Coldplay have taught Emeli Sande to be disciplined on stage and the ‘Heaven’ hitmaker says supporting the band on tour has shaped her own performances.

Coldplay taught Emeli Sande to be disciplined on stage.

The ‘Heaven’ singer – who supported Coldplay on their ‘Mylo Xyloto’ European tour in 2011 – has revealed watching the British band in action has shaped her own performances as well as teaching her to be considerate behind the scenes.

Speaking exclusively to BANG Showbiz at the O2 Silver Clef Awards in London today (29.06.12) – where she picked up the American Express Innovation award – Emeli said: ”When you watch them onstage it’s so energetic, but there’s still an intimacy to it. So I guess I’ve learned that from them, and there’s such discipline going on with them behind the scenes.

”Everything is very considered and everybody is very welcome and those are things I’ll take with me for the rest of my career.”

The ‘Paradise’ hitmakers were so impressed with the 24-year-old singer-songwriter that they invited her back to join them on their US tour in July and August.

BRIT Critics’ Choice Award winner Emeli added: ”I’ve had a few conversations with Chris [Martin] and I see them when they’re coming on and I’m going off, but the main thing I’ve learned from them is seeing them onstage and how it all operates.”

Emeli has also admitted that there was a lot of pressure on her to perform with the seven-time Grammy Award winning group, and the nerves took over at first.

”The first show we did was in Glasgow, so that was a home crowd. It’s difficult because you think, ‘This is a crowd which came for Coldplay, how will they react to my music?’

”But after the first gig, it was just fantastic! Then we had a great time around Europe and we were invited back to perform with them in America.”

Copyright (C) bangshowbiz.com 2012.

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EMELI SANDE is on the verge of becoming the next British star to conquer America after enjoying rave reviews from US critics.

The Scots chart-topper has already toured there in her own right and is set to play massive stadium shows with Coldplay in America next month.

CBS News ran a review under the banner, “UK’s Emeli Sande charts her own success with debut”.

This week, US business magazine Bloomberg ran the headline, “Adele, Aretha get upstaged as Emeli Sande plans invasion”.

Emeli says the signs are good for her in the wake of One Direction, Adele and Ed Sheeran enjoying chart success in the US.

The singer, from Alford in Aberdeenshire, said: “We started very slow in America. It was small acoustic shows. We played places like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago and everywhere there has been a great reaction. It has been really lovely. They listen to the lyrics and the melody over there and the reaction has been fantastic.

“It is a good feeling and it feels like it is bubbling. It is a good time to come to America.”

Tonight, Emeli will collect her latest award, a Silver Clef for musical innovation, in London.

It follows a string of awards such as the Critics Choice Brit and chart-topping hits including debut album, Our Version of Events.

“I’m excited about the awards show,” she said. “Last year, I presented an award to Tinie Tempah, so it is nice to go back and receive one. It will be quite an honour.”

She has also written for Susan Boyle, Cheryl Cole, Tinie Tempah and Leona Lewis.

Yet Emeli almost didn’t get a record deal because labels refused to believe she could make it as a singer.

She added: “I built a reputation as a songwriter in the industry before my own hits. People were used to coming to me for songs. There were songs like Clown and Mountains that were my songs that I wanted to keep. But the record labels saw me as a songwriter. It was hard to get people to believe in me as an artist.

“I tried to bang down a lot of doors but Virgin were the only label who believed in what I was doing. I ended up with the label that understood what I was trying to do.

“Clown was written when I couldn’t find anyone who believed in me as an artist. Maybe those labels will think twice next time a young songwriter comes along.”

Despite her success, Emeli says she has no plans to follow Amy Macdonald and buy a Ferrari. But she added: “I splashed out a Yamaha Baby Grand piano, on which I keep the awards.”

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Her first name is Adele, and she’s the latest British soul singer to try to conquer the U.S.

She’s not Adele Adkins, the multi-Grammy-winner behind “Rolling in the Deep.” She’s Adele Emeli Sande, a former medical student who’s being compared to Aretha Franklin.

Sande’s dropped her first given name, not surprisingly. She still has the voice, the songs and the attitude — with a support slot on Coldplay’s North American summer tour.

She will be worth the ticket price alone, based on her recent U.K. shows which have been continuing at a workaholic pace all year, including at London’s O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, Lovebox Weekend on June 16 and the Hackney Weekend on June 23.

X-Factor mogul Simon Cowell has praised her, as have a phalanx of grizzled critics, normally the implacable enemies of anything touched by Cowell. Soul doyenne Alicia Keys and upstart U.K. rappers like Wiley and Professor Green have recorded with her, while Sande’s debut album “Our Version of Events” has topped the U.K. charts.

Watching her perform, it’s not difficult to fathom Sande’s popularity. A shocking-blonde super-size quiff dominates the top of her head. The performance matches the hair. Sande sounds as though she may have jet engines instead of lungs, all the better for belting out the big choruses she repeatedly rustles up.

Vocal Acrobatics It also suits Sande’s musical style. For all her soul roots (she proved herself capable of deploying just enough wiggly vocal acrobatics to keep the occasional plain verse interesting), her basic four-piece band and two backing singers frequently slide into polished classic mid-tempo rock.

In the first half of the concerts, it’s all a bit like Air Supply. Crafted songs never quite transcend various combinations of ‘stand up for who you are’ platitudes and well-tried cliches.

The stripped-back drums and chugging guitar of “Tiger” bring to mind “Eye of the Tiger” by 1980s rockers Survivor.

“Read All About It (Part III)” is crooned earnestly over a solo piano before exploding into Bon Jovi power-balladry with swelling keyboards and ludicrous drum roll.

