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Young scottish songster

Singer/songwriter Paolo Nutini came out of nowhere a few years ago with a debut album of blue-eyed soul that spawned three hits and established the young Scot as an artist to watch. Possessed of a life-worn voice sounding a half century older that his 22 years, he is back with Sunny Side Up, channeling the persona of an old ragtime street busker in place of the radio-friendly soul man of his debut. The music is loose, rollicking, romantic, and totally unique. It's the sound of a young man having a ball.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0623/p17s01-algn.html

Article from the daily record

The view and paolo nutini are planing to work together again.
Paolo sang on the song covers on the dundee bands recent album Which Bitch! and also joined them on stage during the isle of wight festival at the weekend.
He told the view frontman Kyle Falconer they could be his band for a one off album and he and kyle swapped ideas for new songs backstage.
Both acts were set to stay on an extra day to watch neil young and simple minds last night.

PAOLO IS NUTS ON NEIL

ABOVE: STARSTRUCK: Paolo

15th June 2009

PAOLO Nutini said sharing a cuppa with Neil Young was even better than joining the Rolling Stones on stage at Isle Of Wight two years ago.

Paolo, 22, admitted: “It’s hard to beat playing with the Stones but Neil Young is a legend.

“There’s something for everyone in his back catalogue and he’s done it all his way.”

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/playlist/view/84921/Paolo-is-Nuts-on-Neil/

Paolo fra Isle of Wight 13. juni 2009

Mum’s the word

KEN SMITH

STAFF and students at the RSAMD in Glasgow were delighted when the No 1 in the album charts, Paisley's Paolo Nutini, dropped in yesterday for a session with the academy's Phil Cunningham.

After happily and patiently signing autographs and posing for pictures, Paolo was brought back down to earth, though, by his mum who had, in typical maternal fashion, brought his clean laundry, ironed and folded ready for his next trip.

He was then given a row for the disorganised state of his bags, but she at least stopped short of licking her hanky and wiping his face.

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/diary/display.var.2513855.0.Mums_the_word.php

Paolo Nutini: an all time great in the making

Posted By: Neil McCormick at Jun 9, 2009 at 12:42:58

Paolo Nutini is very deservedly at number one in the album charts this week with 'Sunny Side Up'. I gave this a five star review in the Telegraph , which I described as an 'organic blend of soul, country, folk and the brash, horny energy of ragtime swing ... an eccentric blast, like some obscure lost classic from the Seventies, channelling Harry Nilsson, Alex Harvey, Otis Redding and Cab Calloway.'

Gallery Photo
Musicality that lifts everyone in the band: Paolo Nutini

I really think it is a fantastic album from a genuinely rich musical talent who will be with us a long time, although I find myself quite surprised to be saying that. Based on his sudden emergence in 2006 amongst a wave of handsome ersatz singer-songwriters (including James Blunt and James Morrison) I initially had Nutini pegged as a housewife's favourite, another boy band model with an acoustic guitar. But the more I saw and heard of him, the more I realised how far I was off the mark. Paolo is an old soul in a young man's body, who seems to have soaked up music until it just pours back out of him. Live, he is a revelation, performing with joy and passion and the kind of musicality that just lifts everyone in the band and in the room.

To be fair, this is something his record company recognised early on. The legendary Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic records, took Paolo under his wing after seeing him play at the tiny Liquid Lounge in New York. "He was a very dapper man, he dressed like my grandfather, and he had all this wisdom," Paolo told me recently. "His advice was really 'F*** all the people who work for my company, they're good at their jobs but it means nothing if you don't give them something to work with, and the only way you can do that is by being you.'"

I met Paolo a while back and was completely engaged by him. He is, by his own admission, a bit of a stoner. He has a song on his new album called 'Coming Up Easy', which sounds like a heartbreaking tale of a confused man trying to give up his one true love, but which he told me was actually about "a conflict I had about my marijuana smoking." Which puts a different spin on lyrics like 'Sunday morning I got the hazy hazy Janes / I turn to you and inhale you where you lay' and 'Oh you kissed my lips again and again and again' or 'I love you but you see I resent you all the same / And all my other friends their just saying you're slowing me down'. Of course, it comes in a great and almost honorouble tradition of coded drug songs, from 'Kickin The Gong Around' by Cab Calloway to 'Golden Brown' by The Stranglers to 'Ebeneezer Goode' by The Shamen (actually, that one was barely coded at all, since it involved a chorus shout of 'E's are good, E's are good, Ebeneezer Goode').

But I digress (must be all the secondary smoke). The thing I really liked about Paolo was his musical knowledge and enthusiasm. It is strange to hear a 22-year-old 21st century pop star raving about Cab Calloway, Wynonie Harris and Louis Armstrong. "If I could lay it down and give you my favourite vocalists, its those old ragtime swing crazy mad cats," he told me, enthusing about the old footage you could find of lost swing and jazz legends performing on You Tube. You can certainly hear it on his album, in zippy upbeat blasts of joy like 'Pencil Full Of Lead' and his gloriously toe tapping ode to his father, 'Simple Things', in which he sings of the joy of 'going round my mum's house for my tea' (no drug references there, methinks).

The first song he really connected with was The Drifters 1962 hit 'When My Little Girl Is Smiling', which he heard in 1992, when he was five years old, and it seems to have presaged an obsession with music that bore no relationship to the contemporary pop charts. Because of his association with Ertegun, Paolo was invited to be a part of charity and tribute shows in honour of Ahmet, appearing at Carnegie Hall and The Montreaux Jazz Festival, and singing with many of his childhood idols. "I found myself onstage with George Duke, Buddy Williams was playing the kit, Cornell Dupree on lead electric, singing Ray Charles 'What'd I Say' with Les McCann, Soloman Burke and Ben E King. To be welcomed into this circle, that was amazing. I was made to feel like I was part of what Atlantic was. I got to share a stage with Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock. I got to do 'Strawberry Letter' and Lee Retenour was playing the solo, just like he did on the Brothers Johnson version. It was bizarre. I was sharing a dressing room with Mick Hucknall and Curtis Steigers; walk out and its Beverly Knight wanting me to meet Chacka Khan. Nobody ever sat me down and gave me a lesson but I learned so much just watching these guys. They're legends, who have made a wealth of important music but you meet them and they are all human. And you get to see there is no blueprint for anything."

He is a rambling, loquacious conversationalist, Paolo, and we spent a little bit of time together, swapping rock and roll stories. The one that most amused me was his encounter with the Rolling Stones. He has been rather taken under the wing of a lot of older players, who recognise his musical spirit, and performed with The Stones at the Isle of Wight in 2007, duetting with Mick Jagger on the Robert Johnson classic 'Love In Vain' ( typically, Paolo chose this, rather than the usual duet of 'Wild Horses' cause he loved the Johnson original, and then got into an argument with the road crew who insisted the Stones version is the original). Anyway, Paolo suggested it to Jagger on a phone call, who said, "I hope we can remember it, its been years since we played that tune." The Stones had taken over a Travelodge onsight as their rehearsal space, dressing rooms, and they had bars for pre and after show drinks. "We went into a little room and Mick's sitting watching Formula One with Chuck Allman. I think Amy Winehouse had just come out. She was doing 'Aint Too Proud To Beg', which she insisted she didn't need to rehearse, she knew all the words, it was fine. Well, I've seen the show and she didn't know one word. It was just like an improv. I remember Charlie creeping round the door, going, 'Oh, its you! I thought it was the madam again!" Then we get led into the rehearsal space, and there they are, The Stones in a little Travelodge room, and I get given a mike and stood with Mick Jagger and sang the song. Keith plays the E when he was supposed to go to the A, and Ronnie goes, 'For ****'s sake, Keith, not in front of Paolo!' It was good vibes."

I think this 'Sunny Side Up' album is going to run and run, it is just full of spirit and joy. And Lord knows we could use a bit of that right now.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/neil_mccormick/blog/2009/06/09/paolo_nutini_an_all_time_great_in_the_making

Paolo Nutini is the new king of soul

29/05/2009

The Paisley boy has grown up and found his voice

Chris Cottingham

Paolo Nutini remembers meeting Ahmet Ertegun. It was in 2006 at an art gallery in New York, where Nutini was performing his first American showcase. Ertegun, the late founder of Nutini’s label, Atlantic, was once accurately described as “one of the most significant figures in the modern recording industry”.

This formidable figure approached the young Scot and offered him some advice. “He had this great voice, like an old-fashioned gangster,” says Nutini. “He said, ‘Remember kid, all this, all these people taking photos and everything, it has its place but if you’re trying to be something you ain’t, it don’t mean nothing’.”

Good advice and Nutini took note. Ertegun’s counsel underpins his new album, Sunny Side Up. His 2006 debut, These Streets, reached number three, but, in truth, it was pretty standard singer-songwriter fare. But Sunny Side Up is a huge leap forward.
The album opens with the ska-driven ‘10/10’, complete with cheeky steal from ‘Monkey Man’ by reggae legends Toots And The Maytals (as covered by Amy Winehouse). On ‘No Other Way’ he recalls the great ’60s soul men such as Otis Redding.

Elsewhere, Cat Stevens and Willie Nelson are clearly audible. Most startling of all is the hint of Cab Calloway on the rowdy rag-time number ‘Pencil Full of Lead’. It’s a bold, impossible-to-categorise record that sees Nutini reinvent himself.

Or, to look at it another way, a record that sees Nutini stop trying to be just another bloke with an acoustic guitar, and start being himself.

Nutini is in the London offices of his publicist. The musical transformation is accompanied by a sartorial makeover.
The scruffy jeans and trainers are gone. Instead he wears Chelsea boots, shirtsleeves and brown suit and waistcoat — he looks like a detective from a ’70s TV show, a bit John Thaw in The Sweeney.

He’s got a reputation for mumbling on stage, and it’s the same in person.

However, once you’ve adjusted to smeared vowels, he’s an entertaining conversationalist. “The next time I saw Ahmet Ertegun, I gave him a present,” he says, continuing his anecdote.

“I remember thinking, ‘What might he not have?’ So I got him a tartan tie. He seemed to like it.”
A toothy grin spreads across his face.

Nutini was born in Paisley and his father is a fourth-generation Italian immigrant who owns Castelvecchi’s chip shop on New Street. Nutini junior left school to become a roadie for Glasgow band Speedway – his break came in 2003 at a concert by David Sneddon, winner of BBC’s Fame Academy talent show. Sneddon was delayed and Nutini stood in. He left the gig with a manager.

Nutini was only 19 when These Streets was released and spent the next two years touring relentlessly. Unsurprisingly, it had a big impact, not all good. “After a while it starts to play with your head,” he says.

“It can start to become real life. You get a buzz from performing every night and that becomes your life.

“Then when you stop it’s like, ‘What do I do now?’”

Then there’s the rock ‘n’roll lifestyle… Nutini admits he’s no stranger to hedonism, but that it’s “nothing I can’t defend”. Maybe, but there have been times when it’s looked like the after-party started early. For example, his shambolic performance at the Oasis Centre in Swindon just a few hours after his team, Celtic, won the Scottish Premier League in 2007. He played to a crowd of 4,000 and was accused of slurring his words as fans streamed from the gig a few songs into the set. However, Nutini’s adamant he doesn’t lead the rock‘n’roll lifestyle to excess. “I’d hate to go on stage and feel that I wasn’t in control of what was coming up. I did it when I was younger, but not now.”

Still, the constant touring meant Nutini was in an “angsty” head-space at the start of 2007 when These Streets came to the end of its life-cycle. “I just had to live somewhere that didn’t move constantly, get back home and be in the one place for a week.” He took three months off to “get back into neutral”. In February 2008 he gathered his backing band at Grouse Lodge Studio in Rosemount village, County Westmeath, Ireland.

The idea was to build the musical rapport back up. They kicked ideas around. Nutini was hearing “a lot of brass and horns, and tracks with harmonicas”. He fell in love with the sound of the live room at Grouse Lodge and wanted to record the whole album there but Snow Patrol had booked in to make A Hundred Million Suns, so he was forced to decamp to Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, Wales.
It was there he met The View, who were working on their second album, Which Bitch?, in the nearby Monnow Valley Studio. There was a bit of history.

Nutini remembers reading an article in which the Dundee four-piece said they were avoiding his show at T In The Park, where they were both playing, “like a bottle of piss”. Turns out it was a fabrication.

“I asked them, they said they never said it,” he smiles. “I chose to believe them over The Sun.” He ended up supplying guest vocals on ‘Cover’ from Which Bitch? The View and Paolo Nutini don’t seem like a natural fit, but Nutini counters that they’re all just “ young Scottish guys who enjoy a drink and a cigarette, football and making music”. You get the impression he resents his mainstream credentials a little bit, that he’d like a little bit of The View’s underground cool to rub off. Whatever the root cause, he locked horns with his record company when eyebrows were raised about a new direction.

Atlantic wanted him to go back into the studio with a big-name producer to apply some polish. He’s very diplomatic about it, but it’s telling that he says a lot of the pressure when you’re making a record comes from the fact you owe the record company money.

“As an artist, if you’ve got something that you want to do and it’s coming from a pure place, you’d be a fool not to pursue it,” he says.

“I was almost ready to go, ‘This is how it is, so that’s that’. But I didn’t feel like I was in a position to do that because, like I said, basically you owe them.” The suits got their way but Nutini is building a recording facility in his new house.

Maybe money can’t buy you everything but it can secure some artistic freedom.

In the end, he turned the situation to his advantage. He rejected the list of producers presented to him and asked for Ethan Johns, someone he’d always wanted to work with. Johns, whose CV includes Kings Of Leon, Ray LaMontagne and Ryan Adams, helped provide the spark that separates a good album from a great one.

Nutini thinks a lot of it was down to Johns’s judgement about which vocal takes to use. “I’d been struggling with that,” Nutini admits.
“He was the first person I’ve met that I feel happy handing over that responsibility to. It was really important. I wanted the album to be a true reflection of my voice.” If he’s not more bolshie about being forced to re-record parts of the album, perhaps it’s because the end result is so good.

Tonight, Nutini is playing at Wilton’s Music Hall in London’s East End. He walks on stage and launches into ‘Alloway Grove’ from These Streets, then new tracks ‘Coming Up Easy’ and ‘Growing Up Beside You’. He’s bent double most of the time, belting it out with eyes screwed shut.

Is he half-cut or channeling something primal? Either way, it’s rivetting. A cover of ‘I Want To Take You Higher’ by Sly & The Family Stone tears the roof off. Then he goes one better with his last song, a knock-down version of ‘Jenny Don’t Be Hasty’.

Backstage, afterwards, Nutini is ridiculously critical of his performance. “I didn’t have as much time as I would have liked,” he says. “It’s hard creating the right dynamic with just eight songs.

“I’d have like to have taken it down a bit more and come back out with a bigger punch.”

Some residual anxiety about escaping his old image, perhaps. “After the first album I’ve got this tortured singer-songwriter thing attached to me,” he says. “I want to escape that with the new record.

“The things that meant so much to me then mean nothing now and the things that I wake up thinking about now were a million
miles away from my mind when I was writing a song like ‘New Shoes’.”

He continues the riff: “My voice has opened up. Going on the road and touring, drinking and smoking ain’t that good for your voice, so by rights I shouldn’t be able to hit higher notes than I’ve hit before. But for some reason I can, and there are lots of them on this album. I think it’s what I’m saying that gets me up there.” Whatever it is, Nutini should bottle it. It’s dynamite.

http://www.bigissuescotland.com/features/view/72

Paolo Nutini: Grandad would be so proud of me after I played Italian opera halls

Jun 10 2009 By Rick Fulton

PAOLO NUTINI celebrated his first No1 album with a gig that would make his late grandad proud.

The Paisley-born singer was performing at the Arena di Verona in Italy when he was told Sunny Side Up had hit the top spot.

It was the place where his grandad Giovanni, known as Jackie, went to watch operas.

Speaking exclusively to the Record, Paolo, 22, revealed: "I played Candy at the Italian Music Awards at the Arena, this amazing outdoor amphitheatre.

"My grandfather said to my dad when he was younger, there are three things you have to do before you kick the bucket.

"First, you need to watch a performance at the opera house in Barga and I managed to do a gig there.

