A BRIT Award-nominated singer-songwriter has said she would “always” return to the Island if given the opportunity to perform on the Jersey Opera House stage again.
Nerina Pallot, a former JCG student, was speaking to the JEP following the release of her latest single, Regrets.
The single is to feature on the platinum-selling artist’s eighth studio album, A Psalm for Emily Salvi, due to be released in November.
The Grade 2-listed Opera House building, which has been closed since 2020, is currently being refurbished at a cost of £12.7 million.
“I would always go back to the Opera House,” said Ms Pallot. “It is so special. I grew up on that stage and it made me dream of bigger stages.
“Jersey is so supportive of people who go off-Island and I feel really lucky to come from a place like that.”
Since her days performing in the Jersey Eisteddfod, Ms Pallot has gone on to release several studio albums over a successful music career. She now lives in London with her husband Andrew Chatterley, a Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter from Jersey.
Commenting on her new music, Ms Pallot said: “I was largely inspired by the loss of friends and family in 2022.
“We had the pandemic, people were losing people they love regularly and I hadn’t really had that much major loss in my life, so the subject matter can be quite sad.”
But she said of new single “Regrets”: “It’s not a sad record.”
“At the beginning of this year, I didn’t know if I was going to finish it [the record]. But out of the blue I’d been talking to one of my fans from America. She’s a lady that started messaging me about two years ago and she just writes to me and knows exactly what to say.
“She knew I was struggling to finish the album and mentioned if I had ever thought about Psalms in the Bible, not in a religious way but as beautiful poems about how humans figure out life.”
The fan, Emily, has her name featured in the album title “A Psalm for Emily Salvi”, while Salvi means “saved” in Italian and “beautiful thing” in Hindu.
Ms Pallot described the album as a tribute to all the people who write to her.
The singer performed a sold-out gig at the London Palladium this year, described as a professional highlight and “personal milestone” for the singer, with the event coming two weeks before her 50th birthday.
The show was a celebration of the re-release of her most popular album, “Fires”, which first came out in 2006 and peaked at 21 in the UK charts. It also led to the artist’s nomination for Best British Female at the Brit Awards the following year.
“It was my biggest ever headline show,” Ms Pallot said.
She praised her “amazingly loyal fan base” who “flew in from all over the world”.
Ms Pallot’s upcoming album will feature in her new UK tour next February. She is also performing a one-woman show “I Digress” at the Marylebone Theatre in London on Monday 2 and Monday 9 December.
New material
Regrets is available at: nerinapallot.lnk.to/RGSPR and “A Psalm for Emily Salvi” can be pre-ordered at: nerinapallot.com
