If you were one of Ceberano’s many fans across Australia who wondered just what this successful singer and reining queen of Australian television would do following her smashing victory on the hit TV series Dancing with the Stars, rest easy, the answer has come…
The infectiously charming Kate Ceberano has remoulded the 80s in an album of cover hits that makes the perfect soundtrack to a cocktail (Tom Cruise pun not intended) hour. She told OUTinPerth about the creation of the album and her nostalgia for Dancing.
OUTinPerth: What is your goal for the album?
Kate Ceberano: It was my goal to make a relaxing, cocktail hour album… So, it is a nostalgic return to the music.
OiP: The new album covers a diverse range of artists, from Prince to Fleetwoord Mac. How did you decide which songs to cover?
KC: It couldn’t be too much of a brainer. We got together one afternoon around coffee and cake and played like children. We called out tunes, rehearsed. We literally put it down in 3 days. It was an old school, ‘don’t think just do’.
OiP: Your brother Phil Ceberano sings with you on much of this album, what was it like to work with your brother?
KC: Singing with my brother, there was a common agreement about our history. These songs were taken from our youth and are the soundtrack of certain events. They were often the soundtrack to the first time we did things: He had his heart broken; I kissed somebody; I came home after 3 in the morning… You never have first times again. There is a purity when you have a witness, a sibling or a good friend, to those moments. So, we captured a certain feeling of that house we lived in.
OiP: Where is 9 Lime Avenue? Does your family still own the house?
KC: Melbourne. Growing up, my brother Phil imagined himself a Jack Kerouac in the making. My mother and grandmother both believed a children’s property was their own, and if you wanted to write poetry all over the wall, you could. So, when my family sold the house, my eldest brother pulled a piece of Phil’s wall off to take. The turd [guy] who bought the house freaked out and forced my brother to return the wall. My brother was like, ‘Can’t you see this is history?!’ But for the him [the owner] it was just ‘Put that wall back!’ We would have gladly paid for a new wall, but he just couldn’t see the romance in it. He has since removed the house, and it no longer exists, or if it does, it is down the coast somewhere as a holiday home.
OiP: Why did you decide to make the move to television?
KC: The move to television was a finger up to a record person who said it was impossible to shift albums of women of a certain age. I was listening to kd lang, and she seemed ageless to me. I can’t make a Norah Jones album, but I can make a Kate Ceberano album I told them. And they came back with, ‘Quite frankly it is difficult to shift’. I said what to I need to do to shift it. They said TV wouldn’t hurt. So, I said, right, I’m going to do it.
Dancing was a very different beast. In live television you have no chance of editing or having words put in your mouth. It was media making little bits of art. You go out every week and dance. In that we created a platform for me to produce. Literally I’ve just been exploiting it. As an artist, if you can’t work or have a profile it is death.
OiP: Since Dancing ended, you have taken on a new television role. Tell us about that.
KC: The same channel asked me to do It Takes Two. The guy I’m working with is very sweet. My partner Daniel was a great Olympian, but was always the bridesmaid but never the bride. He suffered for that and now he is wanting to sing. Last week I had him come out with tails. With the ambition to show him that it is not like a sport. It is smoke and mirrors – it is TV.
OiP: Do you miss Dancing?
KC: I’m in a depression over the dancing, I miss it so much! It Takes Two is a little too real to me. I’m going to have to find my dance partner and just dance sometime.
Kate Ceberano – Nine Lime Avenue
Columbia
Kate Ceberano’s album of 80s covers is the soundtrack of dinner parties past, present and future. The lovely Kate puts twists to an amazing variety of old favourites. Her cover of Prince’s Rasperry Beret is the polar opposite to the original and just as delightful.
