New voice for late star's unheard songs

Pauly Fuemana. Photo / Supplied

Unheard final songs by OMC singer Pauly Fuemana are being assembled on an album by fellow hitmaker Tiki Taane.

Fuemana, best known for his 1995 worldwide hit How Bizarre, died in January last year. Widow Kirstine said he wrote and home-recorded songs almost to the end.

She approached Taane, best known for his No1 hit Always On My Mind and an experienced sound engineer-producer, to trawl through the hundreds of unreleased songs and assemble a posthumous album due out later this year.

In the mid 90s, OMC's success took off with How Bizarre, which sold more than two million copies, as did the album of the same name.

However, Fuemana didn't deal well with the fame and fortune and this, coupled with record company politics and a spat with co-writer and producer Alan Jansson, meant that little new music emerged.

Mrs Fuemana said he wanted to release the songs he wrote in the wake of How Bizarre but was protective of them.

"Like Paul, Tiki is definitely about the music rather than wanting to be some star, and is treating the songs with so much dignity."

* See TimeOut for the full interview with Tiki Taane.