British musician VV Brown

Welcome to 2010! Good Prattle's first interview this decade is with VV Brown, a singer-songwriter whose music hearkens back to the 1960s... if, y'know, 1960s musicians incorporated electronic Gameboy blips into their music. Herein she and I discuss the greatest influences on her album, late R&B legend Ruth Brown, and the days of Super Mario Land. Enjoy this interview; she's a doll.

How are you?
I’m great, thank you. How are you?

I’m good! Let’s talk about your new music. When you were writing these songs, was there any overarching theme you had in mind for the record?
Uh, yeah! I wanted to incorporate the influences of my British heritage, which is quite punk and indie, and I wanted to also incorporate my love for the sixties, which I was getting really into at that time. Those were the main things that I was listening to; I was collecting a lot of vinyl records. That was pretty much the gist.

Well, the sixties influence is very much apparent in the way you present yourself in music videos and photoshoots.
Yeah, when I was making the album I was just so obsessed with that world: the fashion, the grace, the energy, everything about it. It definitely seeped in and skewed my ideas, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t completely sixties. That’s why I incorporated more colors and this very colorful sort of image of popular culture.

Were there any particular musicians during your sixties phase whom you were emulating more than others?
I’m really in love with this singer called Ruth Brown, and she was kind of an underdog in relation to other top artists that were there at the same time. She was not as well-known; she had an amazing voice, and she was so chi-chi, and her lyrical content was very similar to how I write my songs in that the melody line is so happy but the lyrics are quite dark. She talked about how her boyfriend treated her meanly, but in a very joyous way with her tambourine. And I kind of related to her use of that contradiction.

Yeah. I think that’s a powerful contrast.
I agree. It’s kind of more psychotic and less predictable.

On the Wikipedia page for your album, Traveling like the Light, there’s a particular quote that really stuck with me. It says that, as well as sixties music, you were also inspired by sounds emitted from Gameboy and Nintendo.
Yeah… Around then I was so broke I really couldn’t afford to work with any producers, and that catapulted me into more hands-on forms of production and I started making my own music. And I experimented with the sound played in video games, in Nintendo games. There’s a real beauty in the sounds emitted from video games, and the music playing on video games as well; it’s almost like if a violin were playing the melody line it could be considered extremely classical, and it’s because of the beeping sound that people take the beauty of it for granted. I just left it subtly in the mix of my record; it’s not like you can hear it, like, outstanding. But that kind of found its way into the mix. I guess I’m experimenting more because I’m a huge fan of Imogen Heap; I met her the other day, and she’s very much into her electronic style. Not in a very predictable way, just little bits of electronic music, which is great, but it motivated me to look at it in a different way. A bit more, I don’t know, technical; that’s how she does it, and I like that.

I mean, I was never a really big video game person, but I always loved the Pokémon games on Gameboy and the music would always get stuck in my head.
Yeah! That’s the thing about them; the frequency is off with video games. They’re very hypnotic. I used to play Mario Land; I got it when I was about twelve and I remember playing it so much that when I turned it off I could hear the song playing clearly in my head. It was like I was psycho.

I remember my first Gameboy color, one of the big clunky ones, and one of the Pokémon games—that was my present for my seventh birthday and I was so excited! They couldn’t tear me away from it for like weeks.
[laughs] Wait, how old are you?

I’m seventeen.
Oh my god! You’re young! [laughter] I’m a lot older…

I guess my having been seven when Gameboy color came out would date me pretty well, yeah.
Yeah, ‘cause I remember my first Gameboy, and it was a massive one and it was black and white! [laughs]

I always liked the black and white ones. I never played one, but they came in better colors, like solid yellow and solid gray or whatever and the Gameboy colors were all see-through.
[laughs] Yeah. That was a bit weird. I remember that.

I know in the UK Traveling like the Light actually came out this past summer, yeah?
It did. It came out earlier this past year, and it got really great responses. I think I was put in the same sort of box as MIA and Santigold, and I feel like mine’s going to be a different journey. Like with Amy Winehouse: nobody knew her before Back to Black; they thought it was her first record, but she had one before that. I think my journey is similar to that. It’ll be a very evolving journey because I’m not making music that’s like everybody else. I’m trying to be different.

Right. Well, with artists like Amy Winehouse, I think it’s great that you can get introduced to some of their music but there’s still a past that you can discover on your own.
Exactly.

Are you a fan of Amy Winehouse’s?
Yeah. I think she’s amazing. I think she’s a very honest artist; she writes music that’s very true to her life and to what’s going on in her life, and I think any artist that’s able to do so you have to comment them for that. Her music is beautiful, and her voice is piercing… yeah, I think she’s very lovely. I think she’s a wicked artist. I hope she gets better and records another record.

Me too. I feel like she’s probably going to be remembered for a while. Her music has such a timeless sound to it.
Right. Yeah, I agree.

With your album’s upcoming release in the States—I don’t know whether you’ve played the material here in the US yet, but I was wondering whether your music is received differently in different places that you’ve played.
Well, yes, generally I think different cultures are based upon different perceptions and they’re socialized differently, so in the UK I think it’s been slightly different. I’m not sure what to expect from America, but so far we’ve received so much love; my music has been played on The Hills, The City, and all these other places already.

I know—which is fantastic.
But I don’t know. I think when you’re a black female and you’re making music that’s not necessarily R&B, I think wherever you go it will be a slight challenge. All over the world the stereotype for black female singers is that people automatically associate you with R&B music, and you’re not necessarily doing that. I think wherever we go we will have to challenge people’s perceptions. But that’s the fun thing about it, and I think we’re in a time at the moment in music where people are really screaming out for something different, which is why we have the likes of Lady Gaga, Florence and the Machine, even Rihanna. Our artists are being artists with the visuals at the moment, so I don’t think it’s going to be as difficult as it might have been maybe ten years ago.

Traveling like the Light will be released in the U.S. in February. In the meantime, check out VV Brown's website or her MySpace.