"Then he said you also have to watch a performance at the Verona and again rather than watching I played it on Sunday.

"The third thing my grandfather said to do was to go and watch a performance at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. I've found out it's strictly opera or ballet. So I'll need to either put on my pumps or put down the cigarettes for a few weeks. Two out of three ain't bad. But I have to do all three."

Paolo celebrated his success on Sunday with champagne and beer.

He knocked Eminem's comeback album Relapse off the top and outsold the No2 album, Daniel Merriweather's Love & War, by 50 per cent.

Sunny Side Up went two better than Paolo's 2006 debut These Streets, which hit No3.

Yesterday, he admitted it felt like he had exam result nerves as he waited to find out the chart placings.

Paolo laughed: "When people were telling where the record was in the mid-weeks, it was like getting my standard grade results back.

"Three ones there, two twos, couple of threes.

"Actually, it was slightly more impressive than my standard grades. There were not a lot of ones there."

Sunny Side Up is vastly different from the first record. His debut was pop folk in the vein of James Morrison. But the new one is very different using country, bluegrass, New Orleans jazz and ska.

He told his record label he was doing it his way. It was a bold move by the young Scot - one that could have blown up in his face.

If the album had been a flop, the worst case scenario was he would have been dropped by his label.

A relieved Paolo said: "It was very surprising the album went straight in at number one.Who'd have thunk it!

"Honestly, I thought I'd get in the 20s and then maybe rise after a while when the record was out.

"I never thought I'd get to say I had a No1 record to my name. I'm just so happy that people have given it the time. I really didn't anticipate that kind of reaction and I'm so appreciative of everyone who has gone out and bought the album.

"A lot of people dismissed the first record for what it was and therefore dismissed me. This record was trying to show who I am."

Now back in Scotland, he is gearing up for a very special performance tomorrow afternoon.

He will be at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow for a special short performance with accordion player and folk legend Phil Cunningham.

Phil, who played on three tracks on Sunny Side Up, Growing Up Beside You, Chamber Music and High Hopes, teaches at the Royal Academy and has invited Paolo along to play in front of around 100 music students.

Paolo said: "We will play the songs from Sunny Side Up and Phil's arrangement of Alloway Grove from the first album, which I loved.

"There's plenty of things I'd like to do. There are a couple of Burns's poems that haven't been put to music. We'll see what time we have."

But the celebrations will continue this week when Paolo gets the keys to his new house in Paisley.

And he wants to thank his fans for putting him on top of the world.

Paolo is playing Preston tomorrow and Lincoln on Friday before kicking off the summer festival season at the Isle of Wight Festival.

Pals The View are also playing the main stage this Saturday, and Paolo, who duetted on the track Covers on the Dundee group's latest album Which Bitch? is keen to team up at the weekend.

He said: "I'm trying to get hold of Kyle (Falconer) to do his song Covers at the festival or maybe even write another song for it. All I want to do is repay the faith."

He's also going to team up with one of his high school friends, who has just graduated with a first class honours degree.

Paolo said: "Me and him through high school were the two who were going down the Swannee river. We were not going places very fast. For him to find his feet and for me to be comfortable with what I'm doing is incredible."

The day before he released Sunny Side Up, Paolo enraged town leaders in Paisley when he said: "There is nothing to do there now. It's bad for drink and drugs and gambling."

Rather than a backlash, most agreed with him, especially as he still lives there.

He laughed: "It wasn't like that advert for Homecoming Scotland when these people were singing Caledonia. Where did Sean Connery record his? St Lucia?

"I was hoping to provoke a reaction from the guys in the council to make them come out and say there are plans to sort Paisley out. They've done that. But I'mnot going into politics."

Tickets for Paolo's autumn tour go on sale on Friday. He plays Dundee's Caird Hall on October 13 and Glasgow Academy on October 14 and 15. Tickets from 24-hour hotline 08712200260 and on line at gigsandtours.com.

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/showbiz-news/celebrity-interviews/2009/06/10/paolo-nutini-grandad-would-be-so-proud-of-me-after-i-played-italian-opera-halls-86908-21428792/

Paolo Nutini

New Music Tuesday Review: Paolo Nutini bring raw soul on 'Sunny Side Up'

Tuesday, June 9th 2009, 3:19 PM

There's a scratch in Paolo Nutini's voice millions would kill for.

The raw throatiness of it all brings to mind the great sandpaper voices of vintage soul, from Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding to their British imitators, Rod Stewart and Joe Cocker.

Given the texture and force of that voice, it's small wonder Nutini chose to fashion much of his debut CD, 2006's "These Times," as a retro-soul salute. Not that the album succumbed to mimicry.

The singer - then barely a 19 pup out of Scotland - gave his music distinction through the thrilling youth of his delivery, as well as the friskiness of his lyrics.

The latter came through especially well in the single "Jenny Don't Be Hasty," an ode to an older woman that threatened to become the "Maggie Mae" of this generation.

Now, for Nutini's follow-up he has made a leap of Olympic proportions.

"Sunny Side Up" represents such an advance - in both breadth of genres, and maturity of perspective - it sounds more like a fourth effort than a second.

Nutini didn't entirely jettison references to ‘60s soul in his compositions. With his vocal style he never entirely could. But the singer announces his intention to shake things up from the very first track, "10/10," a piece which draws jauntily on the flicking rhythms of vintage ska.

From there, Nutini alludes to big band jazz ("Pencil Full of Lead"), vintage folk (a reworked version of the rustic standard "Worried Man"), and even a ‘30s-style croon-a-thon Bing Crosby would have appreciated ("Keep Rolling").

The result could have seemed show-offey, or diffuse. But the distinction of Nutini's voice makes it all cohere. Just the resonance of that voice would be enough to captivate, but it's even more stirring to recognize Nutini's ambition to renovate his point of view.

That becomes most clear in the album's greatest heart-tugger, "Tricks of the Trade" whose melody has a pained beauty that mirrors the lyrics' particular blend of acceptance and regret.

Much like Buddy Holly's "Learning The Game," the song addresses getting your hands around love's changes and limitations.

If Nutini can communicate all that ache and beauty at 22, imagine all that can come from him next.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/2009/06/09/2009-06-09_new_music_tuesday_review.html

I found this wee article from the telegraph

Paolo Nutini is very deservedly at number one in the album charts this week with 'Sunny Side Up'. I gave this a five star review in the Telegraph, which I described as an 'organic blend of soul, country, folk and the brash, horny energy of ragtime swing ... an eccentric blast, like some obscure lost classic from the Seventies, channelling Harry Nilsson, Alex Harvey, Otis Redding and Cab Calloway.'

Musicality that lifts everyone in the band: Paolo Nutini

I really think it is a fantastic album from a genuinely rich musical talent who will be with us a long time, although I find myself quite surprised to be saying that. Based on his sudden emergence in 2006 amongst a wave of handsome ersatz singer-songwriters (including James Blunt and James Morrison) I initially had Nutini pegged as a housewife's favourite, another boy band model with an acoustic guitar. But the more I saw and heard of him, the more I realised how far I was off the mark. Paolo is an old soul in a young man's body, who seems to have soaked up music until it just pours back out of him. Live, he is a revelation, performing with joy and passion and the kind of musicality that just lifts everyone in the band and in the room.

To be fair, this is something his record company recognised early on. The legendary Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic records, took Paolo under his wing after seeing him play at the tiny Liquid Lounge in New York. "He was a very dapper man, he dressed like my grandfather, and he had all this wisdom," Paolo told me recently. "His advice was really 'F*** all the people who work for my company, they're good at their jobs but it means nothing if you don't give them something to work with, and the only way you can do that is by being you.'"

I met Paolo a while back and was completely engaged by him. He is, by his own admission, a bit of a stoner. He has a song on his new album called 'Coming Up Easy', which sounds like a heartbreaking tale of a confused man trying to give up his one true love, but which he told me was actually about "a conflict I had about my marijuana smoking." Which puts a different spin on lyrics like 'Sunday morning I got the hazy hazy Janes / I turn to you and inhale you where you lay' and 'Oh you kissed my lips again and again and again' or 'I love you but you see I resent you all the same / And all my other friends their just saying you're slowing me down'. Of course, it comes in a great and almost honorouble tradition of coded drug songs, from 'Kickin The Gong Around' by Cab Calloway to 'Golden Brown' by The Stranglers to 'Ebeneezer Goode' by The Shamen (actually, that one was barely coded at all, since it involved a chorus shout of 'E's are good, E's are good, Ebeneezer Goode').

But I digress (must be all the secondary smoke). The thing I really liked about Paolo was his musical knowledge and enthusiasm. It is strange to hear a 22-year-old 21st century pop star raving about Cab Calloway, Wynonie Harris and Louis Armstrong. "If I could lay it down and give you my favourite vocalists, its those old ragtime swing crazy mad cats," he told me, enthusing about the old footage you could find of lost swing and jazz legends performing on You Tube. You can certainly hear it on his album, in zippy upbeat blasts of joy like 'Pencil Full Of Lead' and his gloriously toe tapping ode to his father, 'Simple Things', in which he sings of the joy of 'going round my mum's house for my tea' (no drug references there, methinks).

The first song he really connected with was The Drifters 1962 hit 'When My Little Girl Is Smiling', which he heard in 1992, when he was five years old, and it seems to have presaged an obsession with music that bore no relationship to the contemporary pop charts. Because of his association with Ertegun, Paolo was invited to be a part of charity and tribute shows in honour of Ahmet, appearing at Carnegie Hall and The Montreaux Jazz Festival, and singing with many of his childhood idols. "I found myself onstage with George Duke, Buddy Williams was playing the kit, Cornell Dupree on lead electric, singing Ray Charles 'What'd I Say' with Les McCann, Soloman Burke and Ben E King. To be welcomed into this circle, that was amazing. I was made to feel like I was part of what Atlantic was. I got to share a stage with Quincy Jones and Herbie Hancock. I got to do 'Strawberry Letter' and Lee Retenour was playing the solo, just like he did on the Brothers Johnson version. It was bizarre. I was sharing a dressing room with Mick Hucknall and Curtis Steigers; walk out and its Beverly Knight wanting me to meet Chacka Khan. Nobody ever sat me down and gave me a lesson but I learned so much just watching these guys. They're legends, who have made a wealth of important music but you meet them and they are all human. And you get to see there is no blueprint for anything."

He is a rambling, loquacious conversationalist, Paolo, and we spent a little bit of time together, swapping rock and roll stories. The one that most amused me was his encounter with the Rolling Stones. He has been rather taken under the wing of a lot of older players, who recognise his musical spirit, and performed with The Stones at the Isle of Wight in 2007, duetting with Mick Jagger on the Robert Johnson classic 'Love In Vain' ( typically, Paolo chose this, rather than the usual duet of 'Wild Horses' cause he loved the Johnson original, and then got into an argument with the road crew who insisted the Stones version is the original). Anyway, Paolo suggested it to Jagger on a phone call, who said, "I hope we can remember it, its been years since we played that tune." The Stones had taken over a Travelodge onsight as their rehearsal space, dressing rooms, and they had bars for pre and after show drinks. "We went into a little room and Mick's sitting watching Formula One with Chuck Allman. I think Amy Winehouse had just come out. She was doing 'Aint Too Proud To Beg', which she insisted she didn't need to rehearse, she knew all the words, it was fine. Well, I've seen the show and she didn't know one word. It was just like an improv. I remember Charlie creeping round the door, going, 'Oh, its you! I thought it was the madam again!" Then we get led into the rehearsal space, and there they are, The Stones in a little Travelodge room, and I get given a mike and stood with Mick Jagger and sang the song. Keith plays the E when he was supposed to go to the A, and Ronnie goes, 'For ****'s sake, Keith, not in front of Paolo!' It was good vibes."

Nutini album debuts at number one

Paolo Nutini hails from Paisley in Scotland

Scottish singer Paolo Nutini has seen his new album Sunny-Side Up go straight to number one in the UK charts.

Australian artist Daniel Merriweather took the number two spot with his new release, Love & War, while Eminem's Relapse fell from one to three.

The first winner of Britain's Got Talent, Paul Potts, entered the album chart at five with Passione.

The Black Eyed Peas returned to the number one spot in the singles chart with Boom Boom Pow.

They pushed Dizzee Rascal down to number two with Bonkers, while the only new entry in the top 10 was Kasabian's Fire at number three.

Lady GaGa's former number one Poker Face is proving to have staying power, rising back up one place to 12, having been in the charts for 21 weeks.

Escala, Britain's Got Talent finalists from the second series, fell two places to number four with their self-titled album.

The only other new entries in the album top 20 came from Diana Krall's Quiet Nights at number 11 and Eels with Hombro Lobo at 18.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8088158.stm

BT

Farverig forvandlingskugle

Som en blanding af Van Morrison, Bob Marley, Amy Winehouse og The Beatles brillerer den 22-årige skotte.

1. juni 2009, 20:44 Af HENNING HØEG

'Sunny Side Up' er kun Paolo Nutinis andet album. Og manden er kun 22 år gammel. Men alligevel lyder han som en kunstner med adskillige årtier på bagen.

Ikke at Paolo lyder gammel og træt - tværtimod.

Men ligesom erfarne kunstnere som Van Morrison og salig Bob Marley har Paolos sangstemme flere vibrerende lag og en varm 'feel' som en mand, der er mindst tre gange så gammel.

Og som han gør det på 'Sunny Side Up' klæder det Paolo at udvide den musikalske horisont til så forskellige stilarter som Reggae, stax soul, blues og dixieland.

På sin 2007-debut 'These Streets' lød Paolo mest som en mandlig version af Amy Winehouse - retropop af høj kvalitet.

Men denne gang lader han blot lysten og ikke modebevidstheden styre. Og resultatet er intet mindre end forrygende.

'Sunny Side Up' udkommer 2. juni.

http://www.bt.dk/article/20090601/plader/90601034/

Review

by Thom Jurek

When Scot singer/songwriter Paolo Nutini issued his debut album in 2006 — all of its songs were written before his 18th birthday — there was no doubt, despite his youthful demeanor, that he was the real thing. He stood out from the 21st century plague of the young, confessional songwriting throng because of his unusual depth, canny melodic sensibility, and homemade but taut production. His singles, "New Shoes," and "Jenny Don't Be Hasty," were wrapped in rock & roll classicism and bore the attitude of Dion 's "Teenager in Love" and the romanticism of Jonathan Richman 's "That Summer Feeling." With Sunny Side Up, his sophomore effort, Nutini makes a giant leap forward. Not only has he moved a few levels north in terms of his use of harmony, melody, and broadening genres, his lyrics have gotten bolder and more sophisticated. With the help of Ethan Johns , Nutini has taken huge chunks of America's (and Scotland's) pop and folk pasts and reshaped them in his own image; he's all but left his previous identity behind.

Nutini recorded and produced the original sessions himself with his band the Vipers — Donny Little , Mike McCaid , Dave Nelson , Seamus Simon , Gavin Fitzjohn , and Fraser Speirs — and Johns added some production details and did a load of mixing. In addition, there are guests that include a string quartet, the legendary Rico Rodriguez of the Skatalites and Specials , and ?uestlove of the Roots who helps out on the album opener "10/10." Though this cut is not the single, it is one of the grandest moments here. As an opener, "10/10,'" is indispensable: a ska heavy soul beat with blazing brass is laid down, as Nutini delivers a vocal that is the perfect meld of Louis Prima and Bob Marley . Its lyric captures the solid swaggering joy and braggadocio of the street with a melody that screams "party time." "Coming Up Easy," is one of the set's featured tracks and as such, with its soulful Memphis-style Hammond B-3, Duck Dunn -style bassline, and fat horns by Fitzjohn , is a killer breakup track, but with a lyric that could have been written by Nick Drake . It's tight, tough, and moving. The set's first single is "Candy," which opens with an Omnichord by Johns (who also plays mellotron and another guitar on the cut). This one feels a lot like John Martyn . It's not an ape, but since both were Scotsmen, the lineage is there, and both borrowed from American blues and folk heritages as well as their Celtic ones. This is a gorgeous, if unlikely, single with acoustic guitars weaving around the mix like water falling around Nutini 's Scottish brogue. It's a love song of the first order without an ounce of sap, and containing a poetry so impure it could only be pop music. The rest of Sunny Side Up holds water, too. It's remarkably consistent as it embraces Scottish folk ("Tricks of the Trade,"and "Worried Man"), swing jazz ("Pencil Full of Lead"), early rock and doo wop ("No Other Way"), calypso soul ("High Hopes"), skiffle-style country ("Simple Things"), and even late-'30s style crooning ("Keep Rolling"). All of these stylistic indulgences could have turned up as a mess, a bad mash-up or still worse, an album full of songs that were longer on style than they were on substance. That's not the case; it's almost unbelievably sophisticated, flows easily, and feels whole, finished. This one leaves its generational competition in the dust and is wise beyond this songwriter's years, and to be frank, leaves his own previous identity as simply a bedroom balladeer to history.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:fvfexzy0ldje~T1

Sunny Delight

Friday, 5 June 2009

Paolo Nutini

enlarge

She's never been a Paolo Nutini fan but his latest album Sunny Side Up has persuaded Jane Graham to change her tune

Most of us for whom music is more than an accompaniment to coffee and mints wear our allegiances like a badge, with our well-worn list of favourites brandished like a statement of both intent and character.

