Nadine Loren: A law unto herself

Nadine Loren likes having control over her singing career - a factor she missed as a model and actress. Photo / Greg Bowker

Rebecca Barry Hill talks to Kiwi lawyer-turned-actress-turned singer/songwriter Nadine Loren about making it in California.

Clive Davis told her to drop the opera and go pop. David Foster told her to drop the pop and go opera.

"I was like, 'aaagh, what do I do?"' says Kiwi singer Nadine Loren, on the phone from her home in Los Angeles. Baffled as to which record mogul to listen to, Loren followed her own advice, releasing her first album, Living in Wonderland, in 2009, a collection of pop songs laced with opera backing vocals, and now Naked 80s, a collection of covers of her favourite hits from the decade of leg-warmers and fluoro. In true Loren style, Nik Kershaw's Wouldn't It Be Good has eerie soprano vibrato in the background. Don Henley's Boys of Summer has flamenco guitars - the opera starts at the bridge. It's an odd mix and Loren hopes to head home to Auckland this winter to play gigs to promote it.

The 33-year-old is still an artist on the rise but her heady ascent so far is proof that it takes more than raw talent to forge a career in music. It also requires tenacity and business nous. Acknowledging that old adage "it's who you know" doesn't hurt either.

Seven years ago, Loren was living in Auckland, working as a stressed-out lawyer by day and singing with the NZ Opera chorus by night. Now she's a singer-songwriter living her dream in LA, rubbing shoulders with Cat Stevens and the Beach Boys' pianist and songwriter Ron Altbach, hanging at dinner parties with actor Matt LeBlanc and wine-tastings with radio and television personality Ryan Seacrest and consulting with the creme of the music industry.

Clive Davis is famous for helping to ignite the careers of artists including Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys and Carlos Santana, while David Foster discovered Josh Groban and Michael Buble.

Naked 80s was produced by Peter Asher, the Grammy-winning producer who has worked with The Beatles, James Taylor and Linda Rondstadt. Loren credits her manager Barry Krost, Cat Stevens' former right-hand-man, for introducing her to the right people.

Personally too, Loren is well- connected. When she married multi-millionaire investment firm chairman Michael J. Levitt this year, ice hockey star Wayne Gretzky and David Foster were among the guests. The couple were married by their friend Antonio Villaraigosa, the Mayor of Los Angeles.

"I remember looking out into the room and seeing all these fabulous people. It was so surreal because I'm definitely that same girl from New Zealand."

Well, it's not quite that simple. Loren was born in Switzerland and spent the first eight years of her life in Germany. Her father is German and her mother, who grew up in New Zealand, is Dutch-Indonesian. Loren, then known as Nadine Bernecker, went to a Rudolf Steiner school, where the approach to learning was focused on the performing arts. She learnt the guitar and piano and grew up wanting to be a performer. In her teens she was signed to the Ford Model Agency, which sent her on assignments around the globe.

"I enjoyed it, it got me a lot of opportunities but I love the fact that I can eat anything I want now," laughs Loren, who is fluent in English, German and Italian. "I appreciate how much flexibility I have now and to be known for something other than what's on the outside. I spent seven years modelling and was pretty serious about it. It got me through law school and I travelled the world with it and it was really fun at times but I think you get to an age where becomes a little bit tiring."

After studying at the University of Auckland she became a law clerk at Minter Ellison and then a lawyer, specialising in international trade law and corporate law. Although it didn't compare to the high of performing, Loren says her day job was good training for her future life.

"Law teaches you how to formulate arguments and it gives you a good business sense. I now sit back and make a list and really think things out, probably better than if I hadn't done it."

Small acting gigs came up throughout her early 20s, including roles on Mercy Peak, Xena Warrior Princess, Street Legal and Hercules. But it was her role in the American film production Without A Paddle that really encouraged her to rethink her life's plan. The Seth Green and Burt Reynolds comedy was shot in New Zealand in 2004. Loren played Angie, the put-upon girlfriend of one of the leading men. The three-and-a-half-month-shoot provided the impetus she needed to make some big changes.

"The director [Steven Brill] said, 'If you're serious about acting, move to LA'. I didn't really think about it and I said, 'okay'. I liked the challenge of it all."

She took the plunge that year and headed to Hollywood to pursue acting, promising her parents she'd be back in two. She also changed her surname to the easier-to-pronounce Loren.

