Interview with Lucy Kay: ‘My absolute dream would be to front a symphonic metal band!’

Riding high on the success of her second album, Dark Angel, last month, Leicester-born mezzo-soprano Lucy Kay is already mulling how to shake it up again on her next album.

Crossover artist Kay nows lives in Nordesen in Norway, having moved there during the pandemic last year: ‘I was on a ship working as a singer and I met my now partner Dan, who was a chef on the ship,’ she said. ‘I felt there was something there and we kept in touch. When the borders opened up again last year, I spent a week with him in Norway – and I’m still here. I’m from a family of five siblings, no-one moves away so they thought I was mad!’

Dark Angel comprises 10 edgy and eclectic covers, ranging from Soundgarden’s ‘Black Hole Sun’ to ”Starlight’ by Muse and Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’, all of which are given a different spin with Kay’s operatic vocals, which are beautifully fused with rock and metal elements. Intriguingly, there’s also a nugget of darkness in her versions that is not present in many of the originals, helped in part by Berlin-based composer Robin Hoffmann’s incredibly sweeping orchestral arrangements: ‘I had done some research on Robin as I heard a version of ‘The Earth Song’ by an artist named Aliki, he had arranged it in such an impressive way, I knew I had to have him work on this project with me and luckily he accepted. I hate being a one-trick pony, I wanted a metal influence on this album and drums. The next album could be classical strings with metal bands,’ she grinned, looking genuinely delighted at the prospect.

She describes making Dark Angel as ‘a journey I’ve loved and hated, it’s the most difficult process to create an album’: ‘Crossover music is always what I wanted to do,’ she said. ‘The album was pushed back by a year and a half because of COVID. I wanted to be able to tour it. I kinda feel in a show that I want a show packed with adrenaline, I want to take you somewhere on a cinematic journey, to give you an adrenaline kick. I wanted to create an album that would cross the boundaries of classical music and touch the hearts of all ages. I feel like classical music needs a push into the modern world whilst still embracing all the original elements as to not lose touch with the classical genre – Dark Angel is the epitome of crossover music. Within this album, I have included a few beautiful classical pieces weaving in and out of these popular rock and pop songs all accompanied with a strong cinematic and film-like score.’

‘I thought that a classical version of ‘Poison’ could be so sultry and sexy‘

One of the hardest decisions was cutting down her wish list of songs to cover to just ten: ‘We had a huge list of songs! My first boyfriend was into rock/heavy metal and when I heard ‘Black Hole Sun’ I was like, wow. I was obsessed with Alice Cooper and ‘Poison’ (laughs). I thought that a classical version of ‘Poison’ could be so sultry and sexy (her version is). I’m still a bit unsure about my version of ‘Black Hole Sun’ but I’ve always wanted to cover it.’ I say that I’m a huge Chris Cornell fan but I absolutely love her version of the song and find it really haunting, and she’s genuinely touched. ‘That really means a lot, I’m so happy you like it. I always let negative criticism get to me, I shouldn’t, I know. I should focus on the good stuff.’

Depeche Mode’s ‘Enjoy the Silence’ also gets a makeover. Kay’s version has a beautifully melancholic piano intro, which gives way to the strings before the rest of the orchestra comes in. It packs a punch even before you hear her vocals, it’s slower, edgier and hints at something darkly cinematic in a way that the original doesn’t. ‘I’d always listened to that song in my stepdad’s car, I imagined it with an orchestra being so big,’ she said. ‘I had such a connection with them, I wanted to turn their song on its head.’ She works her magic in a similar way on Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’, which kicks off with lightly dysphoric strings nestled up against the drums as the choir’s voices soar alongside hers as the organ weaves in and out.

She got into singing at the young age of two: ‘I don’t remember it but my mum says I would turn the dial to classical on the radio and try to emulate it, although she didn’t think anything of it at the time,’ she said. Singing has clearly been enormously cathartic for her over the years: ‘I’m from a broken family, my dad left when I was a baby,’ she said. ‘I was the fourth child and couldn’t understand why he’d left, I thought it was my fault, even though my mum said it wasn’t. I was a very sad child, I was always asking men at bus stops if they were my dad. If I wanted to be someone’s friend, I’d do anything to be their friend, they’d take advantage of my vulnerability. My mum wanted to make me happy and she took me to a cafe one day, sat me down and said she wanted to help and would I like to have singing lessons? She thought I’d say pop but I said opera. Then my stepdad came along and he was wonderful. I joined the local choir, Cantamus, and got to sing pieces like Pie Jesu when I was seven. I loved it, that thrill of performing. From the ages of 7-13, I was in the training choir, then in the main choir from 13-20. That was my sanctuary but people didn’t understand why I’d sing opera, there was about a decade of bullying,’ she said ruefully. I say that now I know more about her background, I understand where the dark nugget that gives her songs such an edge comes from and she agrees: ‘Oh, definitely. I sing through a lot of pain after my childhood. I take that and put it into my singing.’

