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 While writing and recording the songs composing
her new album, Sunday Love,
Fefe Dobson learned the
hard way how to make a great album: keep getting your heart broken. The
destructive power of love and love lost and the diary entries they
spawned are at the core of the Canadian firecracker’s second disc, and
it’s what enables her to skirt the mythic sophomore jinx with ease.
On the heels of the success of her 2003
self-titled debut—which spawned the massive MTV/TRL smash “Take Me
Away,” and even landed her a “Got Milk?” ad (but more on that
later)—Dobson returns with an album on which she offers both apologies
and the middle finger to former lovers in songs like “This Is My Life”
and “Scar.”
The album’s 14 tracks proudly bear the influence
of ‘80s pop and ‘90s punch. Some of the biggest hitmakers from both
decades either co-wrote, produced or served as enormous inspirations for
the disc. While ex-Veruca Salt hottie Nina Gordon adds backing vocals,
the songs themselves were co-authored by the likes of Billy Steinberg
(“Like a Virgin,” “Eternal Flame”), Matthew Wilder (“Break My Stride,”
producer of No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom) and ex-Marilyn
Manson guitarist John5. She also collaborated with Rancid’s Tim
Armstrong, Cyndi Lauper and Joan Jett early on in the songwriting
process.
As a result, Sunday Love finds the 20-year-old
Dobson—who wrote and recorded her celebrated 2003 debut between the ages
of 15 and 16—coming into her own as a singer and writer. While Sunday
Love is most definitely her “Love Kills” album, Dobson says it’s just as
much about her musical growth. And no one was as key to that growth as
Wilder, who co-produced and co-authored four songs: “Scar,” “Be Strong,”
“Man Meets Boy,” and “If I Was a Guy.”
“I fell in and out of love so many times making
this record, and he was always there when it happened,” Dobson says. “I
went through a really bad breakup with my boyfriend and no matter what
happened, I had a session with Matthew the next day. So it was good that
way, because right after I had a breakup or right after I was really
emotional, I would be able to put it into music. Matthew and I would
just sit there and talk about life, and he helped me through things, and
then we’d just write songs, like two songs a day. I had my diary, and I
was like, ‘Do you want to hear things from my diary?’ and he was like
‘Okay,’ and I started reading him poetry.”
If Wilder was her therapist, then John5 was “like
my inner anger. He helped me get my inner anger out. And Billy was like
my inner sap.”
But the writing process wasn’t all tears and
tissues. “Yeah, Yeah, Yeah” is a light, thrashin’ pop track, while “Miss
Vicious” is a study of stalkers and their prey. “As a Blonde” laughs out
loud at our culture’s fascination with blondes, be they pop stars or
not. “Man Meets Boy,” meanwhile, examines child abuse.
Musically, Dobson was looking to inject a bit of
the teeth-kicking bombast from some of her favorite ‘90s albums: “I
really wanted to go for that old school, like, riot girrrl thing. I
wanted there to be some like ‘80s synth stuff, but I wanted that almost
grunge-y feeling, but more than that. I love Hole’s Celebrity Skin
record because it was a mix of Courtney Love’s grunge with that sparkly,
more produced vibe, and I love the ballads, and that’s kind of what I
wanted to go for.”
Helping out in that pursuit was Courtney Love
herself: “I had this really great moment where she invited me over to
her rehearsal space, and she was like, ‘Fefe, what we need is women to
stand up and not take any fucking shit,’ and at first I was like, ‘Okayyy,’
but then I was listening to her, and I was like, ‘Hell yeah, I should
celebrate that I have tits and that guys bow down to us because we’re
powerful.’ I really took that and ran with it.” And during the recording
of the album, Fefe’s musical influences were never too far away. Dobson
pinned pictures of Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious inside the vocal booth.
Growing up in Ontario, Canada, Dobson started
playing piano when she was 13, falling in love with albums by everyone
from Nirvana and the Red Hot Chili
Peppers to Cyndi Lauper and Silverchair.
Aching to leave behind her suburban town, just a
couple of years later, Fefe was discovered by producer songwriter Jay
Levine, who together with James McCollum, co-wrote Fefe’s first album
with her. Released in 2003, Fefe Dobson was as melodic as it was
crunchy, and was driven by Dobson’s ragged-edge, screw-you attitude,
which was embraced by critics, fans and even the people behind the milk
moustache advertisements, who made Fefe one of their most recent poster
girls. The album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart and
the video for “Take Me Away” was the most requested clip on the TRL
countdown in 2003, and also scored “buzzworthy” status from the network.
Her debut found Dobson—the product of a bi-racial
couple (her father was black, her mom white)—rising from the ashes of a
painful childhood that found her coping with having an absentee father
and a single mom.
“I was 16 when I made the first record, now I’m
20,” she says. “I went through a lot when I was 16, but I’ve gone
through even more now being 20. My voice has changed. I feel like I’ve
gone through puberty. I see the world in a totally different light and I
want to express that. Sunday Love
is just about chillin’ and relaxing and enjoying every possible aspect
of this career and my life now |
The new single off Sunday Love will be “This Is My Life”
