歌手资料
Belinda Oakley
英文名：
性别：男
国籍：
出生地：
流派：
生日：
星座：
身高：
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简介：
“It took a long and winding road to get to this point in my life,” says Belinda Oakley \non the eve of her upcoming release ‘Bittersweet’. “I guess it would have been nice to take \na more direct route” she says laughing “but really, I wouldn’t change a thing. \nI’m kind of like one of those Russian dolls now because of all those twists and turns….\ntotally complete from the outside but with a few equally important evolutionary versions of \nmyself hidden beneath the shell. They all make me who I am and while I don’t define myself \nby them today, without them I guess I would be empty… hollow”. \nIt appears then that the first character in this set of dolls was ‘Bindy Jane’ as Belinda \nwas known then. Born in Hobart Tasmania, the birthplace of Australia’s penal colony, \nit was not long before her family relocated to Christmas Island off the coast of Indonesia. \nHousing a mere 2,000 people over 52 square miles of jungle, she spent her early years in an \nenvironment with no fear, no knowledge of privacy and no need for rules. Her parents remember \nthat she loved dancing and clapping along to music and that while she had good intentions \nthe majority of times, trouble had a tendency to find her wherever she went.\nBy the time she was nine, the family had returned to Hobart for a few years and were \nnow on the move again to the nation’ s capital, Canberra. Here, ‘Bindy’ began to evolve. \nShe was a talented, precocious little girl with big dreams and a big heart. She could dance, \nsing, play guitar and piano and was a regular in the professional music theatre circuit. \nThe years had taken their toll in other areas however and like many families, her parents \nwere heading towards divorce. Unlike most children though, Bindy had discovered a unique \nway of coping. “With so many years in theatre, I had learnt how to play a role I guess... \nIf I needed to cry, I could switch it on and off like a button” Belinda remembers. \n“When my parents’ marriage was falling apart and they were both so lost and vulnerable, \nI think I decided the best role I could play was just to be strong…to be okay for them. \nOf course you don’t realise when you are that young how important it is to actually allow \nyourself to feel sad or angry or whatever. It just festers otherwise and then generally \ncomes back threefold - as I figured out a few years later”. \nAt fourteen, ‘Belinda’ had evolved into a Private Catholic Schoolgirl on the brink of disaster. \nHer bedroom noodling with her mother’ s guitar had developed into prolific songwriting. \nAll those chords she taught herself from the pages of her mother’s old folk music books were now\nfinding their way into songs. Words and melodies were always on her mind but never having \nsheet music handy, she would just draw the melodies on scraps of paper and write the words on\nthe back. Through these songs, years of bottled emotions and typical teenage angst found a home. \nBelinda on the other hand, soon found herself homeless. At fifteen she had come to blows with \nher closest ally, her mother, one too many times and made the decision to go it on her own. She \ndropped out of school, fell into a bad circle and before long was just another street urchin with a 'habit'. \n“I have no real connection to that girl anymore. I know that she’s there and that she made me who I am today. \nShe made me strong, she made me trust fate and life’s path because despite how much I didn’t care \nwhether I lived or died, something steered me safe when so many of my friends back then didn’t make it. \nYou don't live through that and then take your life for granted.”\nA new city, a new school, and ‘Bel’ was finishing her final years in Perth Western Australia. \nOld beyond her years she was still involved in straight theatre and studying classical voice. However it was \nthe thrill of performing her own music that started to take precedence. By the time she left high school, \nshe was a singer and a writer in a rock band playing everywhere and anywhere they could. They had \nminor success in their home-town but vocal nodules and an urge to pen more personal material forced the \nend of the project. Bel was given an electric piano by her mother for her 21st birthday and so began her love affair \nwith creating the ultimate confessional ballad. This project saw her playing nearly one hundred solo shows \nfrom high profile clubs to the 8pm music slot at the local strip joint. It was during this time that Bel set about \nplanning a move to New York City. With all of her favourite artists coming out of the US and her preoccupation \nwith the female singer songwriters from the 60’s and 70’s,this seemed like the perfect place to find her voice.