We cherry pick from our i-pods to present a version of ourselves that covers all the qualities we value most — Dylan suggests intelligence, Leonard Cohen wit and depth, The White Stripes eccentricity, Funkadelic sexual prowess and Glasvegas an edge. That’s me summed up then (in my dreamiest delusion).

Yes it’s pretentious, but few of us get by without the odd pretention. It’s how we communicate. Which is why Facebook is filled with photos of people laughing, dancing and drinking with other people, rather than photos of solitary figures gazing at computer screens.

With this in mind, I have never, ever been a Paolo Nutini fan. A ridiculously pretty purveyer of soul-lite blah, with Timotei hair and rom-com friendly choruses, he has never fitted my bill. I wasn’t cruel enough to lump him in with James Blunt as some critics did, but there was nothing about his Puma ad jingle ‘New Shoes’ or Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack ‘Million Faces’ to divert me for more than a fleeting moment.

The most interesting thing about Nutini was that he signed to Atlantic Records when he was just 18, and was thus lifted dramatically out of the future his family had assumed he would have as the fourth generation owner of the family fish and chip shop in Glasgow fringe town Paisley.

It was a great story, but the music was disappointingly humdrum in comparison. So it has come as something of a surprise — make that a seismic shock — to find myself more moved and excited by Nutini’s new album Sunny Side Up than anything else this year. How the hell has that happened?

Well, let me say first, Sunny Side Up is not a logical follow up to These Streets, the multi-million selling, Grammy Award winning debut that made an international star of Nutini when he was just 19.

The album isn't just remarkable because of the magnificent songwriting and breathtaking vocals it delivers, but because it’s genuinely odd and wilfully unfashionable.

It's not the sort of album million-selling babyfaced boys are usually given the freedom to make. It is said that Atlantic’s legendary founder Ahmet Ertugun – the man responsible for the careers of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett — took the teenage Nutini under his wing, regarding him to be a rare talent.

Sunny Side Up explains his hitherto perplexing enthusiasm.

Generically, the album is as eclectic as the White Album, but unlike that schizo classic, it’s entirely the work of one man, a mere boy in fact, who's just turned 22.

It moves from Jamaican ska through deep Staxy soul to Arran jumper-esque Scottish folk withmoments of honky tonk and pure pop in between. The mood is equally erratic — there is thoughtful melancholia (‘Tricks of the Trade’, ‘Worried Man’ and there are yelps of youthful free joy with great lines like “I've got food in my belly and a licence for my telly and nothing's gonna bring me down” (‘Pencil Full of Lead’) and the ‘Coming Up Easy’ refrain, which Nutini hollers with forceful purpose, like it’s the principle he lives by; “It was in love I was created and in love is how I hope I die”.

Then there's Nutini's utterly unique voice — he has the power of Animals’ frontman Eric Burdon and the light and shade of Otis Redding — but he also has a strong Scottish accent.

Sometimes it’s like hearing Ivor Cutler singing In the Midnight Hour, full of chutzpah after a few cans of Tennants (if you can imagine such a thing being disarmingly charming). It’s nothing like the voice Nutini used to sing with — a pretty standard American-accented affair.

All in all, Paolo Nutini’s second album sounds like a divorce from his first one.

While recent shows have provoked a few scratched heads (“Why’s he singing like an old man?” I heard a young woman who had screamed him onstage like he was Robbie Williams mutter to her friend at the Glasgow show), there’s an integrity and depth to the new Paolo Nutini that suggests he might be around for a few decades, long after his looks have gone.

It’s likely to have been this quality which attracted Kings of Leon producer Ethan Johns to Sunny Side Up, and which has so impressed fans like Mick Jagger, Solomon Burke and Rod Stewart.

I’m not the only one who had never noticed it before.

So, time to update my list then. Paolo Nutini – single-minded, honest, funny, gutsy. Yup, that sounds like me.

Paolo Nutini is appearing at Oxegen 2009. His latest album, Sunny Side Up, is in the shops now

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/music/news/sunny-delight-14328628.html

AndrewGardner 3 June, 2009
May I say that Paolo Nutini has been working hard this week on the promotion for his stunning new album. I attended an amazing instore performance/signing session at Glasgow's HMV on the day of release. Approx 400 people queued from 6am to get the coveted wristbands. Nutini and his band put in a stunning half hour performance. He then very graciously signed copies of the album and posed for pictures for over 3 hours. He smiled and talked throughout the entire proceedings. It truely heartens someone in my age bracket (50+) to not only adore an album by an artist younger than my own son, but to watch his general humility and attitude to his craft, which will surely outlive the hordes of young girl fans in attendance on Monday. Incidently he was finally whisked away from Glasgow at 5pm, to do the entire thing again in Edinburgh at 7.30pm. These must surely be contributing factors to the albums high performance this week

004.jpg Paolo in Glasgow picture by preciousmystery1

019.jpg Paolo picture by preciousmystery1

BBC Review

A classic case of the protégé rebelling against the laid-out path.

Sophie Bruce2009-05-27

After his million selling 2006 debut, Paisley boy Paolo Nutini is back with the follow up – and it’s a classic case of the protégé rebelling against the path laid out for him. Where These Streets was slick, polished and poppy, Sunny Side Up is the exact opposite.

It’s difficult to know what to make this confused, folky melee – a lot of which sounds not unlike the sort of souvenir your Dad might bring back from a week in the Outer Hebrides. If you can get past his heavily accented lyrics – and sometimes they’re almost unintelligible – then the music is equally rambling.

This is a self-penned, self-produced flight of indulgent fancy, more old fashioned than old school. It’s all the more surprising given that he had help from Kings Of Leon supremo Ethan Johns – but then maybe these days Paolo’s harder to mould. Let’s face it; he has now played Live Earth, supported Led Zepplin and duetted with Mick Jagger. How do you argue with that?

Nutini’s aim was an organic, timeless sound – the result is described by even his own management as ‘almost unfashionably eclectic’. And maybe there lies the problem – this album sounds 40 years older than it should do coming from a guy still in his early 20s.

If he’s aiming to crack the US he’s certainly heading in the right musical direction, with first single Candy sounding spookily like a Scottish Bruce Springsteen. Laidback soulful ballad Coming Up Easy is about his struggles with marijuana, but just sounds like it was written on the stuff.

The confusion continues with ska-driven 10/10, Pencil of Lead where he sounds like a sped-up Louis Armstrong and the messy High Hopes – melody and lyrics are great, but overshadowed by an ill-thought-out penny whistle which belongs on the soundtrack to The Lion King.

There are some gems - like Worried Man, a beautifully dark ditty about a man ‘who feels like he’s getting old before his time’. Irony alert! Paolo, slow down – it doesn’t look like you’ll be forced to return to the family fish and chip business any time soon, but that doesn’t mean you have to age six decades between albums.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/zdbd

010.jpg Paolo picture by preciousmystery1

Telegraph.co.uk

Paolo Nutini: Sunny Side Up, CD review

Paolo Nutini's joyous second album Sunny Side Up has the horny energy of ragtime swing.

By Neil McCormick
Published: 3:56PM BST 29 May 2009

Atlantic

An old soul in handsome young guise, Nutini has the music in him. His joyous second album organically blends soul, country, folk and the brash, horny energy of ragtime swing.

The result is an eccentric blast, like some obscure lost classic from the Seventies, channelling Harry Nilsson, Alex Harvey, Otis Redding and Cab Calloway.

Telegraph rating: * * * * *

Paolo Nutini interview

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/neilmccormick/5393530/Paolo-Nutini-Sunny-Side-Up-CD-review.html

News of The World, UK

Life's Sunny Side Up for Paolo

PAOLO NUTINI HITS NEW HEIGHTS WITH LATEST ALBUM

Paolo Nutini

By Tim Barr, 30/05/2009

LOOKING relaxed and happy, Paolo Nutini is sprawled across the leather seats in the lounge of his tour bus.

It's a busy place since, these days, he has a six-piece band on the road with him and the various members are constantly ducking up and down from the top deck to raid the fridge, check stage times and share a joke or two.

But he chats enthusiastically about his twin passions - music and football - and proudly shows off the new laptop he's just bought to replace the one he's already filled up with recording software, song ideas and lyrics.

"It's pretty cool, man," he grins. "Totally state of the art."

On the table in front of him, however, is a copy of an album that's equally up- to-the-minute . . . and ought to make him even prouder.

Sunny Side Up is the breathtaking follow-up to the 2.3million-selling These Streets.

Packed with songs as sophisticated and beautifully-crafted as any you'll have heard in a long time, it sees the Paisley-born star firmly taking control of his destiny, not only penning the songs but - with a little help from Kings Of Leon studio whizz Ethan Johns - producing too.

As A-Listed exclusively revealed last October, it takes its cue from the greats of yesteryear. but the result is a classic album that's more reminiscent of 1970s landmarks like Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells A Story, Too Rye Ay by Dexys Midnight Runners or Van Morrison's Moondance.

"It's a progression for me," Paolo insists. "I just wanted to go forward as a songwriter and a musician. I wanted to expand my horizons.

"In the grand scheme of things, I'm hoping this record will stick around. For me, it's about trying to make a connection with people in a way that's completely honest.

"When you're putting your heart and soul, blood, sweat and tears into something, you want people to have a chance to judge it for themselves."

Opening with the brassy, upbeat ska of 10/10, Sunny Side Up - which comes out tomorrow - takes at least part of its cue from the joyous, celebratory mood of first album highlight Alloway Grove.

But it's a much wider-ranging affair, which sees Paolo pushing towards a variety of different styles from the confessional singer-songwriter style of Tricks Of The Trade to the rambunctious swing of the Louis Prima-inspired Pencil Full Of Lead to the limpid Celtic soul of the outstanding Growing Up Beside You.

And it shows a massive leap forward from first album favourites such as Rewind and Autumn, originally written when Paolo was just 16.

Now, six years on, he says: "I've done a lot of growing up since then.

"After the first album came out, we were more or less on the road for two and a half years. I was still writing songs, of course, but until we finished that tour, I hadn't really had a lot of time to reflect.

"These songs are the result of being able finally to take stock of it all. It's been three years since the first album came out and I really wanted to deliver something honest that I felt was worthwhile. It's a record that, to me, feels good and sounds good. It feels real, rather than fake. Around the time of the first album, I felt, in some ways, that I was a bit misrepresented.

"But that was then and this is now. In many a way, I feel like this is another debut."

You don't have to look far to see what he means. On his recent tour, Paolo was on blazing form, turning in bravura performances that saw him push his voice to extraordinary new heights.

And in addition to long-term guitarist Donny Little, he's now backed by a world-class band who pull out all the stops to give his gigs the feel of a Harlem soul review. What those performances underline is that he's NOT content to go with the flow, to churn out faceless pop or landfill indie according to the current hot trend.

Instead he's determined to create something that's entirely unique and all his own.

And, following the first album campaign, that meant digging his heels in and standing his ground on the way he wanted to create his second album. "We got a lot of offers from big-name producers - people who I'd be proud to say I'd worked with," he confides.

"But, for me, I had a vision of what I wanted to accomplish on this record. I didn't want that to be moulded or shaped or altered in any way."

Paolo helmed the initial recording sessions that began at Ireland's Grouse Lodge studios early in 2008 and continued at Rockfield in Wales - where legendary albums by Queen, The Waterboys and The Stone Roses were made.

There was also a stint at Glasgow's Park Lane, where Paolo once worked as a tape op before signing his record deal.

Fans who'd seen his shows in 2007 would have heard a set already peppered with new songs like 55 To One, Rainbows or the stonking live favourite Funky Cigarette.

But though they were considered for the album, they didn't make the cut.

"After I came off tour, I really wanted just a chance to be normal again, to hang out with normal people treating you in a normal way," he says. "After a while, the things I'd be writing about being lonesome on tour or whatever didn't seem so relevant. I really just wanted to write honest songs about honest sentiments."

One of the songs that DID survive from that early period was current single Candy.

It's just one of the standout tracks on Sunny Side Up that underline how far Paolo has come as a songwriter since his 2006 debut. But what appears on first listen to be a beautifully- constructed love song has surprisingly dark origins.

It followed a meeting between Paolo and one of his all-time music heroes, US singer-songwriter Rodriguez. Paolo explains: "When we were teenagers, me and one of my friends would listen to him constantly.

"His stuff was very overlooked, we didn't know where he was or whether he was alive or dead. But when I played in Detroit, his hometown, he came to see me and we did his song Sugar Man together.

"After the show he gave me a DVD of the film Candy, which features Sugar Man on the soundtrack.

"It stars Heath Ledger as a heroin addict. It's quite a desperate tale about his addiction, very dark but somehow very beautiful and moving too. Watching it got me thinking about the way that love can be an addiction too. You get hooked on somebody so much that, even when you're away from home - or on tour - something keeps that person at the forefront of your mind.

"The night I wrote the song, I called my girlfriend and I was about to tell her about the film and what it had meant to me when she told me the news that Heath Ledger had just died, apparently from an overdose. It was a weird coincidence. Very uncanny."

As recording moved into its final stages at Peter Gabriel's Real World studios, Paolo called in Ethan to put the finishing touches to the LP.

"I wanted Ethan to record my vocals particularly because of his work with Ryan Adams and Ray LaMontagne. All of his records have a really special quality to the voices - if you listen to the way he recorded Caleb Followill's vocal on the Kings Of Leon album, you'll hear how magical his touch is."

On must-hear moments like Growing Up Beside You, Coming Up Easy or the gorgeous closing track Keep Rolling - where Paolo conjures up the spirit of seminal doo-wop outfit The Ink Spots - the producer, who's the son of Rolling Stones/Who mastermixer Glyn Johns, has captured a maturer, smokily soulful tone that sees the Last Request star edging ever closer to R&B giants like Bill Withers, Sam Cooke and Otis Redding.

And it was Ethan's little girl who inspired one of the most intimate moments on Sunny Side Up, the lilting acoustic ballad Chamber Music.

"That song came right at the end," says Paolo. "It was originally supposed to be an instrumental but I was watching Ethan and his daughter playing one day and it reminded me of a very sunny time in my life. When I was young, we used to have a trampoline at the back door that I used to jump around on and that image came into my head and ended up in the lyric."

Paolo's pal Matty Benbrook, who co-wrote Last Request and New Shoes, helped pen Coming Up Easy, which fuses Hammond organ and a biting brass section to summon up the spirit of the soul sound championed by Paolo's mentor, Atlantic Records legend Ahmet Ertegun.

The result is a confident, ambitious record that's as far as it's possible to get from the notorious 'difficult second album syndrome'. I don't see this release as a high-pressure situation," he says. "It's one that I hope people will live with and get to know."

But Paolo - who's already played with a incredible galaxy of stars from soul legend Ben E King to The Rolling Stones - does admit he's got one regret.

"Ray Manzarek of The Doors turned up to a little art gallery show we did in Australia," he reveals. "He came into the dressing room beforehand and I was asking him about playing keys on amazing stuff like Light My Fire and Riders On The Storm.

