PUBLISHED IN THE KITCHENER-WATERLOO RECORD Tuesday, January 27, 1998
By Nick Krewen
With all the fanfare surrounding last year's Lilith Fair, 1997 was declared by several music magazines as "The Year Of The Woman" in pop music.
One woman, however, isn't feeling too celebratory.
"I just don't want anything to do with it," declares HOLLY McNARLAND, the 22-year-old Toronto-based Winnipeg native who has been gaining national attention with her piercing voice and her fine debut album, Stuff.
"I don't want anything to do with politics. I just want to play music."
McNarland, who spent three years in Vancouver before relocating East, refused an offer to join Lilith because she feels music shouldn't be segregated by gender.
"I think any festival like that should be both sexes, because it's just music," states McNarland, who has sold over 50,000 copies of Stuff.
"I don't think men should stage an "all-male" concert on purpose, and I don't think women should either."
McNarland says she can't understand why music is concerning itself with a battle of the sexes.
"I like playing with both," she states. "My CD collection has both. I never walk into a record store and say, `I don't think I'm going to buy that guy's CD, because I have too many men in my collection.' It just doesn't happen. It never crosses my mind.
"I don't do that with women, either."
McNarland's candid views are also a hallmark of her deeply personal pop as portrayed on both Stuff and her introductory EP Sour Pie, the cover of which portrayed a pie with a pair of pastry penises on the cover.
While both albums contain sexual frankness, McNarland doesn't think it's anything out of the ordinary.
"There's no more (there) than your average person, male or female" she protests. "I think this whole women in rock, swearing on their albums still plays a big part in questions that get asked by the media.
"I just think it's sort of normal. Whether it's blatant or not, music is kind of sexual. People take it the way they need to take it when they listen to it. Look at Prince. For some people that's very sexual music. But he writes great love songs that are very sexy, but they're not about sex."
She's also surprised when people consider such songs as "Numb" and "U.F.O." to be about sex.
"They're not about sex!" she states. "Like `U.F.O.' People come up to me and say, `Wow, that's such a sexual song!' No! You know what? It's not! It's not about sex in the least. But it's just the way somebody's thinking about it."
Yet McNarland admits she appreciates a different perspective.
"I love the fact that people can look at a song -- whether it's mine or anybody else's -- and turn it into their interpretation."
McNarland confesses that some of her songs are autobiographical, but an equal amount are influenced by environment. Her hit "Numb", for instance, was inspired by H, a stark and blunt film about heroin addiction.
"That was a movie that I saw that creeped me out," she confesses. "It's a world that's so far from my world, but it's still there. In Vancouver, for instance, there's so much junk there. It didn't affect anybody really too close to me, but I saw it all the time."
In the meantime, McNarland plans to return to Vancouver. Although she's lived in Toronto for nearly a year and "likes it here a lot," she says she wants to settle down.
"I just want to buy a house," she admits. "I want to be by the ocean and the mountains, and know where I'm going. I know Vancouver well -- it's small and comfortable. But I'd love to eventually have a place in both cities."
The former pet shop employee is obviously strong-willed and self-determined, considering she didn't pick up a guitar until she was 16, and only began writing when she was 18.
"It came really easily," admits McNarland, in Toronto last week to film a video for her new single "Courage."
"I played by ear after I got callouses on my fingers and got the co-ordination down. Writing came easily too. It's just co-ordination, right? I have to learn how to sing and play at the same time. It took a little work."
She turned down her first deal at the age of 19 after a record company executive told her to sing like one of the label's other successful artists.
"I started thinking, `Do these guys actually want a double of what they already have?'
"I was 19 and naive, but not that f----n naive. I said, `You know what? Screw you guys.' A person like that I can't trust."
Still, McNarland is realistic about her status and future in the music business.
"I hope that I can keep it my only calling,"says McNarland. "Time will tell. I realize exactly where I am right now, that I'm really lucky to be where I am right now, and this could all disappear tomorrow. I'd love to do this for the rest of my life, but I realize I might not be able to do this at this level, and that's a scary thought. I hate it, but that's reality.
"There are so many people who aren't doing what they love to do, so I'm thankful."
DISCOGRAPHY
1996 -- Sour Pie EP -- MCA
1997 -- Stuff
1998 -- Stuff Live
COLLABORATIONS
1999 -- Various Artists, Lilith Fair -- A Celebration Of Women In Music Volume 2 Nettwerk
AWARDS:
1998 -- Juno, Best New Solo Artist
THANKS: SUE McCALLUM, PHILIP BAST
©1998, 1999 Nick Krewen, Octopus Media Ink
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