\nBelinda did indeed find herself traveling overseas a short time later, however, it was in the wrong direction. \nShe followed her heart to London in 2006 after falling in love with a session musician who worked on an early \nattempt at her first album release.While living in such a high profile city had its positives, she struggled to adjust to \nthe grey skies and found it difficult to find her place in the edgy London music scene. “I think I just completely lost my \nsense of self in London. I felt so self-conscious, and I struggled to find artists of a similar mind and body ofwork who I \ncould feed off. I’m sure that they were there but at that time in my life, I guess I just wasn’t ready to find them” . \nBeing a resolute believer in the hand of fate, Belinda entered herself in the US Greencard Lottery, pledging that \nif she were one of the 50,000 randomly selected from over 13 million people, she would give it all up and \nfollow her dream to the other side of the world. As it happened, she did indeed win the US Greencard Lottery \nand was suddenly forced to keep that promise.\nWith her guitar and a suitcase, Belinda jumped a plane to Los Angeles in 2010 leaving behind her love, \nher friends and again her family. “I didn’t know anyone. Not a single soul. I had been to LA once during the \nfew months I had before I had to leave London and decided that I preferred it to New York because of the weather, \nthe geography that reminded me of home and the water. I really didn’t know what I was going to do though. \nI paid thousands of dollars to someone over the net to sublease an apartment I’ d never seen, from someone I had \nnever met and arrived on the doorstep hoping that the key would be under the mat as she had promised. \nI just had to go with my instinct on everything and be ready to live with the consequences.” \n‘Bittersweet’ is a collection of the material Belinda wrote while living in London and recorded with her producer Adrian Hall \n(Black Eyed Peas, Shakira, Alicia Keys, Robyn, Sugababes, Delta Goodrem). “Sometimes I get angry at myself for never \nhaving committed to a release before now. Never believing in myself enough to just get what I’m doing out there. \nI guess I’ve now come to accept that it just wasn’t my time before and now it is.”
“It took a long and winding road to get to this point in my life,” says Belinda Oakley \non the eve of her upcoming release ‘Bittersweet’. “I guess it would have been nice to take \na more direct route” she says laughing “but really, I wouldn’t change a thing. \nI’m kind of like one of those Russian dolls now because of all those twists and turns….\ntotally complete from the outside but with a few equally important evolutionary versions of \nmyself hidden beneath the shell. They all make me who I am and while I don’t define myself \nby them today, without them I guess I would be empty… hollow”. \nIt appears then that the first character in this set of dolls was ‘Bindy Jane’ as Belinda \nwas known then. Born in Hobart Tasmania, the birthplace of Australia’s penal colony, \nit was not long before her family relocated to Christmas Island off the coast of Indonesia. \nHousing a mere 2,000 people over 52 square miles of jungle, she spent her early years in an \nenvironment with no fear, no knowledge of privacy and no need for rules. Her parents remember \nthat she loved dancing and clapping along to music and that while she had good intentions \nthe majority of times, trouble had a tendency to find her wherever she went.\nBy the time she was nine, the family had returned to Hobart for a few years and were \nnow on the move again to the nation’ s capital, Canberra. Here, ‘Bindy’ began to evolve. \nShe was a talented, precocious little girl with big dreams and a big heart. She could dance, \nsing, play guitar and piano and was a regular in the professional music theatre circuit. \nThe years had taken their toll in other areas however and like many families, her parents \nwere heading towards divorce. Unlike most children though, Bindy had discovered a unique \nway of coping. “With so many years in theatre, I had learnt how to play a role I guess... \nIf I needed to cry, I could switch it on and off like a button” Belinda remembers. \n“When my parents’ marriage was falling apart and they were both so lost and vulnerable, \nI think I decided the best role I could play was just to be strong…to be okay for them. \nOf course you don’t realise when you are that young how important it is to actually allow \nyourself to feel sad or angry or whatever. It just festers otherwise and then