"Then he says to me, 'So are there any songs you want me to play keys on tonight?' I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. Then I realised, we didn't have ANY keyboards with us. The one show where we didn't have any, was when Ray Manzarek turns up to play. And you know what? I could order an organ for every gig from now until I die, and he'll never turn up to another one . . ."

SUNNY SIDE UP is released tomorrow by Atlantic Records

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/scottish/scottish_listings/scottish_music/334547/Paolo-Nutini-hits-new-heights-with-his-spectacular-new-album.html

Interview: Paolo Nutini - A sunny disposition

Published Date: 30 May 2009

By Alice Wyllie

RAIN is hammering against the grey columns of Aberdeen's Music Hall, where a large queue of determined Paolo Nutini fans are attempting to take shelter, three hours before the 22-year-old singer from Paisley is due to take the stage. Nutini's monster of a tour bus is parked at the back door, and two young women are braving the bad weather to circle it excitedly, in the hope of catching a glimpse of their idol.

What they don't know is that Nutini, currently on a UK tour, is seeking refuge in a coffee shop just a few feet away. It's been nearly three years since the release of his million-selling debut album, These Streets, during which time he's played with

the Rolling Stones, supported Led Zeppelin, won the support of everyone from Jools Holland to Rod Stewart, and found the time to pen that difficult second album – Sunny Side Up – which he's here to talk to me about.

Drumming at the top of his can of San Pellegrino and tapping both feet along to the same inaudible beat, Paolo Nutini is an energetic young man, yet has a laid-back calm about him. He is strikingly handsome, but seems to have grown into his looks since he first appeared on the scene as a boyish teenager.

Wearing a checked shirt open over a white vest that's so low and loose that, when he leans forward, I can almost see his belly button beyond an expanse of chest hair, Nutini's strong features and olive skin hint at his Italian roots (his family have lived in Scotland for four generations, but his father is of Italian descent). The hair's still a little rebellious, but he no longer hides behind a long fringe, favouring a messy crop that exposes a pair of almond-shaped eyes with languid lids.

That he doesn't maintain eye contact for long might imply a certain stand-offishness, but – on the contrary – he's so immediately open and engaging that I cannot help remarking on it.

"I dunno, maybe some journalists just fool me into it," he laughs. "Maybe I just get a bit comfortable and then I start blabbering on. But there's nothing I really have to hide. I've had people telling me about interview techniques, how to assert my voice at the right time, how to manipulate an interview and maximise what you want to get; is that what you'd want?"

No, no, I assure him; it was a compliment. "Ah, sweet. An interview goes a lot easier if we just start having a conversation about old Eighties American kids' films," he says, before reeling off a list of some of his favourites (Rocky, Rambo, The Sandlot and The Goonies, in case you're wondering). Whoever cajoled him into media training would surely be sweating by this point: he wants to go over the finer points of the Rocky theme tune, I want to discuss his new album. With a little work, however, we get back on track.

Sunny Side Up might be neatly described as Nutini's coming-of-age album. He wrote many of the songs on These Streets (including his debut hit single, Last Request) when he was in his mid-teens and, understandably, he brings a rather different perspective to his new material.

In These Streets, Nutini drew on universal themes: love, sex and, um, the uplifting feeling one experiences when pounding pavement in a new pair of shoes. He sang of the agony of a relationship in its death throes, the loneliness of moving to a big city for the first time and the perils of lying about your age.

Sunny Side Up offers a more mature take on similarly broad themes. There's a strong, bluesy edge to it, but it's an album packed with diverse influences, from ska – on 10/10 and Pencil Full of Lead – to country, on Simple Things. Nutini's ragged, whisky-saturated voice skims effortlessly across the tracks, with a solemn wisdom beyond his 22 years.

Indeed, he has been described as something of an "old soul", a label that can be applied both to a remarkable voice that seems to have spent the best part of 50 years sipping bourbon in a smoky jazz bar and to the way in which he chooses to shun a lifestyle most men his age would embrace with open arms.

"That's the conflict right there," he says, when I ask him about his experiences of fame. "I'm not a famous guy in the sense that I'm not running with the fame. I'm not focusing on that kind of lifestyle. All you are is … a lot of people know who you are, and that's about it. The only time it bothers me is when I can't comprehend it, when I can't get what's going on around me to the point where I can't then structure normal life around it."

The perils of fame, however, reach beyond being recognised when nipping out for a pint of milk. In the past few years Nutini has been "airbrushed to the point of no return" in more ways than one. As a young artist enjoying both critical and commercial success, his image has been carefully controlled, from promo shots that play up his pretty features to the production on his first album (which he thinks he might re-record in the future, "for fun").

"Image is something I'm too fussed about, to be honest. I just don't like other people putting forward a direct statement of who I am (when they] really don't have a clue. You'd go to photoshoots and people would bring along a rack of clothes, get you to try them on and take a couple of photos. They'd end up being the ones they use and you look stupid in this f***ing thing that you would never wear in a million years," he says, with heightening frustration. "But then, you know, it all gets attached (to me] and it means absolutely nothing."

This time round he's learned to take a bit more control. "The first year (of fame] it was fine," he says. "After two years it got … it didn't feel like I was going with this thing; it felt like all of a sudden this was it, this was real life, and I wasn't too keen on that. Feeling like you're that guy attached to that song… you almost felt like that was your purpose. I just didn't feel it was what I should be spending that much time on and resigning (myself] to that. Now I feel a lot more on my feet. This time I'm moving at the same pace as everything else around me." As is so often the case, Nutini's pretty face is something of a double-edged sword. It ensures a certain quota of young female fans (like the ones currently pacing round his tour bus), but it also tars him with the same brush as other attractive male singer-songwriters (he's been compared, rather unfairly, to James Blunt in the past), regardless of the standard of the music he's making.

"I don't know what it implies, if that's what you cater for. I can't imagine… you know, look at the state of me!" he says modestly, tugging at his shirt and laughing, as if he can't quite believe what all the fuss is about. "(But] every time I sit and watch any of my favourite bands from the Sixties, there are screaming girls everywhere. That's fine as long as it's (balanced] out by people who actually listen and have something to say about music. After shows, you know, there's a lot of people who want a photo, but at the same time there's a lot of people who have a lot of nice stuff to say, who make stabs in the dark as to where a song has come from and actually hit the mark sometimes. That's quite cool."

Does he have any regrets? "I dunno, I might have thought twice before singing about shoes, but then again I might not," he says. "Perhaps… I could have got a hell of a lot more done, taken a hell of a lot more in over the past few years, I wish I'd listened a lot more in school, I wish I'd opened my mind up a little bit more that little bit sooner." There's that openness again. He has a tendency to think carefully about his answers, not so as to deliver a polished, publicist-honed soundbite, but rather to give the most honest response he can. However, he can be as vague as he is open, if not necessarily intentionally. He talks a lot, but doesn't edit what he says, which can be rather charming.

A case in point is his slightly embarrassed, rambling answer when asked about the upside to fame: "Of course there's (an] upside. Most people that know me, if I wanted to go somewhere and I'm in London for a night and there's a nice place to go eat and you phone and it's fully booked then, most of the time, whoever you're with will be like, why don't you get somebody to phone up and say who's coming? But I never, and sometimes somebody will phone and try, but it just depends on who's picking up the phone that night."

I don't get the impression that it's Nutini himself who's keen on using his name to get a table in a restaurant, or anything else for that matter. The trappings of fame seem to sit a little uneasily with him, but he's far too gracious to let his fans know it: when we part ways in the rain, I turn to watch him scurrying back to his tour bus. The two by now rather damp young women can't quite believe their luck and trot after him, hoping to get a photograph. He is, of course, happy to oblige.

• Sunny Side Up is released on Monday.

• Paolo Nutini will be performing and signing autographs on Monday at HMV in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, from 1-2:30pm and at HMV Picture House in Edinburgh from 7:30pm.

The full article contains 1703 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.

Last Updated: 29 May 2009 8:40 PM
Source: The Scotsman
Location: Edinburgh

Interview: Paolo Nutini - A sunny disposition

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/Interview-Paolo-Nutini--A.5318108.jp

Published Date: 30 May 2009

By Alice Wyllie

RAIN is hammering against the grey columns of Aberdeen's Music Hall, where a large queue of determined Paolo Nutini fans are attempting to take shelter, three hours before the 22-year-old singer from Paisley is due to take the stage. Nutini's monster of a tour bus is parked at the back door, and two young women are braving the bad weather to circle it excitedly, in the hope of catching a glimpse of their idol.

What they don't know is that Nutini, currently on a UK tour, is seeking refuge in a coffee shop just a few feet away. It's been nearly three years since the release of his million-selling debut album, These Streets, during which time he's played with

the Rolling Stones, supported Led Zeppelin, won the support of everyone from Jools Holland to Rod Stewart, and found the time to pen that difficult second album – Sunny Side Up – which he's here to talk to me about.

Drumming at the top of his can of San Pellegrino and tapping both feet along to the same inaudible beat, Paolo Nutini is an energetic young man, yet has a laid-back calm about him. He is strikingly handsome, but seems to have grown into his looks since he first appeared on the scene as a boyish teenager.

Wearing a checked shirt open over a white vest that's so low and loose that, when he leans forward, I can almost see his belly button beyond an expanse of chest hair, Nutini's strong features and olive skin hint at his Italian roots (his family have lived in Scotland for four generations, but his father is of Italian descent). The hair's still a little rebellious, but he no longer hides behind a long fringe, favouring a messy crop that exposes a pair of almond-shaped eyes with languid lids.

That he doesn't maintain eye contact for long might imply a certain stand-offishness, but – on the contrary – he's so immediately open and engaging that I cannot help remarking on it.

"I dunno, maybe some journalists just fool me into it," he laughs. "Maybe I just get a bit comfortable and then I start blabbering on. But there's nothing I really have to hide. I've had people telling me about interview techniques, how to assert my voice at the right time, how to manipulate an interview and maximise what you want to get; is that what you'd want?"

No, no, I assure him; it was a compliment. "Ah, sweet. An interview goes a lot easier if we just start having a conversation about old Eighties American kids' films," he says, before reeling off a list of some of his favourites (Rocky, Rambo, The Sandlot and The Goonies, in case you're wondering). Whoever cajoled him into media training would surely be sweating by this point: he wants to go over the finer points of the Rocky theme tune, I want to discuss his new album. With a little work, however, we get back on track.

Sunny Side Up might be neatly described as Nutini's coming-of-age album. He wrote many of the songs on These Streets (including his debut hit single, Last Request) when he was in his mid-teens and, understandably, he brings a rather different perspective to his new material.

In These Streets, Nutini drew on universal themes: love, sex and, um, the uplifting feeling one experiences when pounding pavement in a new pair of shoes. He sang of the agony of a relationship in its death throes, the loneliness of moving to a big city for the first time and the perils of lying about your age.

Sunny Side Up offers a more mature take on similarly broad themes. There's a strong, bluesy edge to it, but it's an album packed with diverse influences, from ska – on 10/10 and Pencil Full of Lead – to country, on Simple Things. Nutini's ragged, whisky-saturated voice skims effortlessly across the tracks, with a solemn wisdom beyond his 22 years.

Indeed, he has been described as something of an "old soul", a label that can be applied both to a remarkable voice that seems to have spent the best part of 50 years sipping bourbon in a smoky jazz bar and to the way in which he chooses to shun a lifestyle most men his age would embrace with open arms.

"That's the conflict right there," he says, when I ask him about his experiences of fame. "I'm not a famous guy in the sense that I'm not running with the fame. I'm not focusing on that kind of lifestyle. All you are is … a lot of people know who you are, and that's about it. The only time it bothers me is when I can't comprehend it, when I can't get what's going on around me to the point where I can't then structure normal life around it."

The perils of fame, however, reach beyond being recognised when nipping out for a pint of milk. In the past few years Nutini has been "airbrushed to the point of no return" in more ways than one. As a young artist enjoying both critical and commercial success, his image has been carefully controlled, from promo shots that play up his pretty features to the production on his first album (which he thinks he might re-record in the future, "for fun").

"Image is something I'm too fussed about, to be honest. I just don't like other people putting forward a direct statement of who I am (when they] really don't have a clue. You'd go to photoshoots and people would bring along a rack of clothes, get you to try them on and take a couple of photos. They'd end up being the ones they use and you look stupid in this f***ing thing that you would never wear in a million years," he says, with heightening frustration. "But then, you know, it all gets attached (to me] and it means absolutely nothing."

This time round he's learned to take a bit more control. "The first year (of fame] it was fine," he says. "After two years it got … it didn't feel like I was going with this thing; it felt like all of a sudden this was it, this was real life, and I wasn't too keen on that. Feeling like you're that guy attached to that song… you almost felt like that was your purpose. I just didn't feel it was what I should be spending that much time on and resigning (myself] to that. Now I feel a lot more on my feet. This time I'm moving at the same pace as everything else around me." As is so often the case, Nutini's pretty face is something of a double-edged sword. It ensures a certain quota of young female fans (like the ones currently pacing round his tour bus), but it also tars him with the same brush as other attractive male singer-songwriters (he's been compared, rather unfairly, to James Blunt in the past), regardless of the standard of the music he's making.

"I don't know what it implies, if that's what you cater for. I can't imagine… you know, look at the state of me!" he says modestly, tugging at his shirt and laughing, as if he can't quite believe what all the fuss is about. "(But] every time I sit and watch any of my favourite bands from the Sixties, there are screaming girls everywhere. That's fine as long as it's (balanced] out by people who actually listen and have something to say about music. After shows, you know, there's a lot of people who want a photo, but at the same time there's a lot of people who have a lot of nice stuff to say, who make stabs in the dark as to where a song has come from and actually hit the mark sometimes. That's quite cool."

Does he have any regrets? "I dunno, I might have thought twice before singing about shoes, but then again I might not," he says. "Perhaps… I could have got a hell of a lot more done, taken a hell of a lot more in over the past few years, I wish I'd listened a lot more in school, I wish I'd opened my mind up a little bit more that little bit sooner." There's that openness again. He has a tendency to think carefully about his answers, not so as to deliver a polished, publicist-honed soundbite, but rather to give the most honest response he can. However, he can be as vague as he is open, if not necessarily intentionally. He talks a lot, but doesn't edit what he says, which can be rather charming.

A case in point is his slightly embarrassed, rambling answer when asked about the upside to fame: "Of course there's (an] upside. Most people that know me, if I wanted to go somewhere and I'm in London for a night and there's a nice place to go eat and you phone and it's fully booked then, most of the time, whoever you're with will be like, why don't you get somebody to phone up and say who's coming? But I never, and sometimes somebody will phone and try, but it just depends on who's picking up the phone that night."

I don't get the impression that it's Nutini himself who's keen on using his name to get a table in a restaurant, or anything else for that matter. The trappings of fame seem to sit a little uneasily with him, but he's far too gracious to let his fans know it: when we part ways in the rain, I turn to watch him scurrying back to his tour bus. The two by now rather damp young women can't quite believe their luck and trot after him, hoping to get a photograph. He is, of course, happy to oblige.

• Sunny Side Up is released on Monday.

• Paolo Nutini will be performing and signing autographs on Monday at HMV in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, from 1-2:30pm and at HMV Picture House in Edinburgh from 7:30pm.

http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/features/Interview-Paolo-Nutini--A.5318108.jp

The full article contains 1703 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.

Page 1 of 1

Last Updated: 29 May 2009 8:40 PM
Source: The Scotsman
Location: Edinburgh

May 30, 2009

Significant others: Paolo Nutini

The relationships that make a life

Alexia Skinitis

Singer and songwriter Paolo Nutini, 22, was born in Paisley, Scotland, and still lives ten minutes down the road from his parents’ house.

My girlfriend

We’ve been together three years, but I’ve known Teri since I was in high school. I wrote and recorded the first album just after we ended for a while. When we got back together I had to carry on singing the songs, which was weird and I can’t listen to some of them now. Every relationship has its ups and downs, and I take that and put it into words. It just creeps in. There is a lot of her in this album as well.

