Music
Press
"...When Lucy Woodward took the stage, she beamed with the “I've got a secret” slink of a natural-born performer. Her bluesy pop infused elements of hiccupped scatting, and her spectacular vocal control and command of the stage made all of the previous acts look like amateurs." - VenusZine
"One of the special things about working at a magazine is that you hear about media and fashion “secrets” before any body else. You see clothes before they hit the stores and meet bands before they’re famous. But this secret is just too good for me to keep!
Last week, CosmoGirl sent me to see Lucy Woodward, a twentysomething
singer from London. I was especially excited to see her because I’m always the last of my friends to hear about new music, so my preview of Lucy made me feel like I was finally one step ahead of the game! And she did not disappoint!
Lucy is a Carrie Underwood look-a-like who sings like Alicia Keys. She played at The Zipper Factory in New York City to promote her new album, “Lucy Woodward…Is Hot and Bothered." Sharing the stage with two soulful back-up singers, Lucy two-stepped her way through each and every number. Her song “Too Much to Live For,” had the entire audience dancing in their seats, including me!
Her song, “What’s Good For Me” was featured in Bend It Like Beckham, and Lucy has also recorded several film soundtracks including "What A Girl Wants" and "Accepted." My personal favorite song of Lucy’s? “Use What I Got,” – it had me singing into my hairbrush at home like I was five years old again!
Go online and listen to the sultry track, “Hot and Bothered” from her new album, “Lucy Woodward…Is Hot and Bothered” in anticipation for the July 2008 release. Hurry up, you’ll want to be the first person to whisper about this secret." - CosmoGirl, May 2008
Wednesday night, hump day, and the back room brick walls of Molly Malone’s are lined with the sweating followers of Lucy Woodward and her red tie and blue blazersporting
band. Accompanied on vocals by Greg Clark, Woodward starts the show off with a “Hit it boys” that makes the venue feel like a New York underground speakeasy from the 1930s. As ceiling fans help reposition the beads of sweat from forehead to neck,
Woodward’s sultry lyrics spill out into the crowd and cause simultaneous group vibing.
She has the kind of voice that sounds good just breathing into a microphone. It seems like
at least half the club knows her, giving the night a jovial togetherness. Her set builds up to “Hot and Bothered,” which she tells us actually came from a Yiddish lullaby her
grandma used to sing to her. If only we all could be sung to sleep by such music. - Campus Circle
“When Lucy Woodward took the stage, she beamed with the “I've got a secret” slink of a natural-born performer. Her bluesy pop infused elements of hiccupped scatting, and her spectacular vocal control and command of the stage made all of the previous acts look like amateurs.” - Venuszine
Discography
Atlantic debuted Lucy Woodward in 2003 with her Top 40 song 'Dumb Girls' domestically and internationally. She also co-wrote the Top 5 worldwide hit, 'There's Gotta Be More To Life' sung by Stacie Orrico.
Photos
Bio
Lucy Woodward began her musical life when she was born in London twenty-something years ago. Lucy's father was a composer, conductor for the BBC Singers and director of the Netherlands Chamber Choir. Her mother was a belly dancer/musicologist who also studied opera. After living in Amsterdam briefly, Lucy moved with her family to New York City when she was five. "I was lucky to have had such an international lifestyle when I was so young, because it's a big part of who I am today," she says. When she was in high school, her mother became a music teacher and moved the family to the Bronx in New York City. Lucy found other kids who "wanted to sing everywhere,"? she recounts. "You couldn't stop us. We'd sing and dance Salsa."? The first songs she recorded were House music, because "everyone's dad or brother had a studio in his basement."? Lucy found singing that kind of music "liberating and improvisationally freeing"? and she began to write her own songs.
An exceptional talent and terrific live performer, Lucy is already a young veteran of the music business. Lucy's song "Dumb Girls" from her Atlantic Records 2003 debut album While You Can was a Top 40 chart hit, which allowed her to tour internationally in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America, as well as garner her significant press exposure including a spot on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno".
Lucy's song "There's Gotta Be More To Life" earned her a BMI songwriter's award and she's recorded songs for several film soundtracks including "What A Girl Wants," "First Daughter" and "Accepted," as well as covering Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet"? for Disney's "Ice Princess." "My good friend Jamie Houston who I wrote with on my first record was producing the track. The song took about an hour to cut, and in that time I knew I had the inspiration for my next record. That vocal made me open up in ways I hadn't done before. It was really satisfying." Lucy plunged back into her record collection and pulled out all the recordings of her favorite songstresses; “singers like the sassy powerhouse Etta James and the wild and idiosyncratic entertainer Betty Hutton, who had originated `It's Oh So Quiet' in the early 1950s. Her fearlessness just blew me away." But, Lucy adds, "I have so many musical influences, and I knew I needed this record to allow for that. I am a singer fan. When a singer can make her voice dance, that's what moves me."?
After the success of While You Can, Lucy felt a shift in her songwriting inspiration. "I kept coming back to three albums in my collection: Julie London, Ray Charles, and the soundtrack of `The Jungle Book.' They were triggering something in me I hadn't felt in a while and I knew I was brewing up the sound for my next bunch of songs."
Lucy's new album, Lucy Woodward...Is Hot and Bothered was co-produced by Lucy and Itaal Shur (Cyndi Lauper, Jewel, Ricky Martin, Robi Rosa and Maxwell), her longtime collaborator and musical director. A multiple award-winning composer and producer, Itaal is best known for having written the smash hit "Smooth" with matchbox20's Rob Thomas for Carlos Santana, which won the Song of the Year Grammy in 1999. "All of our songs were written on piano or guitar, but Tim K. was integral in tying the songs to all the strings, melatrons, horns, live and programmed drums, and whatever else we could muster up to make our sonic template," says Itaal. "Writing solid songs and having this innovative soundscape to showcase them on was our goal."
Lucy and Itaal teamed up with electronica-inspired Tim K. (half of Home & Garden), and the three set out to create a funky, sultry, pop/torch song record with twisted beats. The title song, "Hot and Bothered" takes the melody of a Yiddish lullaby Lucy's grandmother sang to her as a baby. "It turned out pretty racy, but I still think Grandma Sylvia would approve if she heard it now," Lucy says. "Lucy and I wrote the song `Hot and Bothered' before she recorded the Atlantic album,"? says Itaal. "I felt [While You Can] was good, but only scratched the surface of who she was as an artist. I told her I wanted to make an album with her that was totally 100% bona-fide Lucy. I wanted to capture the rambunctious, whimsical, funky, melancholy, sexy, soulful, playful, and explosive Lucy that I had known for years."
Recently, Lucy performed on "American Idol"? judge and superstar producer Randy Jackson's debut album for Concord Records, which was released in March, and she sang on Celine Dion's latest release, Taking Chances.
Lucy's journeys have led her further from New York each year, and to Kenya many times. In 2006 she went to Rwanda to visit an AIDS village that she and her friends had been raising money for. Another year they brought school supplies to a Nicaraguan children's refugee camp. "Most of my friends are musicians, so we had a talent show. We sang Bob Marley songs to the kids, and they sang us songs about Jesus. We had our broken Spanish, and they di
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