SINGER MARSHALL 'JUST A CHICK IN A HAT'
WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
BARTLEY KIVES
DECEMBER 15 2001
Amanda Marshall says only people who really know her would recognize her album as highly personal.
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On the cover of her third CD, Amanda Marshall is dressed up like a Broadway chorus girl to illustrate the album title: Everybody's Got A Story.
The suggestion is that every human being plays some kind of role, making it tough to know their real selves. That's the theme of her new CD, even though she isn't crazy about reading too much into a simple photograph.
"I'm just a chick in a hat," says the 27-year-old Toronto pop singer, sitting in a downtown Winnipeg hotel room yesterday morning. Dressed casually in jeans and a black sweater, she was here to promote Everybody's Got A Story, which has sold more than 90,000 copies since its release in November.
"To me, this is just a gig. This is not deep psychoanalysis. This is a highly personal album, but only the people who really, really know me would be able to tell that." By her own admission, Amanda Marshall has loosened up. In the past, she was regarded as a technically perfect vocalist whose material never matched her natural talent.
Her previous two albums -- 1999's Tuesday's Child and her 1996 debut -- sold more than 1.3 million copies combined, but didn't allow her fans much of a glimpse at the human being behind the powerful set of vocal cords.
"I used to find people would never ask about me," she says. "But then I realized you have to give something in order to make people want to ask."
After the tours in support of Tuesday's Child were finished, Marshall turned over a new leaf. She took a year off to hang out with her friends and family ("I wanted to wear sweats and never put on makeup") and didn't worry about writing new songs.
All the songs on her new CD were written in the studio, giving the disc more of a loose, live feel. There are no truly rough edges, but she makes a real attempt to value grooves at least as much as vocal performances.
"This record sounds like me. It's more (indicative) of my personality," she says. "This is what I'm really like -- more spontaneous.
"You have people who see you on TV and hear your music and they think they know you, but they only know a selected piece of your personality."
Marshall plans to tour Canada in February. A late February performance at the Walker Theatre is a strong possibility, record label Sony Music Canada says.
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