My parents

I wasn’t the most academic person – girls ruined my potential – so I was destined to work in the fish and chip shop my family have had for 100 years. My dad has worked there all his life and, by rights, my parents could have made me feel guilty and made me work there. I wouldn’t have blamed them if they’d said, “What the f*** is our boy doing out there nancying on about shoes?” I couldn’t do anything without their support. Hopefully the fish and chip shop will still be there, just in case.

My best friend

Gavin Jackson has been my best friend since primary and has always been around. There is never a dull night out with Gav, although I am not sure what he does. He works for BAA and maintains he has “skills”, but nobody knows what they are. Everybody who meets him loves him – there is a mould for the boys in Paisley but he breaks it.

The lads…

… are a big group of friends from school who are like my family. I could go without seeing them for eight months and it doesn’t feel like a day has gone by when we get together again. Before I recorded my first album, I used to waste every day with them.

My musical hero

Sixto Rodriguez stands alone. His voice is so moving it takes you to another place, and he has a gracefulness to his arrangements that I try to achieve when I write, but I don’t have the expertise to capture yet. We have met a few times and he said he bought my record and loved it. I got to sing with him in Detroit – incredible.

My producing partner

On the last album I didn’t have the confidence to say, “Wow, this isn’t the way I want to do it,” so when I finished writing this album I was determined to produce it on my own. But after working on it for a while, it didn’t seem to be moving on to that next level, so I approached Ethan Johns, who helped me to re-cut the songs in a way I was happy with.

Paolo Nutini’s album Sunny Side Up is released on Monday

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/article6364312.ece

May 30, 2009

Paolo Nutini: Sunny Side Up

Pete Paphides

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/cd_reviews/article6371784.ece

Second rising

By Declan Cashin

Friday May 29 2009

Paolo Nutini sounds positively knackered. Speaking to Day and Night by phone between in-store performances in Inverness, in his native Scotland , the 22-year-old already seems worn down by the gruelling promotional duties for his second album Sunny Side Up, and that's before it's even officially released. Still, he fully accepts that this is all part of the industry game, even though it may rankle him, as becomes clear throughout the course of our chat. "This is going to be my life for the next year or so," he laughs, his strong Scottish accent carrying just the right amount of weary resignation.

At the very least, Nutini will be energised by the reaction from critics and fans to the new album, because it is a very different beast to his slick, poppy debut These Streets which, armed with a raft of radio-friendly hits such as Jenny Don't Be Hasty, Rewind and New Shoes, tallied up sales of 2.3 million worldwide upon its release in 2006.

Sunny Side Up is, in the singer-songwriter's own words, "almost like a new debut". It's an assured, pared-back dolly mixture of sounds and styles, incorporating calypso, rock, reggae/ska, ragtime, R&B and folk. Nutini is ably accompanied by his band The Vipers, and throughout it all, his soulful voice bends, grows and contracts to accommodate the varied soundscape, and for the most part, it works beautifully (standout tracks are Growing Up Beside You, the Otis Redding -vibe Coming Up Easy and the bluesy High Hopes).

Nutini produced the album himself, with a helping hand towards the end from Ethan Johns , who worked with Kings of Leon and Ryan Adams . As a result, this sophomore effort is less polished than These Streets, but this young man wouldn't have it any other way.

"It's not an album that I feel I have to make something of," he explains. "To me, it just came about very naturally. It's like one big expression rather than an offering of something. It was a bit of a learning curve, but I had a good idea of what I wanted to do. Luckily, I had the facilities and the musicians to translate what was in my head."

To that end, Nutini and his band set up for the best part of a month here in Ireland at the Grouse Lodge Studio in Westmeath to write and record the album. "We had an amazing live room there," he recalls. "We had a great sound going, but unfortunately we had to leave prematurely because Snow Patrol had booked the rooms, and we were fitted in around them."

Nutini also got out and about during his stay in the Irish midlands, though one experience left a decidedly bad taste in his mouth -- literally. "We had a couple of good nights out in Athlone , but it's the only place I've ever been where you could get chips with curry sauce and cheese as well. That's just fucking wrong, man. I don't know if it's just me, but that was not enjoyable."

Irish fast food merchants: take note. Other than music, if there's one thing that Paolo Nutini is an expert in it's chips. Indeed, in an alternate universe, he would be behind the counter of the family business in Paisley, in Scotland, serving up fish and chips to punters.

The child of Italian-Scottish parents, Nutini decided, from an early age, that a career purveying battered Mars bars and cod was not for him, and so followed his passion for music instead, learning the tricks of the trade from musicians he met while working in local recording studios after school.

Nutini's big break came through reality television -- sort of. David Sneddon , the winner of the 2002 BBC show Fame Academy, was also from Paisley and was scheduled to perform at a homecoming reception in the town. Nutini, then 15, had won an impromptu chance to get up and sing onstage before Sneddon arrived. A rep from Sneddon's label was in the audience and immediately took the teenager on board.

His mother signed a record deal for her then-underage son in 2004, and Nutini moved to London to write, perform showcase gigs and support acts including Amy Winehouse and KT Tunstall . He signed with Atlantic soon after his 18th birthday, and These Streets was released in 2006. It was a bit of a slow-burner, but Nutini exploded, particularly in the US , after some of the tracks were used in adverts and on American TV shows (it's also no harm that he has dreamy, boyband good looks, kind of like the Jonas Brothers ' Italian cousin).

Now a little older and wiser, there is a sense with Sunny Side Up that Nutini is trying to distinguish himself more from the male singer-songwriter posse ( James Blunt and Morrison, especially) into which he has often, unfairly, been grouped. Is he trying to deliberately surprise people with these different sounds?

Nutini seems caught out by the question. "Not really, no," he replies, after a long pause. "Some people might view me in a certain way, so yeah, it might surprise them. But I think most people will roll with the punches. I don't see it as a massive left turn. There wasn't any motive behind it."

There didn't seem to be any 'difficult second album' issues hampering the recording, either. "I wouldn't say it was tricky," he says. "Actually, it wasn't at all. If anything, it was more relaxed. There were less people -- in fact, there were no people -- sticking their oar in, only the ones I asked to."

This certainly seems like a sore point for the singer, and the experience from the first album inevitably informs his wary approach this time round. "In terms of the label putting the album out, I don't think it can be done in the same way as the last one," he says. "It will just cloud everything that the album is, which is a simple, human record. The hype and all that surrounding stuff will just dilute it.

"It's funny; I didn't think of any of this until I started talking to a few people at the record label. If you get too much into their business, which is ultimately your business, you start thinking along the lines of the nasty politics attached to music, and it's not really got a place at all, I think."

One such political decision was which single to release first. The winner was Candy, the album's most radio-friendly song. Nutini unsuccessfully fought against it. Why? There's a moment of hesitation before he answers. "As much as I like the song, I didn't feel it was the way the album should have been introduced. I was conscious of wanting to come out with something with a very different kick to it. I thought it would be good to bring out Pencil Full of Lead, based on the reaction that friends had to it when they heard it."

He may be exhausted already, but Nutini had better pack some Berocca in his case because he is facing a hectic summer of live gigs and touring. One such port of call is this year's Oxegen festival at Punchestown . "I played there before, but it was very busy, so it all merged into one," he says. "I'm looking forward to this one where I can go in and out at a slower pace and enjoy it."

Before he goes, I ask if he is expecting a similar reaction to his last gig here in the Academy in Dublin where lusty female fans threw an array of knickers and bras at him on stage?

"I actually do remember that," he says, with a droll laugh. "I tell you man, that gig saved me a lot of money on underwear."

Sunny Side Up is released today by Warner Music . Listen to previews of Paolo's new album and watch the video for Candy on www.independent.ie/paolo

- Declan Cashin

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/day-and-night/features/second-rising-1754855.html

I thank my dad for paving the way to my success, says Scots singing sensation Paolo Nutini

May 29 2009 Rick Fulton

HE is only 22 but Paulo Nutini has already shared a stage with The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Quincy Jones and Ben E King.

He can count Rod Stewart and Paul Weller as fans. But who does Paolo think is the coolest man the world? Yes, it's still his dad Alfredo.

Paolo has written a song for his dad on his new album and the man's so unassuming the singer doesn't even know if likes it or not.

The Paisley star has penned a joyous country-tinged thank you to his chip shop-owning dad on Sunny Side Up, his second album which is out on Monday.

The track, Simple Things includes the lyrics: "My father is a wealthy, self-made man, but his wealth does not consist of riches or acres of land, and instead he has a family who are his biggest fans, that's something that I one day hope to have."

Alfredo has worked in the chip shop every day since he was 16, for 41 years, but is content with his lot in life.

So what are his thoughts on the song? Paolo grins: "He's a man of few words. But he has to like it.

"If he didn't... away you go. For me, it was a chance to reassure him that no matter the kind of gulf in the life he's lived to the one I am leading, because of the business I'm in, I was wanting him to know I was listening to everything he taught me and instilled in me.

"He's definitely the coolest guy I know... " Taking time out from a manic schedule of touring and promotion for the much anticipated album, Paolo is knackered but in a much better place than he was two years ago.

Speaking to Paolo in 2007 as he toured the world with debut album These Streets - released the year before - the young singer felt rootless.

Now he has a new home in Paisley and the beginnings of a recording studio, and the important relationships in his life are rock solid.

"It was important to get back to a life with the friends I call best friends, my girlfriend and my family," he says. "Not just to make them a phone call every second day."

He jokes: "And the new home would have been a castle if the taxman hadn't robbed me."

Paolo is one of Scotland's very real success stories. These Streets sold 2.3 million copies - 300,000 in America - and went to No.3 in the UK charts.

He sang with The Rolling Stones at the Isle ofWight in 2007, duetting with Mick Jagger on the Robert Johnson song Love In Vain.

He also supported Led Zepplin at the O2 Arena tribute to Atlantic founder Ahmet Ertegun, who took Paolo under his wing before his death in 2006.

And Puma used Paolo's track New Shoes for an advert.

Talk to him about other singer/songwriters who hit the big time around the same time as he did - James Morrison and James Blunt- and the usually laid back voice develops a hint of steel.

He says: "We are three different folk with three different images. At first, these comparisons were a bit frustrating. It's not a competition.

"This album isn't anything to do with anybody, it's about me and the seven guys I was in the studio with.

"It doesn't feel like anything I did on the first record. It's another start.

Another beginning.

"James Morrison is a nice guy, and I've never met James Blunt.

"But he probably gets bored with being tarred with that singer/ songwriter brush as well.

"If that's why I'm making music, to separate myself from James Blunt and James Morrison, I might as well give up.

"I've got no relevance to be here if my drive for making a record is not being them. I might as well disappear."

Paolo is currently at No.1 in the Scottish singles chart with Candy and No. 19 UK-wide.

His eclectic second album, that goes from ska to country to soul and folk, is fantastic and will be enjoyed by all music-lovers.

Whether it's the Stax sound of Coming Up Easy, the light Cat Stevens touch on Tricks Of The Trade, or the Jungle Book romp of Pencil Full Of Lead, it's an album you won't get bored of and proves Paolo won't just be, but already is, one of Scotland's best-ever acts.

He has pushed himself on this record, not only in writing and producing it with Ethan Johns, famous for his work with the Kings Of Leon, he has produced some stunning vocals.

Two tracks, side by side, sum this up.

From the high range of High Hopes to the low wheeze of Chamber Music. Yup, the old man-style voice at the start of Chamber Music is Paolo's.

Ask him why he sometimes sounds like an 80-year-old man singing on his way back from a hard day in the cotton fields, and Paolo says: "I think it might be a product of me not finding a voice that I'm comfortable putting out and nailing myself to that tag.

"While I'm not restricted to one voice, I'll try different ones.

"When I'm talking to you, I mumble and talk in quite a laidback way.

"But when I step up to a microphone, it's the last thing I want to do, so I stick my chest out and hold my head up and start singing from my belly. What comes out is a different voice.

"If I do a deadpan delivery or taper things too much, I start to dislike what I hear. And I don't think you can approach a song saying I want to sound like this person or that, or that I want to sound old."

He admits old singers such as Harry Belafonte and Louis Prima gave him confidence to "open up and be happy in front of everybody".

Paolo says: "I expanded my vocal range to see where I could go. And I was singing with a conviction that wasn't there on the first album.

"On High Hopes, it's the closest thing I've come to preaching my message. It's not a Bono moment but I wanted to push my vocals."

Paolo started recording Sunny Side Up in February last year. He wanted to write the album himself and also started producing it.

He says: "I wanted to try the producing seat to see what it entails.

"You don't need to spend all your money on the most expensive gear to get the sound you want.

"But when Ethan came in, I got a perspective of how a seasoned professional in that field does it, and I learned how to keep eight guys interested in what they are doing."

Paolo says: "For me, it is a happy record, which is why it's called Sunny Side Up. It's an expression of joy."

Whether it be the thanks to his dad on Simple Things, or his tune to childhood sweetheart and girlfriend Teri, Growing Up BesideYou, these are the songs of a man at peace with what he's doing.

He loves Scotland and will be launching Sunny Side Up at the HMV store in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, and HMV Edinburgh Picture House in Lothian Road on Monday.

He has a packed programme of festivals including Isle ofWight, Glastonbury and T in the Park.

July also sees him back in America.

He's just supersized his NewYork show at theWebster Hall, which sold out in jig time. He will now play Terminal 5 which holds 5000.

I break this news to him and, for a moment, he's speechless.

While other Brit acts may plot about trying to break America, hard graft and lots of touring have put Paolo well on his way.

He shrugs: "I've got plenty of ideas about how to crack it, but I'm not confident about executing them.

"I haven't got the brass. I just like being me."

And thousands of fans will be quite happy with that.

. Sunny Side Up is out on MondayBut we are 'James Morrison is a nice guy. different folk with different images'

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/entertainment/showbiz-news/celebrity-interviews/2009/05/29/i-thank-my-dad-for-paving-the-way-to-my-success-says-scots-singing-sensation-paolo-nutini-86908-21397754/

Paolo Nutini: New album previews exclusively here

Paolo Nutini's new album will be released on 29th May

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Thursday May 28 2009

Paolo Nutini’s much-anticipated new album "Sunny Side Up" is released on Friday 29th May on CD and download in Ireland.

Still only 22, “Sunny Side Up” is Paolo’s follow-up to his debut album “These Streets”. “These Streets” was a massively successful breakthrough for the young man from Paisley in Scotland.

It went Double Platinum in Ireland and brought him to the attention of a particularly adoring female fanbase who flocked to see him at The Ambassador, Oxegen, and at three sell-out shows at The Academy in Dublin just before Christmas last year. The album has sold more than a million copies and counting in the UK alone.

His new album was produced by Paolo with Ethan Johns (Kings Of Leon, Ryan Adams, Ray LaMontagne) and as well as the hit single “Candy” includes “Coming Up Easy”, “Growing Up Beside You”, “Tricks of the Trade”, “10/10”, “Pencil Full Of Lead”, “High Hopes” and more!

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/music/paolo-nutini-new-album-previews-exclusively-here-1748736.html

PAOLO NUTINI - PAOLO NUTINI'S QUICK WORK

Paolo Nutini is already thinking about plans for his third album, despite only releasing latest LP 'Sunny Side Up' this month.

Paolo Nutini is already preparing to start a new album.

The 'Candy' singer has just released second LP 'Sunny Side Up' but says he has no intention of taking a break from the creative process.

He said: "The current record is a collection of songs that me and the band thought were the best we had to offer. We're going to take it out on the road and then hopefully move on to the next set of songs pretty soon

"You can easily end up on tour and on the road for two years, which is what happened with the first record. This time around I want to follow up with a new album a lot quicker."

The Scottish star also admitted he hates explaining what his songs are about as he would prefer fans to create their own interpretations.

He added to DigitalSpy: "'Candy' about a scenario I've seen played out in my own life and with a few people I can relate to. The 'candy' is the buzz you get from someone who makes you want to be with them. When that candy starts to go away, it's about trying to reignite that spark.

"To be honest though, the song is meant to be open for people to figure out for themselves - I don't want to stifle the imagination."

