Angel City interview with Laura McAllen

Angel City interview image

Clubbing UK catch with Data Record's latest star in the making, the lush Laura McAllen vocalist for the Angel City project... Having just released her debut album "Love Me Right" following a string of club chart successes including "Do You Know" and "Touch Me"... Far more than your average incredibly sexy vocalist, the talented Laura talks about over-coming a disability as a child, knocking Britney off the US Bill Board Chart, the truth about girls' nights in and her lacking of a permanent man?!? Laura McAllen image

How’s everything going?
"It’s fine, I’m pleased that we’ve charted now because I get really stressed for the last couple of weeks of promotion, I start to get really, really stressed and cause I’m over tired and when I’m get over tired everything can just seem a little bit more stressful than it is - it just takes one person from the record label to even look at me funny and I’m shouting and stuff like that, so I’m glad it’s done because we were just so busy but it’s all going well. It’s cool."

The last year has seen some amazing chart success for various releases off the album - what is it that you feel, most attracts people to the Angel City sound?
"We’ve seen a real difference in the sort of Angel City profile since ‘Do You Know’ was released, when ‘Do You Know’ was released we suddenly got - people used to be able to sing our first singles and they’d sing ‘Love Me Right’ but they wouldn’t necessarily know it was by Angel City. I think ‘Do you Know’ did a lot for the profile, I think that people associate the fact that Angle City is good dance, sing-along, feel good music… It’s not too depressing, it’s not too deep, you don’t need to think too hard to listen to it and now things are turning out well. It’s difficult coming from the areas of music that we are, because to get the exposure we want we’ve really had to bang down some doors but they’re starting to open now so that’s cool."

Can you tell us how, where and when Angel City formed?
"It’s a bit of a strange one because the name Angel City I think people assume that perhaps it’s a couple of producers and myself, but Angel City really is just the project name because there’s only me, and the same way that any artist has loads of producers, I just have loads of producers. It was brought because the original record "Love Me Right" that we released was going around the clubs under the name Angel City, so we just brought that name to continue it with the project, so no particular two guys behind a mixing desk with Angel City written above their heads."

Do you write your own lyrics?
"Yeah I’ve co-written about four of the tracks on the album and lyrics are probably more my thing and pop-line, it’s been nice because I’ve been able to get involved with the production as well, which is really quite strange for anyone new to get a word in edge-ways, because you’re notoriously just beaten down by you’re record company or whoever, but my A&R guy at Ministry Of Sound, he allowed me to work really closely with him - which was really, really good and we were close enough to be able to do things sensibly without getting silly about ‘I want this’ or ‘I want this’, so it worked quite well."

Doing a vocal over Robert Miles’ "Children" was a brave move, did the decision come lightly?
"No it was really worrying, that was first suggested to me by Phil (my A&R guy, this is either gonna work really well or it’s gonna totally bomb and do you wanna take that risk? Cause at that time if that single hadn’t done well that would have been it, it would have just been over. I thought goodness that track was such a big, big smash all over the world, I think the term for it is bastardising a track or something like that, I was reading on-line about it and I thought ‘oh god we’re gonna be bastardising this record!’. I spoke to a few people about it, they were like ‘no I think the melody goes really well over it’, and a lot of people came on the website saying ‘it’s nice to sing along to that record’. So it worked, it was fine."

Who are your main influences, dance music/otherwise?
"I’m actually really a bit of a pop girl at heart, my first records I was buying were Kylie in her early days (‘I Should Be So Lucky’) stuff like that, I trained in musical theatre so I was worlds apart from what I’m doing now. Really I prefer definitely the more commercial dance stuff, I think Angel City is quite poppy really, it’s not really, really dancey. I was never really a clubber, I wasn’t sort of going out and listening to a really fast beats all night, I was never in to all that and some of my boyfriends were in all sorts of bizarre music, ‘yeah Drum & Bass, Drum & Bass’, I was like ‘I don’t like Drum & Bass thank you, I’ll listen to the Spice Girls’. But you know I like loads and loads of different music so inspiration from all avenues I think."

Laura McAllen Interview (Angel City) continued here