But LA was tough. Loren knew no one, so took every job she could think of to make ends meet.

"There were times," she says, "it really, really sucked."

At auditions she got used to hearing agents encourage her to lie about her age. "I remember going to see an agent - I was 28 at the time. And he said, 'nope, you're 25'. 'No I'm not'. He said, 'you are now'."

Loren stuck it out and, about three years in, grew to love LA. She met her husband, adopted a big schnauzer called Rocco (who makes his presence known throughout the interview) and eventually settled in Brentwood, near Santa Monica, becoming the latest in a long line of Kiwi entertainers to relocate to the City of Angels - Boh Runga and Loren's mate Greg Johnson both live and work there as musicians.

"It's a really nice lifestyle. It's definitely not as outdoorsy as New Zealand but I love that I can go for a run on the beach. Or through the canyons."

The acting dream soon gave way to music. One night she was in New York having dinner at celebrity favourite Mr Chow, when a new acquaintance at her table said he'd heard she was a trained opera singer and dared her to prove it. She accepted and performed an impromptu aria to a crowd of stunned diners. Impressed, he suggested she cut a demo.

"I said, 'there's no way I can afford to'. He said, 'well how much do you think it would cost?' I guessed about US$12,000. That night I literally walked out with $12,000 in cash. I'd never seen that kind of money in my life. I raced to the bank. I felt like a drug dealer."

Loren doesn't name her mysterious investor - her husband, perhaps? - but she will say she has since acquired others willing to back her. Once she'd done a demo she recorded her début album.

"It wasn't quite as well organised as this one," she says.

The underrated Living in Wonderland, independently released, was recorded everywhere from garages to studios around Hollywood. It was a quirky, perky collection of pop songs that didn't fit the cookie-cutter Britney or Taylor Swift mould but touched on Loren's opera roots, with a hint of folk. On the strength of knowing ditties like Cyberspace, Bang Bang and Look Me In the Diamonds, the album was nominated for Pop Album of the Year at the LA Music Awards, an annual talent competition designed to give indie artists a platform.

Among those to praise her publicly was Altbach, who noted her playful phrasing and called her voice "completely original" and "superb".

She got an even bigger platform later that year, performing the Star Spangled Banner at the Indy 500 in front of 400,000 people. It might not have been her country's national anthem but, in a weird way, it established her as a Californian.

Given the songwriting award, it seems odd that Loren would almost abandon her songwriting on her second album. It was Davis' idea to release an album of covers, she says, to show people what she was capable with her voice, a theatrical, sultry blend that calls to mind Kate Bush meets Kylie Minogue.

You could also argue a covers album is a risky move as her voice could be compared to the original singers, particularly on something as ubiquitous as the Bangles' Eternal Flame. And although not all the covers reinvent the wheel, Loren says she's proud to have co-written the arrangements with Asher, stripping them back to "campfire mode". Perhaps the biggest transformation is Def Leppard's Love Bites, which Loren has backed with strings and her soprano vocals.

Loren has also written two retro-styled songs on the album, both catchy to the point of becoming dangerous ear worms. One is Stuck, in which she sings of "shoulder pads and acid wash", the other is I Wanna Be A Smurf - yup, an ode to those little blue cartoon characters.

"I sort of see myself a little bit like Sara Bareilles [the US singer best known for Love Song: "I'm not going to write you a love song," etc ... ] because she pushes boundaries and she's very theatrical, which I tend to do as well. I've heard other people describe me in America as countryish like Sheryl Crow, which I don't agree with. I'm not trying to fit into a genre, I just like having fun with music and have it be fun and playful - and sometimes a little darker, just because that's life. But generally I'm trying to do something a bit different."

Just how well the New Zealand public will embrace the expat remains to be seen, considering most music fans like to get to know bands and musicians face-to-face through extensive touring. Loren performs regularly in the US and has done a few small gigs in New Zealand but she hopes one day to do a vineyard tour during the summer.

Whatever happens, you can bet she'll be the one calling the shots.

"I don't like having zero control over my career and when you're modelling or acting, generally you have no control. You might think you do but you really don't. As a producer, singer and musician you can create things, you don't rely on anybody else, you just do it yourself. I like that side of it. I've got to an age where I like being treated a certain way and it's difficult unless you're at a very high level in modelling and acting to be treated that way. When you're in charge of your own destiny it's a little bit easier."