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/article/paolo-nutinis-quick-work_1104618

Paolo Nutini

Friday, May 22 2009, 06:34 BST

By David Balls, Music Reporter

Few artists can credit their rise to fame to a former winner of Fame Academy. But for Paolo Nutini the opportunity to open for David Sneddon was just what he needed to bag himself a record deal and a one-way ticket out of dreach Paisley. One million record sales later and the 22-year-old singer is back with his second album Sunny Side Up. As he takes to the road with his band, we caught up for a chat about the record, reality TV and how he plans to outfox Lady GaGa.

You've just released your new single 'Candy' - what's the song about?
"The song's about a scenario I've seen played out in my own life and with a few people I can relate to. The 'candy' is the buzz you get from someone who makes you want to be with them. When that candy starts to go away, it's about trying to reignite that spark. To be honest though, the song is meant to be open for people to figure out for themselves - I don't want to stifle the imagination."

Is the single reflective of your new album, Sunny Side Up?
"'Candy' is slower than some of the other songs on the album, but it's reflective in the sense that it's an honest and human album. The record is a collection of songs that me and the band thought were the best we had to offer. We're going to take it out on the road and then hopefully move on to the next set of songs pretty soon."

So you're not one to trek around promoting the album for ages?
"Well, the promotional side is an inevitable aspect of what I do, but you can easily end up on tour and on the road for two years, which is what happened with the first record. This time around I want to follow up with a new album a lot quicker."

How have the songs been going down live?
"It's going really well - every date seems to me to be completely different. People have been hearing the new material for the first time and they've reacted well considering we've played almost a whole set of new songs. It can be a gamble deciding whether people will have the patience to hear all the new stuff."

Do you have any strange demands when you hit the road?
"Nothing too crazy, but I think we're going to get a bit more frivolous with our rider requests this time round. We were very modest with our last requests. I like the idea of requesting three or four velcro suits and a room backstage that's wall-to-wall velcro, so we could jump and get stuck to the wall. Then whoever was being the biggest a**hole that day can be left stuck to the wall. I think the opportunities are endless."

What about taking the lead from Lady GaGa and going for some outrageous outfits?
"I'm neither here nor there about this Lady GaGa, but she's clearly very passionate about her poker face. I think I might go for a rather fetching outfit though - something nice and risqué. I'd definitely put her to shame with what I could come up with - perhaps a nice tartan number to please my fans in the homeland?"

The original Fame Academy winner, David Sneddon, is partly responsible for your success. How did that come about?
"He was late to do a show in Paisley town hall - where we're both from - and I won a competition to sing before he came on. I suppose his tardiness gave me the opportunity to do all this. I thanked him after the show, but haven't really since him around since. I think he's down in London now doing songwriting."

Are you glad you didn't come from a reality show?
"I think so. To be honest, the first time round I didn't think Fame Academy was the worst premise in the world. You got people on and they would write songs and develop themselves as artists. But then instead of getting a little bit more credible it got a little bit more ridiculous. I think the first one was the only reality show I've ever really watched to be honest."

You're not a fan of The X Factor then?
"I like those people on the opening shows who come in and sing random songs, but the rest of it just seems like a crazy sitcom - and not one of the best sitcoms at that. It seems very transparent and follows a very standard blueprint. But at the end of the day it entertains a lot of people and if no one gets hurt and no one goes in thinking they'll have a 20-year career it's harmless."

Is it true Jade Goody chose your song 'Last Request' for her funeral?
"As far as I know she did - she used that and 'Jenny Don't Be Hasty'. I can't really say I feel that great or proud about it though. The whole whole thing was so tragic. None of it should have happened in the first place and there should never have been a funeral. All my sympathies go to her family. I guess I'm glad in some ways that my song could have meant enough for someone to want it as the soundtrack to that moment."

Sunny Side Up is released on June 1.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/music/a156766/paolo-nutini.html

Get intimate with singer Paolo

On song: Musician Paolo Nutini will perform an intimate concert

Published Date: 21 May 2009

POP star Paolo Nutini played to tens of thousands of fans when he supported The Rolling Stones at Don Valley Stadium.

But just a lucky few will see his next concert in the city - and you can't even buy a ticket.

He is the latest star to agree to an Intimate Performance, organised by Real Radio and Sheffield City Council, at the Winter Garden, on Sunday, May 31.

It follows similar performances there, for just 200 or so people, by The Feeling, Alison Moyet and Squeeze man Glenn Tilbrook. Most of the tickets will be given away to Real Radio listeners – but The Star has teamed up with the station to also give readers and web users the chance to win tickets next week. Listen to Real Radio and watch this space.

Scottish singer-songwriter Nutini, aged 22, whose father is Italian, burst onto the music scene with his debut album These Streets, which spawned the smash hit singles Last Request, Jenny Don't Be Hasty, Rewind and New Shoes.

He is currently enjoying success with the haunting new single Candy, from his forthcoming album, Sunny Side Up, out next month.

Steve South, Managing Director of Real Radio said: "We're honoured to get him. His reputation as a live performer goes before him and I know this is going to be great evening and a very hot ticket."

Sheffield City Council leader Coun Paul Scriven said: "This is a real coup for the city.

"Fifty tickets have been allocated to Sheffield's Youth Council and the BiG project for young people, giving the city's youngsters recognition for their hard work and achievements."

n Morrissey, currently on a sold out UK tour, will play Sheffield City Hall on Friday, October 30. Tickets £32.50, may be subject to a booking fee, are available on Sheffield 0114-278 9789.

http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/Get-intimate-with-singer-Paolo.5289281.jp

Evening Times May 21th 2009:

REVIEW: Paolo Nutini at the ABC

by Maureen Ellis

THERE was no sign of nerves at the ABC last night as Paolo Nutini delivered a performance oozing confidence.

The Scot was in his prime running through a range of musical genres.

He served up material from his forthcoming album Sunny Side Up and some of his hit songs for the excited crowd.

As the album doesn't go on sale until June 1, at least half of the material was new to the ears of the audience.

The country-tinged melancholy of new single Candy had happy bedfellows in Coming Up Easy and the ode to his father Simple Things.

Old favourites New Shoes, Last Request, Loving You and Jenny Don't Be Hasty were given a funky treatment thanks to his beefed up multi-instrumental band.

If the rest of his UK dates involve the same energy, fans are in for a treat.

Publication date 21/05/09

http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/display.var.2509581.0.review_paolo_nutini_at_the_abc.php

Posted 21 May 2009 07:30 PM

Scots star plays kilmarnock

The roadies checked and double checked,The wait seemed to drag on. Then at 9:45pm on came our favourite hunched scotsman,with Tuscany ,Bargo descent,Paolo Nutini to the grand hall kilmarnock on this showery sunday evening.
The audience was a mixed bunch ranging from squealing young girls,middle aged and youthful couples to big macho guys who all came to hear threads of rod stewart,70s style,mixed in with mick jagger moves and stature.

All this plus blues and soul tunes, you did not want to miss this gig.
We are privileged to have such talent appearing on out doorstep in ayrshire.
This is a young man whose vocals feature on such giant usa shows such as scrubs and greys anatomy as well as supplying soundtracks for puma ray ban ad campaigns.
The commercial giants have not failed to notice paolos appeal and catchy tunes.
Nutini hunches over as if the music is just pouring out from him like a river that you think is too fast for him to keep up.
Step in the river and then it flows ,However paolo never loses it his fabulous 6 sometimes 7 piece band are enthralled and play with such vigour and passion,again reminisent of seeing the faces live back in the apollo ,glasgow A band truly enjoying themselves.
But that is where the comparison ends unlike rod stewart of today paolo is a great songwriter His lyrics are like daisies written with such enthusiam. His debut album these streets was slightly more poppy than his follow up sunny side up.
The new songs felt more raw and deep rooted with,It appeared irish folk influnces I am sure in due course these new songs will be sang just as loud back to him as new shoes and last request were tonight from this lively audience.
Paolo loved every minute as the power of his lyrics came bounding back at him,His first ever gig in kilmarnock.
Paolo the passionate young man from paisley wowed the full house in kilmarnock and now sets off with some scottish in store appearences and gigs,festivals throughout the next few months taking him all over the world.
From atlanta to new york to switzerland.How lucky to have caught sight of him here in ayrshire before the rest of the world takes him over.

From my local paper - Ardrossan and saltcoats Herald.

The Sun

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Paolo Nutini: Bizarre live sessions

PAOLO NUTINI turned The Sun studio's into barn-stomping, hoe-down when he showcased his folk-inspired new album Sunny Side Up in a Biz Session.

Backed by his band of drummers, guitarists and even a harmonica player, the handsome Scot was on superb form as he blasted out a mix of soulful country pop that had staff members - mainly women I must add - tapping their feet.

New single Candy - in charts this week - and up-tempo Pencil Full Of Lead reveal a change in musical direction which should see the Paisley-born star trounce any lingering comparisons with JAMES BLUNT.

However Paolo revealed his disappointment at record execs' choice of first single.

He said: "Pencil Full Of Lead should have been the first release but the label wanted me to do a ballad. I like Candy but Pencil Full Of Lead is so much fun. Hopefully it will be out next."

Paolo also did his heartthrob status no harm at all by performing old favourite New Shoes on special request for one of my team.

Top lad.

Paolo's album, Sunny Side Up, follows on June 1

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/bizarre/bizsessions/article2440211.ece?OTC-RSS&ATTR=Bizsessions

Date: 20 May 2009
By Malcolm Jack
PAOLO NUTINI ****

ALHAMBRA, DUNFERMLINE

AS THE band cued up another track from his forthcoming sophomore album Sunny Side Up , Paolo Nutini politely asked of the crowd: "Afore we start, z'it okay wi' you if we play a' these new songs?" Despite his pronounced Italian good looks and the unaADVERTISEMENTshamed worship of Americana in his singing voice and lyrics, Nutini remains deeply, disarmingly Scots at heart. In middle age, possibly long after the world has forgotten his name, he'll still pack out venues like this around his home country.

With Atlantic Records' seemingly concerted effort to transform him from boyish singer-songwriter to a man who deserves a place among the classic rock canon, though, Nutini and obscurity seem unlikely to meet for a long time yet. Old favourites New Shoes, Jenny Don't Be Hasty, an acoustic These Streets and particularly the charming Last Request are memorable pop songs, but those new numbers' rich arrangements and distinctive vocal performances stand out further than any sense of calculated radio suitability.

Playing before a grand swagged curtain and a band who looked like they'd just stepped ashore from a Mississippi steamer, the waist-coated, brown-brogued Nutini essayed grizzled Dr John swamp-blues during a cover of Willie Dixon's Mellow Down Easy , pure hoedown country throughout Growing Up Beside You , and followed up an apoplectic, fist-shaking raindance during Coming Up Easy with a version of the Coasters' Down in Mexico. His gruff, old-man voice is still an acquired taste, but this evidence suggests that these new songs have been designed to eke every last drop of soulfulness from it.

http://news.scotsman.com/entertainment/Music-review-Paolo-Nutini-.5282335.jp

Reviews (2009-05-18)

Single Reviews Released 18 May 2009

Paolo Nutini - Candy: A strong first single from Paolo Nutini's new album 'Sunny Side Up', Candy shows influences like Willie Nelson, Tom Petty, and Smokey Robinson and fuses them into something completely original, delivered convincingly in Paolo's uniquely beautiful voice. I really like the song and can't wait for his album Sunny Side Up, which is released on June 1st - Just in time for summer. Paolo Nutini, for all that he can pen a decent song about buying shoes, fell firmly into that category. Or so I thought.

http://top40-charts.com/news/Reviews/Single-Reviews-Released-18-May-2009/48484.html

Paolo Nutini

KEITH BRUCE, Arts Editor

May 19 2009

Paolo Nutini Palace, Kilmarnock

****

Atlantic records founder Ahmet Ertegun, Paolo Nutini's early champion, would be proud, even if some of his successors at the label are said to be less than convinced. The remarkably-voiced Paisley lad has taken his voracious appetite for music and used it to fuel a new album of astonishing diversity. We'll see what the world makes of Sunny Side Up when it is released on the first of next month, but the eclectic mix certainly appealed to the diverse audience he attracted here, from the devoted young ladies at the front to the barn dancers further back.

His compact band has expanded to the Paolo Nutini Seven with Glasgow's veteran blues harmonica man Fraser Spiers making up half the brass section, alongside multi-skilled Welsh horn player Gavin Fitzjohn. This R'n'B review combo can turn its hand to calypso, the blues of Little Walter, a bit of ska (Ten Out of Ten) and the Cash-derived country of Simple Things with nonchalant ease. Nutini's musical mischievousness extends to a double-speed "patter" verse in that last one, and some even faster vocalese in his jive-trad curiosity Pencil Full of Lead, a clear cousin of last year's cover of King of the Swingers from The Jungle Book.

Alongside all these new flavours, there is still room for community singalongs to hits from These Streets, including Loving You, Last Request and New Shoes, and current single Candy is most clearly where the two eras come together. Although the pacing of the set needs a little work, if Nutini can take the screaming girls with him on his journey there really will be no stopping him.

Paolo Nutini is at Inverness Ironworks tonight and the ABC, Glasgow, tomorrow.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/featurespopandjazz/display.var.2508925.0.Paolo_Nutini.php

(Rated 3/ 5 )

Reviewed by Nick Hasted

Monday, 18 May 2009

Paolo Nutini began by keeping up with the Jameses, Morrison and Blunt, as all three arrived three years ago.

But Nutini's first album, These Streets, was a weirder affair, seeming to borrow from 1980s plastic soul such as Hue and Cry as much as Pop Idol-era hit machines. Since then, he has bettered Amy Winehouse as one of the Stones' chosen guest singers at the Isle of Wight Festival, and supported Led Zeppelin at their reunion. His second album, Sunny Side Up, is an insistent attempt to swerve off the packed middle-of-the-road, and follow such heroes. This 22-year-old from Paisley wants to be a soul man.

In case you didn't get the point, the man he resembles tonight is Joe Cocker. He hunches towards the crowd, finger wagging, like a man who wants to be older than his years. When he dances he is trying to manufacture the testifying transport of an Otis, as Cocker did from a similarly unlikely Sheffield start. The new crack in the grain of Nutini's gravel-throated voice is a further attempt to prematurely carve experience into his sound, the way Rod Stewart chain-smoked himself to huskiness. When he sings "they washed our bodies clean", you know he's thinking of the Mississippi, not Paisley's demure River Cart.

This can all feel a bit forced. It's a relief when Nutini tries out a country croon on "Simple Things", and sings "Loving You" perfectly straight, the crack in his voice mysteriously fixed. New single "Candy" starts that way, Nutini lazily grinning at its intimately suggestive lyrics. But then he tears it open with that rough powerhouse roar.

He has already copied the Jagger cockerel strut he observed at close quarters on a couple of blues shouters, where percussive harmonica aimed for the heart of 1964. On "Down in Mexico" his vocal affectations are swamped in a swinging honky-tonk tear-up: the band let him get lost in a genuine excitement that he tries too hard to work up to elsewhere. Later, "Tricks of the Trade" shows off his enduring talent as a big pop balladeer.

You suspect that Nutini won't mind if his about-turn makes his appeal a little more selective. Just so long as there's a crowd who'll let him sweat and dream of Memphis.

May 14, 2009

Paolo Nutini at Electric Ballroom, NW1

David Sinclair

Watch a video interview with Paolo Nutini

Paolo Nutini makes the star-making process look as easy as falling off a log. The singer from Paisley is still only 22 and his first album, These Streets, has notched up sales in excess of 2 million copies. The follow-up, Sunny Side Up, will be released on June 1, but rather than launch it in a blaze of hype, Nutini is out on the road with his ever-reliable backing band, the Vipers, reconnecting with his core fans at a string of comparatively modest venues. His show at the Electric Ballroom was a masterclass in how to shoot for the very top of the mass entertainment world while maintaining a firm grasp on your musical roots.

Nutini has always drawn inspiration from a variety of unlikely sources — trad jazz, country and western, music hall — while remaining a sharp, modern pop operator. The songs from the new album found him doing exactly this with even greater confidence and style.

Pencil Full of Lead was a rip-roaring vaudeville stomp, during which a part-time horn section performed like a New Orleans band at a wedding party. Ten out of Ten was borne aloft on an infectious reggae/bluebeat groove, while Coming Up Easy was a gentle blue-eyed soul song of a kind that hasn’t been heard much since the heyday of the late Robert Palmer. Candy, the new single released next Monday, was simply the most gorgeous, melancholy pop ballad.

