Leslie Feist, a former punk rocker from Calgary, Alberta, now known professionally as the indie torch singer Feist, recorded her 2004 album, Let It Die, in Paris. But if listeners detect any hint of French flavoring, she insisted, it is entirely imaginary.
"If I'd said, 'Oh, I made my record in Istanbul,' then everyone would be like, 'We can hear the sweetened mint tea in small glass cups,"' she said. "Like, 'We can just feel the hookah smoke running through the veins of the songs.' People need a context to understand things through. In reality, I had no intention to stay in France. I was going to take this and go tour where it made sense."
So it came as little surprise that Feist - whose cosmopolitan touch and offbeat voice are on display on her newest album, The Reminder, which earned her a Grammy nomination Thursday - drew the attention of Martin Kierszenbaum. Kierszenbaum, who is president of international operations for the record industry heavyweight Interscope Records, signed Feist as the first artist to his own minilabel, Cherrytree Records.
LOCAL REPERTORY
Though Kierszenbaum devotes much of his energies to devising global marketing plans for big Interscope acts like Nelly Furtado and 50 Cent, with Cherrytree he has been quietly flirting with the boundaries, artistic and geographic, of mainstream pop by scouting performers from around the world and trying to establish them as stars far removed from their native countries.
In addition to Feist, for whose work Cherrytree secured the domestic rights, Kierszenbaum, 40, is betting on acts, including the Pipettes, a Ronettes-inspired British girl group that is percolating in Japan; and Flipsyde, a Latin-tinged rap collective from Oakland, California, with a hit in Germany. Next stop: Robyn, a Swedish pop singer who is making her return to the US.
Kierszenbaum said such acts reflected his bent toward musicians who are "inside the pop tradition, but push the envelope."
But he acknowledged that his choices also reflected a dramatic shift in global sales patterns. Though corporate-owned record labels continue to rely heavily on exports of English-speaking stars, mainly from the US, the top sellers in many countries increasingly are albums released by homegrown acts.
Sales began shifting more than a decade ago. In 2000 roughly 68 percent of worldwide sales derived from so-called local repertory - artists working in their native country - up from 58 percent in 1991, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, a trade group in London. Though US stars like Beyonce and the Red Hot Chili Peppers still connect with fans in territories around the world, the ranks and global appeal of major US acts appear to be waning, many music executives say. In Spain, for instance, only one American album - the soundtrack to High School Musical 2 - is in the most recent Top 10 chart.
The surge by foreign talent has arisen partly from the spread of state-of-the-art recording equipment and software, as well as the expansion of previously limited avenues for promotion. MTV, for example, has started more than 50 music-video channels customized for viewers in Europe, Asia and other regions. The decline of an American presence among acts abroad also stems from old-fashioned cultural differences: Genres that fed a domestic boom in the 1990s, including country music and certain strains of rap, do not sell as well overseas.
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