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Elizabeth Davidson Fraser |
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Born in Grangemouth,
Scotland UK on August 29th 1963, liz is the vocalist and lyricist in
Cocteau Twins, and co-founded the group in her hometown in 1981 with her
long-time companion Robin Guthrie and their friend Will Heggie. At the
time, she was all of 17 years-old, and had never really thought of
herself as a singer. Robin and Will noticed her dancing at a club one
night, and asked her to join their band.
Her unique vocal stylings and mysterious, indecipherable lyrics have generated much debate over the years, but she has often been taciturn on the matter when asked about it. Now among the world's most acclaimed singers, she parted ways professionally with Cocteau Twins in 1997 to pursue her solo ambitions. Liz has appeared as a guest-vocalist on numerous other recordings with other artists, has performed for film soundtracks, and was invited by Peter Gabriel to lend her spectacular voice to the UK's "Milennium Dome Project" in 1999. Liz has two daughter to two different
fathers
What Liz has to say: "I enjoy singers like Neil Tennant [of Pet Shop Boys] and John Lydon [Sex Pistols, PiL], and there are plenty of great rap artists, so being a great singer isn't necessarily how broad your range is. It's more how singers let every part of their personality come out. Like Tim Buckley, who was good at just letting go - he'd sometimes make the most primeval noises. Nina Simone is emotionally all over the place, warts and all. The singers I like best are unafraid - they've taken risks their whole careers and chosen to be true to themselves rather than just be successful. People tell me I had a voice at primary school, but it took me years to truly believe it. For ages I treated it as a transient thing - but i must have taken it seriously because I stayed in the Cocteau Twins. The more records we made, the more I started to accept it and enjoy it. Working with different people has given me the opportunity to discover more, and stretch myself, because I'm still not very confident. "Singing in the studio? Really sexy! And scary. I usually write in the studio so it's totally spontaneous, and very exciting because I don't know what's going to happen next. I feel like I'm reaching out, in the same way that people do when they enter a room full of strangers. You try and open up and look for similarities so you can connect, but without giving up your identity. And it's a challenge every time, because you could lie, or go through the motions, and some people will buy into that. so it's a cross between joy and pain. The harder I work, the more honest I'm being, the bigger the pay-off, and I can give myself a break, because I did it properly!" (Mojo 1998) |