Nutini’s voice, with it’s slightly gruff edge in the higher register, adjusted perfectly to each of these genres, and his Glaswegian brogue lent regional charm and a seal of authenticity to his lyrics — there was no fake Americana, Jamaicana or any other-ana here, despite the far-flung provenance of the various musical styles.

The old hits, including Last Request, These Streets and New Shoes, sounded like pop standards already, and the more traditional rock’n’roll ode to an older woman, Jenny Don’t Be Hasty, provided a gloriously buoyant encore. Nutini will probably turn into Rod Stewart by the time he is 30. Remember him this way.

Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton, tonight; Aberdeen Music Hall, May 16; Grand Hall, Kilmarnock, May 17; Alhambra, Dunfermline, May 18

Have your say

After desperately trying to get tickets for the Ballroon gig i managed to squeeze a few for Norwich.The drive from London was totally worth it as Nutini was fantastic,he a has a great set of pipes and certainly can use them , he really knows how to deliver every song he sings and the Vipers were hot

Patrice , London, UK

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/music/live_reviews/article6281198.ece

PAOLO NUTINI’S A PUPPETRY FAN

ABOVE: Paolo Nutini

15th May 2009

Scotish heart-throb Paolo Nutini took a year out from music to take up shadow puppetry!

It has been three years since the singing sensation released his hugely successful debut These Streets.

But Paolo hasn't just been twiddling his thumbs - or has he?

He said: "I've been getting better at finger shadow puppetry after buying a great little book, which is called 20 Shadow Puppets That Everyone Loves To Make.

"Chicks dig it. Imagine using the chat-up line: 'Do you want to come and see me do some shadow puppets?' Some require two people.

Maybe I'll incorporate them into my next live show.

"Between seeing my girlfriend and the shadow puppets, I haven't had much time for anything else."

Seems making animal shapes with his digits also encouraged a fresh confidence.

Paolo, 20, pictured here on the video set of his new single Candy, said: "My record label originally marketed me as a pop singles artist and put a lot of money into the videos. But I wasn't really backing it up. I didn't have the charisma or the desire to back it up.

"Once I started gigging my music more I received better feedback, even off artists like Paul Weller. It started to give me an idea that I was better than I was allowing myself to be. I decided just to tour rather than do some bullshit TV show."

The result is a more mature and folky second album called Sunny Side Up, which is out on June 1.

Paolo, 22, said: "I do feel a lot happier and a lot comfortable in the music that I'm putting out."

Get your mitts on the fantastic Candy from Monday.

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/playlist/view/80793/Paolo-Nutini-s-a-puppetry-fan/

Paolo Nutini and The Panics
DAVID POWLES
12 May 2009

Review

Paolo Nutini supported by The Panics at Norwich UEA

There's quite a buzz surrounding tonight's support act The Panics and as such the UEA is virtually full by the time the five-piece arrive on-stage.

The Australian band already have three albums behind them, are a big hit in their homeland and popular in the US, but are only now making serious waves in the UK.

However, judging by their stuff tonight that could all be about to change as their melodic, guitar and keyboard-led indie goes down a real hit with the crowd.

They're a real smorgasbord of sounds, part Grandaddy, part Midlake, part The Decemberists, part Nick Cave and even part Beta Band.

They're a real joy to listen to and well worth further exploration.

As singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini bounded on stage I suddenly wondered if I had come to the right gig.

The fresh-faced Scottish youngster's arrival is greeted with screams and cat-calls more befitting a boy band from many of the female members of tonight's audience.

However, the 22-year-old is more than just a pretty face and his debut album These Streets contains some real gems, such as New Shoes, Jenny Don't be Hasty and Last Request, all of which get the warm reception they deserve.

With a forthcoming album to plug, Sunny Side Up out on June 1, Nutini chooses to play a mix of stuff from his debut album and several new tracks.

And at times it feels like we are being given a quick lesson on the history of music as Nutini and his backing band plug into numerous different styles, including soul, country, reggae, blues and even a bit of jazz.

It's all very enjoyable, and the strength of Nutini's voice cannot be questioned, but you can't help thinking that it's a bit like watching a really good tribute band. Your just waiting for them to knock out a version of the soul classic Try A Little Tenderness.

As such its his aforementioned hits which really stand out and you are left feeling that if only he could find 'his' own sound, then we would have a real star in the making.

The Times May 7, 2009
Paolo Nutini returns with Sunny Side Up

Veronica Schmidt

You can take the boy out of Paisley, but you can't take Paisley out of the boy ... as Paolo Nutini's new album shows

By Adrian Thrills
Last updated at 11:08 PM on 07th May 2009

He has supported Led Zeppelin, shared a stage with The Rolling Stones, turned down the chance to perform at Jade Goody's nuptials ('with the best will in the world, I couldn't think of anything less tasteful than singing Last Request at the wedding of a woman who was dying'), and had two of his songs played at the late reality TV star's funeral.

Clearly, in the world of showbusiness, Paolo Nutini has arrived. And yet, and yet. When I meet the 22-year-old singer to discuss his new album, it's obvious he feels he still has a lot to prove. And to explain.

Nutini emerged, three years ago, alongside fellow singer-songwriters James Blunt and James Morrison. All three were fresh-faced, home-grown and hunky, prompting critics to lump them together as part of a new wave of British solo talent.

Paolo's progress: Although he has clearly arrived in the world of showbusiness, the 22-year-old Scottish singer still feels he has a lot to prove

But being marketed as a pretty boy of pop rankled with the husky-voiced Nutini, who wound up disguising his good looks beneath the sort of scruffy beard and barnet normally seen on men sleeping in cardboard boxes.

'When I made my first album in 2006, the label wasted their money on airbrushed photos and bright, shiny videos,' says Paolo, now thankfully clean-shaven again.

'I have a good relationship with my label (Atlantic Records), and the guys there do their jobs for a good reason, but the image they were pushing only served me well up to a certain point. If they had continued to promote me as a polished pop star, I'd have eventually fallen flat on my face.'

Paolo believes, with good reason, that any lingering comparisons with Blunt and Morrison will be irrelevant once fans have had a chance to listen to his new record, Sunny Side Up.

Out next month, it is a wildly eclectic affair that augments the pop-soul ballads of old with ragtime jazz, ska and some folky laments that hark back to his upbringing.

Enlarge

'That whole wave of male singer-songwriters was a funny thing,' he tells me. 'I'd already finished recording my first album before I heard about James Blunt. Then he released You're Beautiful and the whole thing just exploded.

'Then James Morrison came along, and he even looked a bit like me! He did have a better beard, though. Luckily, we've all grown up since then and moved in different directions.'

Paolo's debut album, These Streets, sold a million in the UK and saw him chart with singles such as Last Request and Rewind.

One of the first major acts to spot his potential was Paul Weller, who invited him onstage in New York, while the young Scot also guested with veteran soul men Solomon Burke, Percy Sledge and Quincy Jones.

His two most high-profile cameos, however, came when he sang Love In Vain with The Rolling Stones at the Isle Of Wight Festival and then performed in Bill Wyman's band at the Ahmet Ertegun tribute concert, headlined by Led Zeppelin, at the O2 Arena in December 2007.

'Playing with the Stones gave me a real insight into why they keep going. Their career hasn't always been a bed of roses, but they are like blood brothers. A lot of old groups end up as museum pieces, but they are still a real working band.

'When Ronnie Wood sits down with his lap-steel and Keith Richards digs out his Gibson, you get the feeling that they are in exactly the right place. Supporting Zeppelin was different. Robert Plant was fantastic, but I got the impression he's no longer comfortable playing the Rock God with his hips shaking and long, blond hair flying.'

The Led Zep after-show gathering at the O2 also gave Nutini a chance to mingle with some of his heroes, including soul legend Ben E. King, who helped him patch up a lovers' tiff with long-term girlfriend Teri Brogan.

'I was having a row with Teri,' says Paolo. ' I can't remember who started it, or what it was about. Ben E. King simply advised me to be a man about it.

'He told me that it was important to keep my girlfriend happy and not try to walk all over her.'

Nutini also made news last month when two of his songs, Last Request and Jenny Don't Be Hasty, were played at Jade Goody's funeral. But, while he is quick to extend his sympathies to her family, the singer seems uncomfortable at the exposure he received.

'I was never that aware of Jade during her lifetime. I knew she'd been on Big Brother and had made some outspoken comments, but I thought that the Press coverage of her death was strange. Somebody asked me whether I wanted to perform at her wedding but I just couldn't.

'It was touching that one of my songs could mean so much to someone, and I offer all the love in the world to her husband and sons. But, as much as I didn't want to say no, I had to decline.'

Paolo, who was living with his parents when his first album came out, recently bought a house in Paisley and he retains a strong emotional bond with his hometown.

His parents still own and run the local chippy, The Castelvecchi, a shop that has been passed down through the generations ever since the Nutini clan emigrated from Tuscany to Scotland around the time of World War I.

He attributes his love of music to his late grandfather, Giovanni, who introduced him to the Scottish folk tradition, and his father's fondness for classic Sixties soul.

His first big break came when he won a local talent show, and he sealed his record deal after moving briefly to London in 2005.

Now, with his new album ready and his current UK tour a prelude to festival appearances in the summer, Nutini aims to cement his position as an artist of enduring quality.

'In an ideal world, I wouldn't want to wait two or three years between albums, but that's the way the music industry works. It's been three years since my first album and that's too long.'

Paolo Nutini's new single, Candy, is out on May 18. The album, Sunny Side Up, follows on June 1. His UK tour continues tonight at the O2 Academy, Liverpool.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/reviews/article-1178500/You-boy-Paisley-Paisley-boy---Paolo-Nutinis-new-album-shows.html

Paolo Nutini: Candy

Wednesday, 29 Apr 2009 17:53

Paolo Nutini's new single Candy is released on May 18th

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Check out the fantastic new effort from the gravelly-voiced Scot ahead of his second album.

It's hard to believe that Paolo Nutini is still only 22 years old, for he has already achieved so much, from his hometown of Paisley (Scotland) to Carnegie Hall, from Brit award nominations to supporting Led Zeppelin at their infamous O2 reunion show.

He returns this summer with his wonderful new LP Sunny Side Up, the follow-up to his 2006 debut album These Streets, which has sold over 2.3 million worldwide including over 1.3 million in the UK.

Ahead of the album's June release, check out the lead single Candy, released on May 18th.

Written by Paolo, Sunny Side Up was recorded in a host of places including Ireland, Wales, New York, LA and Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in Bath, which is reflected by the celtic sway and motown feel to the album. It was produced by Paolo and Ethan Johns (Kings Of Leon).

Sunny Side Up is a record full of warm sentiments and dazzling sounds, courtesy of Paolo's band the Vipers, tied together by Paolo's distinctive vocal, one of the most unique vocals to come out of the UK for many years, a mesmerising soulful voice that has no equal - he has never sounded better.

Candy is one of the many standout tracks, infectious and beautiful in equal measure. Other highlights include the soulful swing of Coming Up Easy, Pencil Full Of Lead sees Paolo's vocal bounce along at its show-stopping best and Worried Man is a heart pulling ode enhanced by strings and the tear in Paolo’s voice.

In support of his new LP, Paolo makes festival appearances in the US (Coachella) and in the UK (T in the Park, Oxygen and V) and will be touring the UK in May.

May 2nd – Lincoln Engine Shed
May 3rd – Preston 53 Degrees
May 8th - Liverpool Academy
May 11th – Norwich UEA
May 12th – London Electric Ballroom
May 13th – Bristol Academy
May 14th – Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall
May 16th – Aberdeen Music Hall
May 17th - Kilmarnock Grand Hall
May 18th – Dunfermline Alhambra
May 19th – Inverness Ironworks
May 20th – Glasgow ABC

http://www.inthenews.co.uk/infocus/entertainment/music/paolo-nutini-candy-$1291723.htm

It must be difficult being Paolo Nutini. Your debut album was one of 2006's slow burn successes, eventually selling over half a million copies in the UK alone, but as quickly as supermarket buyers snapped up These Streets you could feel the few scraps of critical goodwill it enjoyed slipping away.
Such is the fate of soulful, young singer-songwriters from these shores. James Morrison is another like-minded artist who has been in the firing line, understandably so - his second album is frankly awful.

So the question is whether Nutini can change critics' perceptions while retaining his sizeable fanbase. Unfortunately, what the Paisley born artist has come up with on Sunny Side Up is baffling.

While These Streets was chock full of slick ballads and winning pop melodies, from a commercial and mainstream viewpoint the new album is an artistic folly on a grand scale. Secretly, Sunny Side Up is bonkers in a good old-fashioned English sense and Nutini's devil may care attitude should be applauded by all right-minded lovers of artistic sidesteps.

10/10 opens the album up with a full-blown blast of old time reggae, with Nutini declaiming that "some people want to speed it up/in fact I want to slow it down". As a summary of Sunny Side Up's laidback, stoner philosophy it couldn't really be put any better.

The opening track also introduces Nutini's new style of singing, which sounds like he has aged 50 years since These Streets. Slurring like he has a mouth full of molasses, Nutini's vocals are initially very discomfiting but gradually charm the open-minded listener into submission.

Coming Up Easy is the closest track in style to the debut, with its lolloping mid-tempo beat and swirling organ, although towards the end Nutini lets rip in a manner reminiscent of the old soul artists he so clearly worships.

Oddly, this is an album that steers closer to rootsier concerns than old Otis Redding recordings. Growing Up Beside You is the first of several overtly folk-influenced tracks, its gentle sway redolent of old sea shanties.

Even the single Candy starts off as a mid-tempo country rocker, albeit one that may just rescue this album by gaining some extended radio play. Typically, the few times it has been played on mainstream stations the extended and quite beautiful full rock workout that closes the track has been cruelly nipped in the bud. Don't perplex the busy mums, Paolo.

After this highlight, Sunny Side Up swiftly moves into very esoteric territory. Tricks Of The Trade is a winning acoustic ballad but the mood is shattered by the faux-ragtime of Pencil Full Of Lead. When even the Pussycat Dolls can't get away with flapper chic then Nutini should have left well alone.

Elsewhere on the second half of the album, we have the soft crooning shenanigans of No Other Way, the offbeat reggaeisms of High Hopes, Irish tin whistles on Chamber Music, and a good old fashioned country hoedown on Simple Things.

The one track that really connects is the penultimate Worried Man, an oddly endearing sing-along that also boasts the album's best lyric. The stoic country melancholy of Keep Rolling plays Sunny Side Up out at a volume that will barely register with most Radio 1 listeners.

Who exactly will buy Sunny Side Up? Mainstream listeners run a mile at the slightest hint of musical eclecticism, while the hipper than thou indie kids are hardly likely to hear anything to tickle their fancy if they even bother to give the album a spin. What is left is a very small fanbase willing to indulge their hero's artistic folly.

- Nic Oliver

http://www.musicomh.com/albums/paolo-nutini-2_0509.htm

Vocal Hero
Paolo Nutini may well be a big noise, but his heart is in his humble Italian family roots … and family values. Vicky Allan chills out with the singer with a big soul

THE VOICE was always a mismatch, as if it came from some place other than the skinny young man with the bed-head hair, who was just a teen back in 2006 when he crooned out the single New Shoes. Now the disparity is, perhaps, even more jarring. Paolo Nutini is sitting in the corner of a hotel lounge, hair trimmed back to open up his face, tanned from a video shoot in Cuba, and he couldn't look less like the life-worn carcass his new album, Sunny Side Up, brings to mind. The last three years of touring have swelled his vocal range, giving his voice the feel of the gravelled, ageing folk artist, the reggae king and the blues veteran. When Nutini opens his mouth and talks, though, he could be almost any kid plucked from the streets of Paisley. "A lot of people talk massively differently from the way they sing," he says. "I met Ray LaMontagne and he spoke really lightly, just gently saying, Hey man.'"

