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Ilse DeLange
Great artists are always special people. Enormously talented, ambitious, tenacious, headstrong and always willing to go the extra mile. But only the real superstars are courageous, even reckless. Most artists choose the well trodden path of proven success, few dare venture into uncharted territory. They feel the need to always develop their talents, and so they boldly go where they've never gone before. They don't want any restrictions in any way when expressing themselves, and so they spread their wings.
Ilse DeLange is one of those courageous ones. Listen to her new album The Great Escape and marvel at the giant leap forward this singer, songwriter and musician has taken since her previous CD Clean Up (2003). She dares to express herself like never before, showing an incredible range of emotions. Never holding back in thirteen gloriously beautiful songs about life, love and the world around her, Ilse sings, whispers, shouts if need be to reach her audience – straight from her heart to theirs.
Ilse DeLange has never settled for second best. For this reason she recorded her debut album World Of Hurt (1998) in Nashville – an unusual step for a Dutch artist. She worked with the most renowned musicians of the city. And she asked Barry Beckett, a veritable legend who worked with the likes of Dylan, Dire Straits and Paul Simon, to produce her album. Consequently World Of Hurt sold more than 500.000 copies in the Netherlands alone, making it one of the best selling albums ever. Follow-up album Livin On Love (2000) also turned into an international affair. Ilse travelled to studios in the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands and chalked up yet another platinum album. Clean Up (2003) was recorded in the legendary Capitol B studio in Hollywood. Together with producer Bruce Gaitsch and Blue Miller Ilse wrote all of the songs, and once again the album became a smash hit in the Netherlands.
For The Great Escape Ilse DeLange very much wanted to work with her favourite producer Patrick Leonard: "I just love Patrick's production of Elton John's Songs From The West Coast. It's a record with a sixties sound to it that really appeals to me. And I thought Jewel's album Spirit was stunning, I really liked the acoustic sound of that one."
Keyboard player, composer and songwriter Leonard worked with greats like Roger Waters, Rod Stewart and Madonna (a.o. La Isla Bonita, Who's That Girl, Like a Prayer and Frozen). "I liked how he went to extremes in his work with Madonna. He produced very organic, pure, acoustic, intimate stuff with her, but also Frozen – there is a considerable contrast. I find that fascinating."
Ilse managed to get an appointment with Patrick Leonard in Los Angeles. "I was pretty nervous, especially since at first Patrick didn't seem to know who I was and what I wanted from him. But we hit it off right away and that same afternoon we wrote our first song together, Carry Hope, that actually made it onto the album.
Ilse DeLange and Patrick Leonard inspired each other enormously: "Every day that we worked together we wrote a song. He is such a virtuoso musician, whenever he played the piano or came up with sounds from his electronic keyboards, he immediately inspired me to write melodies and lyrics. And in doing so often a new song was born within only a couple of hours."
Ilse met Leonard early 2004 and since then she travelled to the States several times to write songs. Eventually they had to choose from dozens of songs they wrote together, plus some thirty tracks that had earlier been written by Ilse with her previous producer Bruce Gaitsch. With this many songs to choose from, The Great Escape ended up having many different colours. "I think however, that my voice pulls all these songs together, so no matter how great the diversity in songs it still makes for one coherent collection. Thanks to Patrick I've used my voice in ways I have never tried before. The songs themselves demanded it: I had to adapt my way of singing to each individual song, and Patrick writes in such a unique fashion that I was motivated to sing in ways I did not dare to sing before. Very exciting, because if something like that succeeds it feels great!"
Writing songs together means exposing your very soul to each other. Every now and then this led to emotional scenes. "We have cried together on occasion, yes. But then you also know that you have touched upon something real. It happened to us while writing When, the last song of the record, and also with Waterfall. It was a very special time for the both of us, there were a lot of things going on in our lives. I went through a lot the last couple of years, and I would talk about that with Patrick, which would touch both of us emotionally. And so all songs are based on real feelings and stories, but they have been written in such a way that the subject matters are not entirely obvious. We know exactly what every song is about, but the listener has plenty of room for his or her own interpretations."
Still, the songs are so dear to her that she cannot help but talk about some of them: "Reach For The Light is a beautiful start of the album, because it is about the fact that I still believe everything is possible. I continue see the positive aspects in everything, even though things usually don't go the way you want them to.
"The Valley reminds me a little bit of Kate Bush. It's about the highs and lows that you experience in life, how they can break you, and how you can find the strength in in yourself and in others to overcome the lows. It sounds very serious, but that's the way I am. And even more so when writing songs.
"Miss Politician is one of my favourite songs. It is most the poppy track on the album, and I think it will surprise a lot of people. It is a tongue-in-cheek story about how everything in life is political. How people deal with each other, how you shouldn't take all of that too seriously, because then you'll only get hurt unnecessarily. Of course many of the songs are about love: Don't You Let Go Of Me, the title says it all really: You have already lost that other person, only you don't realise it yet. Often the lyrics dig deep, but I can't sing simple songs about nothing. Because they just don't mean anything to me.
"The title track The Great Escape is about an impossible love: you both want to be happy together, but that won't work because of the differences in your personalities. But everyone has his or her own ideas about the meaning of this song. Our video director has shot a script that was based on his own interpretation of these lyrics. And I think that's great; It's fantastic if you can experience them in such a way that they have a special meaning for you..."
The Great Escape, it's a title that lends itself to all kinds of different interpretations. And who knows, it's very likely that it is about Ilse DeLange herself, who spreads her musical wings on this album to boldly go where she has have never gone before, courageously, even recklessly, by letting her creativity flow without any restrictions. And in so doing, she has come up with the record of a lifetime.
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