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| Paloma Faith |
BY LISA ROBINSON
I don’t really feel that I’m of this time,” says British singer Paloma Faith, who brings a mad splash of color and pizzazz to the current music scene. “I don’t connect much with the present. I have more of an affinity for what came in the past.” The London native has been compared to Amy Winehouse and called “the next Adele,” but Faith’s timeless singing style actually has more in common with the brazen drama of Shirley Bassey and the emotional delivery of Etta James. She eschews the “neo-soul” label that gets put on her, and says, “I think soul is soul. I don’t see new soul as any different to old soul. I tend to think of music in terms of old R&B, and soul is definitely more old-fashioned, which is what I am.”
Faith is a former theater-design student, dancer, and magician’s assistant. She’s performed with Prince and co-starred with Tom Waits in the Terry Gilliam movie The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus. She describes herself as a “massive film fan”—particularly of directors Federico Fellini and Wong Kar Wai—and says she watched at least three or four movies every week while recording her latest album, Fall to Grace. That album entered the U.K. charts at No. 2 and stayed in the Top 20 for five months. Next month, when Faith comes to the U.S. for a multi-city tour, she’ll sing her big, gospel-influenced ballads as well as understated songs about heartbreak and hope. On display too will be her trademark glamorous, vintage fashion style. “I’ve always dressed this way,” says Faith. “It’s something innate in me. Before I was in the public eye, I would constantly dress up all day, every day. Part of my ritual every night before I went to bed would be to plan what I was going to wear the next day.” Well versed in the fashions of 1980s British club kids as well as fetish-club habitués, she finds it odd that Americans think the Brits are even the slightest bit repressed. “When you walk around the streets of London,” she says, “there’s always been a real acceptance, freedom, and expression in terms of clothing and style. It’s celebrated in British culture to be eccentric. Especially when you’re around people who come from a long line of wealth; they’re all absolutely crazy. It’s wonderful.”
When Faith carried the Olympic torch for England last summer, she ran through the streets of London wearing a tracksuit and red patent leather, six-inch stiletto heels. While running in heels is not yet an Olympic sport, Faith says for her, “that was nothing strange. I always ran for buses wearing them.”
Lisa Robinson
Prior to joining Vanity Fair in 1999, contributing editor Lisa Robinson was a longtime music columnist for the New York Post, The New York Times Syndicate, the host of syndicated radio and cable TV shows, and edited several rock magazines. From 2000-2006, she produced Vanity Fair's music portfolios. In addition to her regular "Hot Tracks" column, she has written cover stories on Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Jay Z, Adele, Kendrick Lamar and Lizzo, major profiles on Eminem, U2 and Serge Gainsbourg, and Oral Histories of Motown, Disco and Laurel Canyon.
In 2020 her book Nobody Ever Asked Me About the Girls was published in hardcover by Holt; the paperback is out now. Her memoir, There Goes Gravity: A Life in Rock and Roll, was published by Riverhead Books in April 2014. In addition Robinson hosted the weekly SiriusXM radio show Call Me With Lisa Robinson. She was the associate producer of the Netflix series Pretend It’s a City directed by Martin Scorsese starring Fran Lebowitz.
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