generally \ncomes back threefold - as I figured out a few years later”. \nAt fourteen, ‘Belinda’ had evolved into a Private Catholic Schoolgirl on the brink of disaster. \nHer bedroom noodling with her mother’ s guitar had developed into prolific songwriting. \nAll those chords she taught herself from the pages of her mother’s old folk music books were now\nfinding their way into songs. Words and melodies were always on her mind but never having \nsheet music handy, she would just draw the melodies on scraps of paper and write the words on\nthe back. Through these songs, years of bottled emotions and typical teenage angst found a home. \nBelinda on the other hand, soon found herself homeless. At fifteen she had come to blows with \nher closest ally, her mother, one too many times and made the decision to go it on her own. She \ndropped out of school, fell into a bad circle and before long was just another street urchin with a 'habit'. \n“I have no real connection to that girl anymore. I know that she’s there and that she made me who I am today. \nShe made me strong, she made me trust fate and life’s path because despite how much I didn’t care \nwhether I lived or died, something steered me safe when so many of my friends back then didn’t make it. \nYou don't live through that and then take your life for granted.”\nA new city, a new school, and ‘Bel’ was finishing her final years in Perth Western Australia. \nOld beyond her years she was still involved in straight theatre and studying classical voice. However it was \nthe thrill of performing her own music that started to take precedence. By the time she left high school, \nshe was a singer and a writer in a rock band playing everywhere and anywhere they could. They had \nminor success in their home-town but vocal nodules and an urge to pen more personal material forced the \nend of the project. Bel was given an electric piano by her mother for her 21st birthday and so began her love affair \nwith creating the ultimate confessional ballad. This project saw her playing nearly one hundred solo shows \nfrom high profile clubs to the 8pm music slot at the local strip joint. It was during this time that Bel set about \nplanning a move to New York City. With all of her favourite artists coming out of the US and her preoccupation \nwith the female singer songwriters from the 60’s and 70’s,this seemed like the perfect place to find her voice.\nBelinda did indeed find herself traveling overseas a short time later, however, it was in the wrong direction. \nShe followed her heart to London in 2006 after falling in love with a session musician who worked on an early \nattempt at her first album release.While living in such a high profile city had its positives, she struggled to adjust to \nthe grey skies and found it difficult to find her place in the edgy London music scene. “I think I just completely lost my \nsense of self in London. I felt so self-conscious, and I struggled to find artists of a similar mind and body ofwork who I \ncould feed off. I’m sure that they were there but at that time in my life, I guess I just wasn’t ready to find them” . \nBeing a resolute believer in the hand of fate, Belinda entered herself in the US Greencard Lottery, pledging that \nif she were one of the 50,000 randomly selected from over 13 million people, she would give it all up and \nfollow her dream to the other side of the world. As it happened, she did indeed win the US Greencard Lottery \nand was suddenly forced to keep that promise.\nWith her guitar and a suitcase, Belinda jumped a plane to Los Angeles in 2010 leaving behind her love, \nher friends and again her family. “I didn’t know anyone. Not a single soul. I had been to LA once during the \nfew months I had before I had to leave London and decided that I preferred it to New York because of the weather, \nthe geography that reminded me of home and the water. I really didn’t know what I was going to do though. \nI paid thousands of dollars to someone over the net to sublease an apartment I’ d never seen, from someone I had \nnever met and arrived on the doorstep hoping that the key would be under the mat as she had promised. \nI just had to go with my instinct on everything and be ready to live with the consequences.” \n‘Bittersweet’ is a collection of the material Belinda wrote while living in London and recorded with her producer Adrian Hall \n(Black Eyed Peas, Shakira, Alicia Keys, Robyn, Sugababes, Delta Goodrem). “Sometimes I get angry at myself for never \nhaving committed to a release before now. Never believing in myself enough to just get what I’m doing out there. \nI guess I’ve now come to accept that it just wasn’t my time before and now it is.”