In conversation, Nutini has the air of the big-hearted old soul singer, his talk littered with "hey man" and words of laid-back wisdom. He flashes a warm smile and talks about loving his male friends. "With my mates back home in Paisley, I won't be shy in saying, Love you' to them. Of course I wasn't always like that. You don't grow up in Paisley going, Love you, man.' They'd turn on you." Whenever he gives out his autograph now, he writes: "Big Love." "You get some guys going, F***ing love? What's this?' I'm like, Come on, man, you were sitting listening to Bob Marley yesterday and now you're wound up because I wrote love' on your bit of paper. That makes no sense.'"

It's not just the voice but Nutini's whole persona that comes across as old beyond his years. Many of his lyrics seem to come from the depths of a soul that has walked the Earth long enough to wear the soles of his new shoes bald. "It takes a worried man to sing a worried song," he croons on one number. This could all seem like a bit of an affectation, except that somewhere in him does appear to be this man twice his age. In one of his new songs, Simple Things, he pays tribute to the values of his father, a man who has worked all his days in the family fish and chip shop, the Castelvecchi in Paisley, just to "live the simple life".
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"I just wanted to let him know that I feel the same way," says Nutini. "That I'm not on some mad chase in life. I know the things I like having around and I know that I'm going to keep them."

At one point, he refers to his long-term girlfriend and childhood sweetheart, Teri Brogan, as his partner. Does he always calls her that? I mean, he's just 22 years old. "I'll call her anything from my partner to my baby," he says. "But partner' seems right because she's more than a girlfriend. I suppose, I say partner' because we're a team."

The new single, Candy, I had heard, was based on an argument he had with Brogan. Nutini shakes his head. "It's nothing as specific as that, more just what was going on in our relationship. Some people are asking if the line Give me some candy' is about drugs or sex. For me candy' is the buzz, the kick that you get off a person: the sweetness, the sugar, the cherry on the top of the whole relationship." Nutini and a number of his friends were in a similar situation of being in relationships that were working on autopilot and seeing the possibility of things coming to an end. "In this song I'm saying, OK, it's not good, but I don't want to run away. I'll do anything for you. I'll wash your clothes, but just give me the kick, give me the candy.'"

He played it a few times to Brogan without commenting on it. "When I explained what it was about, she was surprised and it was a lot more touching for her," he says. Undoubtedly Brogan and he must have had their rough times over the past couple of years. But even when the tabloids were reporting that Sienna Miller had the hots for Nutini, he was saying, "I love my girlfriend, and that's that."

"We've had some good times together over the past year," he says. "She's been able to come to see me and stay with me for a while and experience the same things, so there's no real divide." Now that another period apart is about to begin, he believes that they are "both ready for it". Brogan, a Strathclyde University marketing graduate, works in Glasgow, and he says: "It's her time to go and do her thing. It's all about her now, about her getting where she wants to go and finding her feet."

Though his values sometimes seem to belong to another era, caught in a nostalgia that you could easily blame on listening to too much soul, Motown, folk, and country, they're in no way self-consciously adopted. He really does believe in the simple things that form the foundations of his father's life: loyalty, marriage, the family. He likes the idea of the long marriage, the young loves that last it out - as is the case with his parents Alfredo and Linda, who met when they were young. "You could say they've got a fairytale story going on," says Nutini. "They have been together their whole lives and are still going strong. Maybe it's the kind of people they are, man - that's the secret. I mean, they've fought, they've argued and stuff, but they always seem to sort it out. Their inclination is never just to head for tthe hills."

For this album, he says, he doesn't want to "give it all out" for the press and the media, as he did when he was promoting his platinum-selling debut These Streets. He wants to retain a bit of mystery. "I'm just trying to claw it back a bit. I didn't really care as much last time. I would just say stuff. I suppose you've got to learn to tread a bit softer." Before These Streets was even released, Nutini had found himself in the thick of it, performing at an Atlantic Records concert at Carnegie Hall, seemingly plucked from obscurity by the label's founder, Ahmet Ertegun. His experiences since then have been wonderful, overwhelming, strange and at times troubling. "It's funny because I can remember what it was all about, and I remember little key bits, but it's almost like I never lived it," he says.

Certain obsessions of the media perplex him. As he ploughs into a plate of the hotel's haddock in sauce, I laugh at the fact that he is just eating an upmarket version of the Castelvecchi supper. "I tried to order the salmon," he says, "but they didn't have it. But it's weird with the fish and chip shop. You go to France, and you hear them talking about you, and then the words in English fish and chips'. I mean, it is the best fish and chip shop ever, but it's just a fish and chip shop nonetheless. It's not like I encouraged it. I never went about saying, My dad's got a fish and chip shop in Paisley'."

Nevertheless, the urge to coat Nutini's image in the nostalgic, greasy batter of the chip shop is strong, and I can't help asking more questions about the Castelvecchi. Do they ever get Paolo tourists visiting it? "A few people do come in," he shrugs. How is it handling the recession? "It's been there for generations 120 years for a reason," he says. "It doesn't seem that dispensable with the people of Paisley. Maybe we'll do something with the single - buy a fish supper and get a single' or something like that, then me and my dad can both do OK off it."

He has not been back to Paisley much in the past few years. He bought a house there but rarely stays in it. "I've been kind of dotted around," he says, "with no consistent time anywhere." Of course, he still enthuses that this home "is a great little place, man, got loads of space, sound-proofed basement, nice garden for when the sun comes". And he tells plenty of family stories, of his grandfather's singing voice, for instance, and its influence on his own. "Maybe it was just him playing songs on the piano when I was really young that was the beginnings of my voice," he says. "He would sing all these old arias. The Italian music in my family is quite an influence on my voice."

Italy, indeed, is strong in him: the result, not least, of many holidays spent in Barga, Tuscany. He talks about buying a vineyard out there, and imagines his father would grow the grapes. Is that something his father wants to do? "I'm pretty sure he wouldn't complain if that was all he had to do. Hopefully, he's going to be able move there soon and enjoy some sun."

Listening to Sunny Side Up, it seems there are many different Paolo Nutinis, all of them reminiscent of other big, classic voices: strains of Otis Redding, Louis Armstrong, John Martyn, Johnny Cash and others. Even at school in Paisley, he recalls that he was never really into one style of music or one band. "I never got involved with bands, purely because most of the bands wanted to be like Metallica or Nirvana," he says. Instead, he sang solo, discovering that if you "sang a ballad, you got the girl".

So, which of the Paolo Nutinis on this album is the real him? He points out that it's not uncommon for an artist to have a few different voices. "Listen to Tom Waits and he has about five," he says. "At first you notice them as different but once you've heard them they all seem like Tom Waits." He says he never thinks about other people's voices when he is recording or singing. Rather, he creates his sound through a kind of synaesthesia. "This may sound funny," he says, "but for me it's all about images in my head. I think about the atmosphere I want to paint. Then I'm able to sing a song rather than think about the performance. Visualising opens up my voice a whole lot more."

Will this album be the big seller his first one was? It's hard to say. Nutini is not yet the big star and guaranteed hit. As his manager says, he is "like a best-kept secret. He's had these big hits and yet there's something really anonymous about him". There have, Nutini confesses, been tensions behind the scenes about the direction his music has taken, with executives pushing for more obvious Radio 1 type songs. And yet he has fought to keep the album as it is. "Once the politics crept in and all the suits got involved, that was when doubts started to get into my head about songs and about the commercial thing," he says. "And, in a way, that's sharpened my sense of what I do."

His schedule is hectic, and yet he still seems chilled, a little lost in his own time. He has a promotional gig to do with his band The Vipers tonight and there is a schedule of flights, meetings and interviews. "I'm just waiting to see what happens," he says. "I've been driven so differently for the past three years. I don't really know what it will be like, whether I'll just be able to brace myself and get on with it. Maybe I might breeze through it, maybe not. Maybe I might just crumble." He speaks like a young man who has already walked a long way in his once new shoes. And will probably walk a good deal further.

Sunny Side Up by Paolo Nutini is released on June 1st. The single Candy is released on May 18th

http://www.sundayherald.com/life/people/display.var.2505640.0.vocal_hero.php

Det har været diskuteret, om det er et nyt fænomen, at piger/kvinder smider deres lingeri op til Paolo. Det er det åbenbart ikke

Det her må vel være en af Paolos tidligste tekster
Se den lige, og han var kun 11 år, da han skrev den. Det var jo åbenlyst, at han

skulle blive til en stor poet.

Hvis du har svært ved at læse teksten, kan du se den ved at følge dette link.

http://ukforums.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/6351037971/m/42210794811

Rolling Stone

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More Rock News, Led Zeppelin Reunion

On the Bus With Paolo Nutini: Kid Rock Stories, Drinks, “Guitar Hero” Battles

9/13/07, 4:11 pm EST

After Amy Winehouse called her tour off due to that pesky exhaustion problem, twenty-year-old Scottish singer-songwriter Paolo Nutini forged ahead alone for what is now a headlining tour of North America. “New Shoes” Nutini (who is now booked for the Led Zeppelin-headling tribute show to his record label mentor, Ahmet Ertegun) let Rock & Roll Daily take a look inside his tour bus before his show at the Fillmore in New York last night. Twelve people are packed onto the bus for a tour that already seen Nutini playing with Elvis Costello and Feist, and partying with VMAs lightweight champ Kid Rock. Unfortunately, Nutini insisted that the band had “obviously hidden the drugs and guns” before we hopped aboard, but take a look at our photo tour to get a taste of the singer’s drinking philosophy, Guitar Hero insecurities and tales of buses that keep moving without drivers.

Crystal Nicholson

Paolo er udnævnt æresborger i den by, hans fars familie oprindeligt kom fra i Italien. Her ser du overrækkelsen af æresbeviset:-)

Dette er Paolos autograf. Der står.

Happy Birthday
Big Love

Paolo

Se det morsommeste interview med Paolo her:

http://video.sina.com.cn/ent/y/2008-08-07/141221959.shtml

Paolo Nutini

LIKE MANY OF THE GREAT SINGERS, Paolo Nutini doesn't speak in words the way he sings in song. Engage him in conversation, and you'll be greeted with a hefty Scottish brogue, his accent thick enough to spread on bread. But when he sings, something rather miraculous happens: the accent remains (Paolo isn't one of those vocalists who turns American when faced with a microphone), but his voice lifts, lightens and becomes exquisitely mellifluous. Listen to the ribald Jenny Don't Be Hasty from his forthcoming debut album, These Streets, and his vocal cords, a mixture of gravel and honey, bring to mind a young Joe Cocker fronting The Faces. Fair enough, you'd think, if the man was middle-aged, nicotine-addled, and fighting both a weight problem and a lifelong inability to maintain relationships with women, but Paolo Nutini is none of these things. He is Scottish, and just 19 years old. God alone knows where the voice comes from, then, but one thing is already abundantly clear: this boy's a natural.

"Och, I've never had anything as formal as vocal lessons," he says - and what he says next brings slight colour to his cheeks, "but I did sing in the school choir for a while. That was tough. As you can imagine, not a whole lot of guys take to singing in a place like Paisley, and it must be said that there was never a particularly big queue to join the choir."

But there were some benefits to being part of it, not least for a young man with Italian blood running through his Scottish veins: "Basically, it was me surrounded by all these girls. That was fun."

While the choir's choice of songs were hardly firm favourites of Paolo's, one teacher, with a sideline in jazz piano, quickly spotted his prodigious talent, and together they collaborated on more soulful songs.

"Initially, I'd wanted to be a football player," he confesses, "specifically a goalkeeper. But the more I sang, the more I realised it was just something I could do, almost without effort. I was hardly going to walk away from that, was I?"

By 16, he was on the road with his friends band, a short lived Glasgow indie act. Paolo acted as part-time roadie for them: he'd sell the band's T-shirts at tour venues, and get on stage as the support. Music was clearly his abiding love, but at this stage in his early life, he was already staring down the barrel of a familial tradition from which there seemed little escape.

â€œI always thought I would carry on in the family business in the chippyâ€ But destiny was to intervene here, in a most unlikely manner.

"You remember David Sneddon, right?" he says.

David Sneddon, of course, was the winner of the BBC's inaugural Fame Academy four years ago. The rather earnest singer-songwriter was from Paisley, and so his triumph on the show was very much a big deal back home. For his anticipated return from the bright lights of Television Centre, the local council had booked out the town hall for his first proper concert. But Sneddon, in the way of pop stars, was delayed on his journey back, and the audience was getting restless. A local radio presenter, in the way of local radio presenters, then bounded on stage and held an impromptu pop quiz, the winner of which would get to sing a couple of songs to the crowd. Paolo, almost in spite of himself, won.

"Initially, I was like, no way am I going up there," he says. But his girlfriend, who had dragged him along to the concert in the first place, insisted otherwise. And so there he stood, facing his very first audience. Seconds ticked by and then, finally, he let loose with that voice that, by rights, should belong to someone else entirely. The crowd went wild, and in the audience was the man who would go on to become Paolo's manager.

"And shortly after, I was moving to London to become a singer, and to record an album," he says, still bewildered at this unexpected turn of events. "Of course, I told my dad I'd stay and do what was expected, but he wouldn't hear of it."

The chips and Mars bars would have to be deep-fried without him. But the chip shopâ€™s losswas very clearly music's gain.

FOUR YEARS ON, and Paolo Nutini arrives on the scene as a fully fledged, fully formed artist. His album, These Streets, sounds nothing like a debut should sound. It is rounded and mature, reigned in and robust, and oozes both a subtle poise and a very determined lyrical kick. He sounds like he has been a songwriter for several lifetimes already, and he sings with the welly of a young Joe Cocker fronting The Faces, or like an old Motown troubadour with his heart on his sleeve and sex on his mind.

"Basically, the album is an autobiographical journey, a diary if you like, of my last three years," he says.

It follows his departure from his beloved Paisley to his arrival in the sprawling London (with the title track's aching lament, "Where it takes you about an hour to cross the road/Just to stumble across another poor old soul"), to his experience with women. Rewind, for example, concerns his first sexual experience at the age of 16 ("When I kissed you in the hallway and took you straight to bed"), to Last Request's pleading for "one last time" before he and his girlfriend split up. And then thereâ€™s the aforementioned Jenny Don't Be Hasty, about an older woman he met last year in London's 12 Bar.

"She was 23, see, so I told her I was 22 - and she believed me," he grins. "In fact, I was 18."

Things were going well, the sex was terrific, but three weeks down the line he decided to come clean. Imagining the scenario before it happened, Paolo was convinced they would laugh about it, have a couple of drinks and then tumble into bed. It didn't quite turn out that way.

"She told me to fuck off, to get out of her face," he laughs. "A few days later, I got a text from her, confirming my dismissal. I haven't seen her since."

Sexual ruminations aside, he does emotional bruising beautifully, too. The closing Alloway Grove, for example, is about returning home to Paisley wondering whether his girlfriend has been unfaithful while he was away ("Has she been naked in her room since I've been gone?"), while Autumn, perhaps the album's most poignant moment, concerns his late grandfather.

"He was a big music lover, my Nonno. He loved boogie woogie piano, he adored opera, and it was him that really encouraged me to sing. He always wanted somebody in the family to make music their living. He's not around to see it, unfortunately, but I'm doing just what he wanted, and I'm doing it in his honour."

HE MAY STILL ostensibly be a new name, but Paolo has been on the circuit for almost half a decade now. Consequently, this young man already has quite a fanbase. His just-completed UK tour, for instance, was all sold out. His debut single Last Request has been picking up plays on national and regional radio stations along with video channels two months before its official release. And he is already scheduled to perform on Parkinson, at which point, we can safely assume, Paolo Nutini will no longer be Britain's best kept secret, but an emergent, bonafide star in his own right, universally hailed the best new singer in the country.

"Everything that has happened to me so far has been really good, really fluent," he says. "There's been a few bumps along the way, sure, but nothing fatal. I feel in a good spot right now, and all I want is for enough people to identify with my songs so I can keep on singing them. I like to think theyâ€™re worth hearing."

He's not wrong.

http://www.ukundercurrent.com/

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****

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Paolo Nutini
Sunny Side Up

Paolo Nutini: You can find fulfilment through fame
Wednesday, 01 Jul 2009 12:52

The Times May 7, 2009
Paolo Nutini returns with Sunny Side Up