Paolo Nutini's finally happy with fame all thanks to his dad's deep fried Mars bars
Chip shop superstar: Chart-topper Paolo Nutini's finally happy with fame ... all thanks to his dad's deep fried Mars bars
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Having first tasted success in his teens, Paolo Nutini became one of Britain’s biggest solo stars when his second album, Sunny Side Up, sold two million and topped the charts three times.
Nutini had originally been bracketed alongside such pretty-boy singer- songwriters as James Blunt and James Morrison, but Sunny Side Up singled him out as a talent of real depth and staying power.
Instead of bringing happiness, though, his growing fame left the young Glaswegian feeling disorientated. His father Alfredo and grandfather Giovanni had both worked long hours in the family’s fish-and-chip shop, The Castelvecchi in Paisley, and it had been thought that Paolo would follow in their footsteps.
Grounded: Paolo Nutini - who since Sunny Side Up, his second album, has struggled with fame
Struggling to stay in touch with his unpretentious roots, he took a long break. With a split from childhood sweetheart Teri Brogan still fresh, he flew to the family’s ancestral home in Tuscany with his guitar and ended up staying two months.
On his return, he disappeared from view. It wasn’t a celebrity meltdown — Nutini is too grounded for that — but a deliberate retreat from the limelight. ‘I’ve been through a few growing pains,’ he tells me. ‘Never mind growing up in public, I just had to grow up, full stop.
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Share‘I thought my life was going to pan out in a certain way, and it was turning out very differently. I had a lot of frank conversations with my family. It’s hard for me to talk about the specifics, but the way we chat to each other has changed completely.
‘The end of a long-term relationship was another factor. I needed to step back, and take stock.’
Nutini, 27, hasn’t exactly been idle since his last major appearance, at an Olympics event in Hyde Park in 2012. That gig, he says, wasn’t his finest moment (though the thousands of fans I saw enjoying themselves might disagree).
Nutini performing at the T in the Park music festival at Kinross in Scotland in 2007. Almost five years after his last album, the musician has just released Caustic Love
‘I was playing with Snow Patrol and Duran Duran, but my songs are not singalong epics like Chasing Cars or Rio. I felt like the black sheep.’ If such self-doubt is typical of Nutini, who is engaging company despite a tendency to ramble, his insecurities may shortly be banished for good. In the five years since Sunny Side Up, he has been writing for his third album, Caustic Love.
Out now, and on course to become the fastest-selling album of 2014 when it charts this Sunday, the record is his best yet, embracing a more modern sound and adding greater emotional grit.
Paolo’s voice retains its distinctive Celtic lilt, but his songs now lean more heavily on contemporary American styles, with the processed rhythms of hip-hop and R&B thrown into the mix alongside the acoustic textures and heartbreak ballads of old.
Paolo Nutini and childhood sweetheart Teri Brogan in 2010
Among the highlights are gospel lament Better Man and the Marvin Gaye-like Diana, a moody piece that showcases Nutini’s soulful falsetto but might alienate the more pop-orientated sections of his audience. The singer also explores new terrain on Let Me Down Easy, which samples a Bettye LaVette hit, and the funky, electronic Fashion, which features a dazzling rap from Janelle Monae.
‘Janelle is wildly entertaining,’ Paolo enthuses. ‘She has real class, and can get her picture on the front of glossy magazines without having to behave like Miley Cyrus.’
The last act signed to Atlantic Records by the late Ahmet Ertegun, legendary label boss behind the success of Ray Charles, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin, Nutini has come a long way since his 2006 debut album These Streets.
Back then, Ertegun hailed him as ‘the most promising artist we’ve had in years’. Now, with Caustic Love, Paolo is fully justifying his mentor’s faith — with a healthier perspective on fame.
‘Some people say I’m lucky to have escaped the life that my dad had, working in a fish-and-chip shop, but I don’t see it like that. If I’d followed in his footsteps, I’d be running my own business. It wouldn’t have been like going down a mine!
‘I’m still involved in the shop. The decor hasn’t changed since the Fifties, but I’m trying to move things forward without losing the charm. I can’t go in and start cooking fish suppers or deep-frying Mars Bars, but the shop is something I’m very proud of.
‘I’m lucky to have had good male role models in my grandfather and my dad. My dad is a bright guy. He can look into the mirror above the fryer and be happy at the man staring back. A lot of the good in me, the honesty and romance, comes from him.’
IT’S THE VINYL COUNTDOWN
Britain's record shops will be in the groove tomorrow when artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, One Direction and Kylie release limited- edition singles — many on seven-inch vinyl — to mark Record Store Day.
The annual celebration, now in its seventh year, is a feature of the ongoing vinyl boom. Boosted by new albums from Daft Punk and Bowie, sales of vinyl LPs more than doubled last year. And, while the overall amount is small in comparison to downloads and CDs, the trend is continuing.
With teenagers and twentysomethings among the biggest consumers of vinyl, tomorrow’s 600 new releases will feature something for everyone, especially the die-hards prepared to camp outside one of the UK’s 240 independent record shops from the early hours.
Among the pick of this year’s limited editions are Springsteen’s American Beauty, a 12-inch EP of four new songs, and Paul Weller’s Brand New Toy, a white vinyl single pitched between The Beatles and Bowie’s Hunky Dory.
There are also offerings from Damon Albarn and Chic’s Nile Rodgers. Expect to see teenage girls queuing to grab a rare vinyl version of One Direction’s Midnight Memories single, with new pictures and a live version of Rock Me.
- For more details, visit recordstoreday.co.uk.
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