s Irish? What’s going on?’”
Nobody could accuse her mentor of misleading the New York public, though. Izibor is a soul singer in the truest sense – when she closes her eyes and opens her mouth a world of ache and longing and pain fills the room. Remarkably, she is just 18. For her to channel a lifetime of heartbreak feels absurd. Surely she’s faking it?
“You can’t fake it,” responds the Dubliner, matter-of-factly. “People will spot it straight away.”
What Izibor brings to the game is a uniquely Irish marriage of melancholy and self-deprecation. This proves to be a potent formula. On her soon to be released debut album – a project many years in the hatching – she carves out a distinctive space: her music drifts languidly between Norah Jones and Billie Holiday yet is tinged with a particularly Celtic sense of mournful longing.
“If you have a nice, squeaky clean PG-life, the audience just won’t believe you,” Izibor asserts. “Anyone can mimic a soul singer, do the whole Tina Turner thing. But to really convince them, there has to be something there.”
Professionally, at least, Izibor has suffered her share of knockbacks (she’s less forthcoming about her personal life). Several months ago, her two year relationship with Jive Records, the hit factory that has hot-housed the careers of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake among others, petered out. This, putting it mildly, was a shock. Jive, after all, had snapped her up when she was still a schoolgirl. Now, abruptly, its interest in her had waned. Should she wish to explore opportunities elsewhere, Jive made it clear it would not stand in her way.
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