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Killing Heidi

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Killing Heidi are a rock band from Violet Town, Victoria, Australia.

Contents

Early history

The nucleus of Killing Heidi is singer/songwriter Ella Hooper and her older brother guitarist Jesse Hooper. They grew up in Violet Town, a small Victorian country town, with a population of approximately 2,000 where their parents worked as music and drama teachers.

They started jamming together at home, she started to sing while he played guitar, they played an acoustic gig together at the Violet Town Arts Festival in 1996 including a couple of songs written by Ella who was then aged 13. A local record studio owner offered the two some time in a studio with a couple of schoolmates as the rhythm section. They submitted these recordings in the Triple J Unearthed in 1996 and their track Kettle won the competition for their area of rural Victoria.

The name "Killing Heidi" came from the band members generating two lists before their first gig; one filled with "soft" words, one with "harsh" words. Killing was chosen as the harsh, Heidi the soft. According to the band, the name basically means "the end of innocence".

Producer Paul Kosky who had worked with Crowded House, Rage against the machine, Kate Ceberano, and The Clouds (Australian band) was looking for a band to manage, sign to his new recording label Wah Wah Music P/L and publishing company Wah Wah Music LTD. He decided to check out a very basic live performance by Killing Heidi. He developed the band from the ground up for the next 2 years working on song writing, song structure and overall direction of the music. He became the manager of the band and arranged a contract with Roadshow Music(who had a contract with Savage Garden) for his label Wah Wah Music P/L, Killing Heidi had also acquired a new rhythm section (which Kosky sourced and introduced to Killing Heidi) with Adam Pedretti on drums and Warren Jenkin on bass. They recorded the rest of the first album in 1999.

Career Success 1999-

Killing Heidi's first single "Weir" was released in August 1999 and reached #6 on the official ARIA charts (and Platinum sales) by the end of 1999. With a blend of Ella's crystal-clear vocals and roaring guitars, the song epitomised the band's musical penchant for slower, quiet verses and loud, up-tempo choruses. Weir quickly became a teen anthem, but more broadly, the song continues to be recognised as an Australian anthem in its own right.

The second single "Mascara", about self-image and individuality, was released in December 1999 and reached the top of the Australian charts in January 2000 - it stayed at #1 for three weeks, also achieving Platinum status. Although "Mascara" outsold "Weir", and indeed the latter still remains a popular teen anthem, "Weir" is generally considered to be the band's greatest song to date.

The band's debut album Reflector was released in early 2000 and debuted at #1, quickly becoming the fastest-selling album in Australian music history. The album featured a unique musical style, fusing hard guitar riffs with melodic synths and Ella's stunning vocals. At the turn of the millennium, Killing Heidi had become the biggest thing in Australian music and arguably the most hyped band in the nation's history; this propelled Reflector to spend seven weeks at #1 on the ARIA charts. The album spawned two further singles: third single "Live Without It" peaked at #5 on the ARIA charts, while "Superman Supergirl" became the fourth single release from Reflector in late 2000.

Reflector eventually sold well in excess of 300,000 albums in Australia, earning 5x platinum status and Killing Heidi won four ARIA awards in October 2000. However, the momentum halted when a cyst was found on Hooper's vocal cords and she underwent an operation in 2001. Her voice was slow to recover.

The band recorded its second album Present, despite Hooper's continuing problems with her vocal cords. Their second album Present wasn't as successful as its predecessor, only going gold with 50,000 sold and failing to make the top ten of the Australian album charts. It spawned two singles - "Heavensent" which reached the top 30 in early 2002 and "Outside of Me" which reached a peak of #12 later in 2002; a third song from the album, "Ammyl", was released to radio in 2003 but was never released as a commercial single.

After Present, manager Paul Kosky left the band (not the other way around as previously published) as a result of ongoing friction about the bands new direction and behaviour. The band signed up with Chris Robinson (Kosky's old financial business partner).

The band went over to Los Angeles in late 2003 to record a comeback album and rented a house in the San Fernando Valley while the album was recorded with producer John Travis. The songs were written both in Violet Town and in Los Angeles.

The first single from the band's third album was "I Am", released on July 12, 2004. Debuting at #16 on the Australian singles charts, it spent three months in the Top 50 charts and eventually reached Gold sales, making it Killing Heidi's most successful single since 2000's "Live Without It". "I Am" also features on the Australian version of the Spider-Man 2 soundtrack.

In late August 2004, Killing Heidi released their third studio album. Self-titled, the album featured a less styled and more sonically expressive sound, and was hailed by critics as a major return to form for the band. Killing Heidi debuted at #7 on the charts, reaching gold accreditation in its first week of sales, though the album fell out of the charts relatively quickly.

In September 2004, the second single from the album, "Calm Down" was released, though it made only moderate impact, peaking at #23. Killing Heidi spent the rest of 2004 touring Australia on their national Calm Down tour, which became highly successful for the band. Early 2005 saw a third song from the album, "Running Underwater" released to radio, but like Ammyl in 2003, it was not released as a commercial single.

Later in 2005, Killing Heidi officially split with record company Sony BMG and began work on their next album. In an interview in early 2006, Ella stated that the recording process was almost finished. The band has also announced that they have produced the new album themselves.

Tentatively titled Holding Pattern, Killing Heidi's fourth studio album is, at this stage, slated for a 2006 release. Early reports suggest that the new album has a more organic sound to it, with Ella claiming that the style of music on the upcoming album is the kind of Killing Heidi the band had always wanted to be.

Members

As of 2006, Killing Heidi consists of: The original band had a different drummer and bassist but the above lineup did not record all of their albums either. Reflector had a session drummer for 'Weir' and 5 other album tracks. Kosky also played an integeral role as an additional musician on all songs from reflector.

Discography

Albums

Singles

External links

 

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