Melanie Fiona has been on our radios for over two years now, but she’s still just getting started.
Coming from small shows in Toronto, to putting out her hit single “It Kills Me” and then touring with Alicia Keys, Melanie’s vocal talents have been spreading like wildfire.
VIDEO: Melanie Fiona Waits On Her Man ‘Til “4 AM”
We’ve heard her belt out on her latest single “4AM” which already has thousands of covers on YouTube.
With the anticipation of the release of Melanie’s sophomore album The MF Life on December 6th, she’s ready to get back to the stage with some new heat!
GlobalGrind caught up with Melanie where she talked about the emotions behind The MF Life, her transformation as an artist, and how she manages to stay out of the gossip blogs.
Check out our exclusive below!
GlobalGrind: You’re gearing up for your second album, The MF Life. Tell us more about it.
Melanie Fiona: I’m very excited. I’ve been working really hard! After I came off of the Alicia Keys tour last year, I decided I should start working on the album. I wanted to take my time and work with some of the producers on the wish list since the first album. Within the past year, I have been in the studio with Jack Splash, Andre Martin, The-Dream, Drake, B.o.B., Jeff Legend, No I.D., Salaam Remi and I’m just very excited about it all just because we made some great music. Now I’m in the process of finalizing the album and deciding what’s going to make the final cut.
I feel like I got more personal on this album. It turned out to be the ups and downs of love, even though The MF Life is about the ups and downs of life. The album is definitely like a reflection of love. It’s a very moody album. I’m really looking forward to people hearing it and see some really great work that I’m very proud of.
What has changed most about Melanie Fiona’s life since the first album?
I think from the first album I was a sponge, and I think the first album is paying respect and homage to the artists and the genres and the sound that influenced me. That retro-soul sound always spoke to me growing up and was a major part of my childhood. I think you got a lot of that off of the first album. This album is definitely a bit more personal and unique to where I’m at right now. It’s that good reality check, keeping it real, and great story-telling. I think it’s a little more identifiable to who Melanie Fiona is on this album, and who I’m going to become.
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You said you get personal on this album. Have you ever found yourself in the house at 4am wondering where a dude was?
Yeah, of course! I wouldn’t sing it if I didn’t live it or believe in it. I definitely have been there. The one thing about the record “4AM” I wanted to show was how relatable it was. How you can actually be home and think ‘Where are you, what are you doing?’ There’s also the flipside to it when you see the video. Your mind can take you places that it doesn’t necessarily need to go to, that’s sometimes based off of our own fear and own insecurities.
I think that’s something we all need to acknowledge and not be afraid to admit. I’ve definitely been in the actual ‘He’s out doing wrong at 4AM’ situation and I’ve been in the 4AM situation where I’ve been like ‘Damn, my imagination is getting the best of me and I need to chill out.’
Do you have any theories about why women start jumping to conclusions?
I think women naturally do it. It’s just the way we’re designed with emotion and get so sensitive. We’re rooted in a lot of different insecurities and people in general have insecurities. I feel like women, we tend to be more sensitive and are built that way, so it heightens our sense of feeling and empathy and all of those things that play a factor in it. I learned a lot of this through past experience. I would like to believe that women are gentle beings naturally. Sometimes when you give yourself to someone in a relationship, men, particularly in my experience, who maybe take a little longer to understand what it is to be gentle with a woman’s feelings, get hurt by a woman and then become guarded, scarred, or emotionally fragile and that effects you in your relationships going forward.
I feel like one of the things that I’ve learned is that you have to take it on a case by case basis so to not make the same mistakes twice. I feel like as women we do have an intuition that is strong and we have to pay attention to that and make sure when we feel those things we pay attention to just how we’re feeling and what we’ve been through.
Check out part 2 of our interview with Melanie tomorrow!
