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By Emma Hall

In a quaint teashop tucked into an Oxford side street, Rebecca Halliwell effortlessly glides over to our table, the epitome of calm. She seems so at ease, sipping from her dainty china teacup, that no one would suspect she’d performed for 2000 screaming fans in a mud-strewn field 12 hours previously. “Oh, that was great fun, a real no-frill, just get up there and sing concert” she says of the charity fundraiser held in Oxford last night “ The stage got a bit slippy when the heavens opened, but that’s the good old British weather, isn’t it?”

Indeed, it’s a particularly drizzly morning today, and we’ve met to discuss Rebecca’s latest single. “ Cosette is a first name that’s quite popular in France” she explains when I enquire about the title “It’s never mentioned in the actual lyrics, but I’ve always loved the way the word sounds, and for some explicable reason it really seemed to fit the tone of the song for me, so I decided to use it”. She pauses for a moment to order a snack from a passing waitress; a meat-free lasagne, naturally. “I’m a vegetarian” she replies to my enquiring look, “I don’t want to seem preachy, but I just hate the idea of all that suffering to produce a few measly McNuggets.”

As well as being a vegetarian, Rebecca has an interest and love of the natural world that has bled through into her music more and more over the past few years, as is evident from her previous hit ‘the Forest’. “That track was actually written around this time of year, when most of the trees are still bare, but here and there just a few of them are coming into leaf…. It’s truly quite a magical time of year, and that song was sort of my response to it all”. It’s interesting to note that as well as a general enthusiasm, the singer also has a degree in Environmental Biology, though she’s keen to play down this point, insisting “I don’t know how I managed it”. A believable statement, when you think that it was during her second year at Kent University that Rebecca’s solo career took off, after a friend suggested she enter a local talent competition, where she was heard by an industry scout.

Three years later, with two hit singles and a debut album, A New Dawn, on the way, Rebecca states that she is still being inspired by nature. “It’s remarkable how much of my education has transferred into my music career, I mean it’s not just the themes or the lyrics, it’s the whole ethos behind how I make my music, there’s just so much we can learn from our environment.” Miss Halliwell elaborates that the lifecycles of things like trees are very similar to that of songs, with artists having a season of popularity before being replaced with the next young hotshot. “If I could be any tree, I’d want to be an evergreen, just staying constant all year round. I don’t ever want to stop making music”.

Not that she disapproves of change altogether though, after all, where would she be if producer Scott Randell hadn’t taken a chance with her? “Probably working in a newsagents or something like that – not very far!” She laughs gently and smiles as she goes back to sipping her tea. You really get the feel when talking to Rebecca that she is genuinely humbled and thankful for her current success, and she admits she knows it can’t last forever, “but I have to enjoy it while it lasts!” Not the words you’d expect from a young woman with hundreds of doors open to her, but there is a more mature quality to Rebecca than most people her age, and there’s definitely a hint of an old soul in her choice of interview venue if nothing else. Critics have recognised this quality in her voice as well, which has ‘both innocence and elegance, qualities rarely paired up with each other so beautifully as in Rebecca Halliwell’s gentle timbre’.

 “Why, thank you to whoever wrote that!” she gushes upon hearing the quote “I don’t know what to say…it’s just lovely to have that reaction, especially as I know my style isn’t the traditional. I guess it’s good to be different.” Listeners obviously agree, as her first single rose to #3 on the UK charts, and to #1 in several of the European charts. The red-headed singer’s cheeks begin to turn the same colour as her hair as she is reminded of this, and she demurely replies that she is very grateful to all the people responsible, and hastens to point out that it was a team effort. “There are so many technicians and producers and assistants who have just been invaluable to me. On this last track alone I can think of at least six people who if I had been without, the song simply wouldn’t have been made”. Speaking of Cosette…

[Continues on the following pages of a 6 page spread]

The article goes on to discuss the specific inspiration behind the new single ‘Cosette’, how the publicity events are progressing for the single, whether she is thinking about the next album yet, where Rebecca sees her career going in the next year or so, and finally a reflection back on how far she’s come in the past few years. All of this is interjected with information concerning the single, what venues she is performing at and other bits of background information about the singer and her origins.