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She’s happy working VV hard
PREVIEW - JD SET PRESENTS: VV BROWN, ESSER and DON LETTS
Luminaire
“THIS IS the year of the eccentric,” declares VV Brown, the hardest-working woman on the scene.
If you haven’t heard of VV yet, you won’t be able to avoid her soon. Her distinctive quiff, which has developed from a minor bump to a major piece of hairchitecture, is just one indication VV is here to stand out. Her music has a heavy 50s/early 60s sound – upbeat in melody but, due to a painful break-up, not so happy in sentiment.
She has launched her own online vintage clothing store, written songs for the Pussycat Dolls, sung backing for Madonna, penned and produced her own album, modelled for Vogue and is on almost every festival line-up going – and she’s only 24.
Next Thursday, VV plays a special JD Set gig in Kilburn, alongside Esser and Don Letts.
Having turned down a place at LSE, she was snapped up by a label with ambitions to turn her into an R’n’B diva and packed off to LA. But she fought against the massively overproduced box they wanted to put her in and soon found herself broke and depressed. She sold her keyboard to fund a flight home and never looked back.
VV arrived back in England to find Amy Winehouse had brought the past to the mainstream.
“I thought no one would want to hear that kind of stuff,” she says. “When Amy came out I realised I was wrong. I should have gone with my instincts in the first place. I found a guitar and took off all the strings, the one string made me get back to the blues and took me to [first single] Crying Blood.”
Being in LA, she says, “was a case of big production, big voice, big sounds and I’m not saying it was all bad but I got lost in it”.
“I went through hell in LA,” she adds, “losing myself to the point where I wanted to die. My music is so connected to who I am it’s almost scary. When your music goes wrong and you feel you’ve been compromised and you come out of that darkness and find yourself again, you never want to get to that place again.”
Of Crying Blood, she says: “I tried to find the most potent way of describing the pain I was in when I left LA and my boyfriend, and my career seemed like it was going to fail. Crying tears showed pain but crying blood showed how sad I was. I wanted a happy melody, a contradiction that although I’m crying blood I’m full of hope.”
She says she’s excited about next week’s show: “Live is the truth. It’s about bringing people together and creating music that genuinely touches your soul.”
VV has also been announced to play the Camden Crawl in April. “I went last year but I went to watch,” she says. “To be on the stage this time is wicked.”
She accepts she works hard, but insists she loves it: “I told my management to work me like a dog, I’m a workaholic and I love it. I’ve been doing this since I was 13 years old. I’m just waiting for that glass to shatter and to be accepted as a credible artist.”
So how did she develop her look? “My style came from being broke,” says VV. “I had to be creative because I didn’t want to look like a tramp. I went to the vintage stores. At first it was out of necessity, but then it became fun.
“It was interesting finding a granny dress and cutting it up.
“My hair started off taking a while but now I can do it in three minutes.”
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