Then “My Kind of Love” switches leagues. The song, Sande explains in her gentle Scottish burr, was inspired by her experiences when training to be a doctor in a Glasgow hospital (she quit medicine in the fourth year of studies). She watched the interactions between patients and their visitors, and the result shows what Sande can do when her inspiration matches her technique.

A piano ballad, “Hope,” errs more toward the generalized sentiment of Lennon’s “Imagine” than to Adele’s intimate confessional style.

A slew of other numbers — “Mountains,” ‘Next to Me” and new tune “Wonder” — suggest she will find her own audience. “Heaven” is pleasingly reminiscent of Massive Attack’s classic “Unfinished Sympathy,” Sande soaring above the slick dance beats and swelling strings with uncomplicated pop pleasure.

“Our Version of Events” is on Virgin Records priced about $13 in the U.S. Download rates vary across services. Sande is playing three European festivals (Lounge on the Farm and T in the Park in the U.K. on July 6-7 and the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 14) before joining Coldplay’s North American tour starting July 23 in Toronto.

Information: http://us.emelisande.com/

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Emeli Sande was on The Grand Journal in France earlier today to promote her debut album ‘Our Version of Events’. Emeli gave stunning performances of her new single ‘My Kind of Love’ and ‘Breaking The Law’. After the performances ‘Emeli Sandé’ was trending in France! View the incredible performances of ‘My Kind of Love’ and ‘Breaking The Law’ below!

My Kind of Love

Breaking The Law

While Emeli is in France she visits The Grand Journal and answers some fan questions. Emeli is asked what is the highest note she can sing, and if she can give a little performance of a Coldplay song, and answers some more questions. Check out the great clips below!

Emeli Sande talks about how she deals with festival weather, her Hackney performance and how she loves living in east London now.

Fifty thousand people turn out for the final day of Radio 1′s Hackney Weekend with appearances from Rihanna, Dizzee Rascal and Nas.

Emeli Sandé’s Our Version of Events has been a constant fixture in the iPod for weeks now. The beauty of her voice matches her incredible songwriting that has the power to make random strangers cry for no other reason than her magical sound. As our June YOK artist we’re happy to share some of our favorite cuts from the album like “Next to Me” or style photos that show her boisterous personality. Today we gift you with her cover of Blur’s “Country House.”

With her ability to maneuver supremely high notes or low whispers, Sandé turns the alternative rock group Blur’s “Country House” into a soft melody. By managing not to sound like a singer covering another group’s song, she makes the song her own in a way unique to her. Sande’s talent, whether singing her own songs or belting covers of other artists, is the exactly what makes her a No. 1 artist in the UK and a rising star stateside.

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Heaven Is A Place On Earth

Whilst fully cementing her place in the public’s consciousness is an accomplishment that Emeli Sandé achieved in 2011, it was in fact the result of years of hard work.

An established friend of Radio 1 & 1Xtra, many will remember her stand out performance at Maida Vale for the 1Xtra Homegrown show two years ago, shortly after she was named a ‘Hot 4 2010′ by the network. In fact it was at one of our events years ago that she first met long time collaborator Naughty Boy, with whom she continues to regularly work with today.

Heavily backed by the likes of Annie Mac, Fearne Cotton, MistaJam and Reggie Yates, it was Zane Lowe who secured the first play of Heaven, her debut solo single which went straight in at Number 2. After triumphant TV appearances on Children In Need, the MOBO Awards, the X Factor, and a support slot on the Coldplay tour, Emeli is extremely excited about entertaining the audience at Hackney 2012, which will follow her UK tour earlier in the year.

Heaven

(Visit the gallery to enlarge the pictures! )

NEW YORK, N.Y. – Writing songs for top U.K. acts such as Susan Boyle, Cheryl Cole and Tinie Tempah helped Emeli Sande’s career. It also hurt her.
After penning those tunes through a publishing deal, the singer said getting her own recording contract wasn’t easy, mainly because record executives couldn’t picture Sande as the artist behind the songs she was writing.
“They could hear that they were good songs, but they wanted to give them to these artists that were already on,” she said in a recent interview.
That process made the former medical student feel out-of-place, which drove her to write the slow groove “Clown.”
“I was finding it very difficult to find a label that understood what I wanted to do and really believed that people wanted to hear something honest and a little bit different. So, I did feel a bit like a clown,” she said. “You’re knocking on everyone’s door trying to get them to believe what you’re doing.”
Sande, whose parents are from England and South Africa, was raised in Scotland. She eventually found a home at a label that lets her belt her pipes over R&B beats and pop grooves. “Our Version of Events,” her debut, was released this month.
“I want to speak for people that may not feel like they’re being spoken for at the moment,” she said. “And I want to make a connection between the world around us and the charts.”
And she’s doing just that: Her album debuted at No. 1 in the United Kingdom when it was released there in February, and it reached No. 28 and No. 4 on Billboard’s Top 200 and R&B/Hip-Hop albums charts, respectively. She won critics’ choice at this year’s Brit Awards and earned a spot on the European and U.S. legs of Coldplay’s “Mylo Xyloto” tour. (The U.S. tour kicks off Friday.)
Even Alicia Keys is a fan. After Sande opened for the R&B superstar at a London show, Keys invited the newcomer to New York to write songs.
“It came out really naturally, and as people we really connected and as musicians we connected as well,” said Sande, who co-wrote the song “Hope” with Keys for her debut and wrote material for Keys’ upcoming album.
“It developed into such a great relationship,” she continued. “It feels like I’ve really made a friend in the industry, which is quite rare.”

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Photos: The Washington Press