‘Rock, classical and metal go together so well but some people don’t see it’

We chat for a bit about how brilliant crossover music can be, citing Muse as being one band that successfully fuses rock music with classical elements. I tell her that her cover of ‘Starlight’ is my favourite track on the album and that it gives me goosebumps and she grins: ‘Like everything arranged on the album, I wanted this song to feel like an adrenaline pumping film score type of piece. It gradually builds with anticipation, each instrument section layering and building to a big crescendo which dies down and repeats over and over again until the final explosive end. Muse take you to another level, don’t they? You wouldn’t imagine it, would you? Rock, classical and metal go together so well but some people don’t see it. I think you could be a hairy rocker (laughs) and still find a song on this album for you.’ I tell her that I would love to hear her sing it with Muse’s frontman Matt Bellamy because I think their voices would work so well together: ‘OMG, how amazing would that be?!! I would LOVE to sing it with him!’

Nonetheless, she acknowledges the challenges inherent in taking on beloved classics: ‘When you do a cover, you don’t try to make it exactly the same. I want to engage the younger and older generations. It’s hard, some people aren’t open to crossover music. Your voice is your instrument, it’s so personal. I can’t change the style and timbre of my voice.’ She tells me a story about a man who got in touch with her to express his disapproval at the songs she planned to cover on the album. He went ahead and listened to Dark Angel and contacted her again afterwards to say he’d been wrong and that it actually worked, which made her day.

Kay has also included ‘Io Te Penso Amore’,  a song in Italian inspired by classical composer Niccolò Paganini, and originally performed by David Garrett and Nicole Scherzinger (lead singer of The Pussycat Dolls). ‘We put it on because it’s the kind of classical music you can get away with blending with other songs,’ she said. ‘It’s a beautiful and epic song. I first heard Nicole Scherzinger sing it and I thought if she can do it, so can I! I like to sew different parts together.’

It turns out that one of her favourite bands is Finnish symphonic metal band, Nightwish: ‘I almost chose a few Nightwish ones for the album, and Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’. I tell her about Florence-based classical-metal crossover duo Golden Salt who do a brilliant cover of it and she asks if I can send her the link. She later tells me how much she liked it. In the end, she opted not to cover ‘Nothing Else Matters’ because it’s been covered quite extensively. ‘Ooooh, I love Iron Maiden, I really wanted to do ‘Run to the Hills,’ she said excitedly. ‘I also thought about Killswitch Engage (an American heavy metal band) but I kinda thought I needed to to stay within mainstream music. Some people don’t know the Soundgarden one, my mum hadn’t heard of it.’

‘I think that versatility is the key to being happy’

From 26 December 2021 to 13 March 2022, she will be touring Europe as part of the Andrew Lloyd Webber Gala Tour, where she will perform pieces from Phantom of the Opera, Cats and Evita: ‘I love to do everything,’ she said. ‘My heart is in the rock genre. My absolute dream would be to front a symphonic metal band! That’s what I want to do next. I’ve done pop/rock classical crossovers, I love never being bored, I think that versatility is the key to being happy. I’ve had to tap dance on stage and I had to do aerial work when I played Carmen.’ Her dream operatic role would be to play Madame Butterfly in Puccini’s opera of the same name: ‘I’d love to be Madame Butterfly, it’s essentially Miss Saigon. It’s so emotional, so beautiful.’

Since graduating from the Royal Conservatoire, Kay auditioned for TV talent show, Britain’s Got Talent, in which she came runner up in 2014 and was immediately signed by Sony Classical. She went on to release her debut album Fantasia later that year, offering a mix of well-known arias, including Gianni Schicchi’s ‘O mio bambino caro’, which went to number one in the classical charts. She has also toured with Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and was personally invited by Samuel L Jackson to sing at his charity event, One For The Boys. She has toured the UK and Ireland with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat playing the narrator and starred in the West End playing Carmen in TriOperas.

Growing up, she was heavily influenced by Welsh classical singer, Charlotte Church, who found fame as an eleven year old and later crossed over into pop music. ‘She was the first idol I had where I thought “I want to do what she’s doing”. Later on, that became Katherine Jenkins and then Nightwish (laughs). I would find myself obsessed with certain bands for a time, I loved Coldplay for a while. With Cantamus, I was 16 when I had a solo in ‘Fix You’, even though I was going through my metalhead phase with black hair on one side and red hair on the other,’ she laughed.

It’s not just the metal scene that she is now eyeing more intently. Since she moved to Norway last year, she is mulling doing the vocals on a trance track: ‘They love that over here. I want to explore so many things vocally. My boyfriend is into techno, I appreciate it for what it is (laughs) but I have to be in the mood. There’s a Charlotte de Witte (a Belgian DJ) song with an orchestra in the background, it’s called ‘Return to Nowhere’. The choir and the music build and build, I’d like to do something like that.’

I ask her what her dream line-up would look like. ‘Oooh, I love questions like this. If we’re talking alive, it would have to be Lady Gaga, she can do absolutely everything. I love her work ethic, she’s made for life and she always surprises. Acting is another art form I’d like to add to the ever growing list of mine. She was an influence very early on. Next would be Freddie Mercury, when he did ‘Barcelona’, it was just beautiful. There was nobody like him and he and Montserrat Caballé (the Spanish operatic soprano) were explosive together.’ If she could write a song with anyone, she asks if we can bring back Chris Cornell: ‘His ideas would be amazing, just to sing with him, can you imagine what that would be like?’

(Photo credit: Stewart Williams)