Rita Ora On Finding Finding Safety In Music, And Constantly Defying Expectations
Rita Ora has made a career out of defying expectations, and she's not going to stop anytime soon.
“It’s the damn fringe,” Rita Ora says apologetically, as her stylist cuts around her face with a slender comb, brushing away hairs one by one.
It’s a classically humid summer day in Sydney, and the sweaty situation isn’t helped by the film shoot lighting that’s been rigged up inside the Warner Music offices. The aircon stands no chance. But Ora doesn’t mind at all: “I’ll never complain about a day of in-person promo ever again,” she quips in between comb flicks.
After a few minutes the stylist hops away, and Ora takes a breath and beams a 15,000-megawatt smile. She’s in Sydney — somewhat controversially — to shoot the new season of The Voice, where she’ll be judging alongside labelmate Jess Mauboy, Guy Sebastian, and Keith Urban. She’s also just released a new EP, Bang, a collaboration with Kazakhstani producer Imanbek — who you might know from his chart-conquering remix of Saint Jhn’s ‘Roses’. Additionally, because the work never stops, also headlining Sydney’s Mardi Gras, which in 2021 will take place in the stadium surrounds of the SCG.
The EP was pulled together, appropriately for 2020, entirely over Zoom — Ora learned basic Pro Tools skills to help sculpt her vocals to send back and forth to Imanbek, who doesn’t speak any English. It was slow going — a lot of stopping and starting, Ora says — and there were times when she wanted to can the whole thing, but they made it work.
“I’m a very instinctive person,” Ora says. “I also look at people’s reactions. I usually play my stuff to my close camp and I couldn’t do that this time, so I had to really trust my instinct which I think was a great lesson for me because it’s made me feel prouder and more confident about the music I put out. Not that I wasn’t before, but it was different. It was like ‘Wow, I really just did this alone in a room’. I learned how to record, how to kindaaa engineer — but that’s way too technical for me.”
Bang, in Ora’s own words, makes “no sense”. For a start, it’s a bold move in 2021 to make the Crazy Frog ‘Axel F’ sample the centrepiece of a single:
Even away from that, Bang is eyebrow-raising — from the ‘skrrts’ that Ora drops in lead single ‘Big’ to the chaos of ‘Bang Bang’ and the frenetic, 2010s dance-pop of the closer ‘The One’. It’s gleefully unhinged, which is exactly what Ora wanted.
“I just wanted to make an EP that made no sense,” Ora says. “First off, the making of the EP made no sense — over Zoom. That’s not how music is naturally created! So I just thought…if we’re doing it, let’s go for it. Let’s start doing something that’s very familiar, like the ‘Axel’ thing, it reminded me of my youth. And if it reminded me, then I’m sure it would remind other people too. And it turned into this dance record ‘Bang Bang’ and I kinda loved that! Growing up that was all I heard and everyone now is talking about it, which is kinda cool, because it’s such an obvious thing I feel like…why hasn’t everybody done that?”
Anywhere And Everywhere
Then again, when has Rita Ora ever done anything that seemed normal, at least in the standard popstar sense? You’d be hard-pressed to find a figure who’s been more…everywhere…than Ora over the last decade. From appearing on what feels like every reality TV show, to featuring across tracks from just about every major dance artist, to appearing in 50 Shades Of Grey, and contributing tracks to soundtracks like 50 Shades and POKÉMON: Detective Pikachu (that song, ‘Carry On’, a Kygo collab, is actually pretty excellent), she’s been a constant across popular culture — even when it seemed her initial reason for being there, singing, had taken a backseat.
Her ubiquity earned her the loving title of ‘OG Who’, by the wildly popular podcast Who? Weekly, which features an entire segment devoted to the singer — What’s Rita Up To? — each week. She was everywhere, but still completely mysterious.
That’s not to say she’s unsuccessful — not in the least. She’s got a envy-inducing list of achievements — 13 top ten singles (more than any British female artist), including four #1’s, and has notched up performances for the Obamas, at the canonisation of Mother Teresa, and the Oscars, and just about everywhere else. The devil works harder, but Rita Ora works harder.
There was a reason for her non-music related ubiquity — her relationship with former record label Roc Nation had soured after her debut, and Ora ended up suing to regain control of her career. She had created “multiple records” during her time there, her team said during proceedings, but wasn’t able to release anything. Eventually, Ora was released from the deal, and subsequently signed with Warner and Atlantic. Her second album Phoenix, finally landed in 2018 — six years after her debut.
“When I met Warner and Atlantic, I felt at home and so safe,” she says now. “It’s so important for artists to feel safe, and Phoenix was that rebirth for me. Two years prior to it coming out I was in a completely different mental space, I didn’t know what I was doing or what was happening, I had no desire to create. Finding a home made me feel like I could do this. It was a team effort.”
Phoenix was a solid record, containing some excellent singles in ‘Let Me Love You’, ‘Anywhere’, ‘Your Song’, and the underrated ‘Only Want You’. There were some missteps — the less said about ‘Girls’ the better — but overall it was a positive step forward for a singer who’d mostly spent the last 10 years moving sideways. It was, again, also commercially successful, hitting #1 on the UK charts and going platinum.
“It’s the rebirth of my journey in this industry, and it will have its own stand in my room of…reminders? I don’t want to say accolades…okay fine I’ll say accolades,” she says after a pause. “What made Phoenix so big was that people really saw it as a genuine connection of real music. There’s a song on there called ‘Soul Survivor’ which is a very explicit example of my desperation and fear all put into a record…being heard being wanted feeling safe. My fans appreciate that. Fans and music lovers really appreciate vulnerability.”
What Is Pop Music, Anyway?
A few nights after we speak, a couple of dozen people are sitting, distanced of course, on beanbags in the sleek Warner offices, which has been transformed into a Nova radio Red Room stage. It’s intimate — a far cry from the stadium conquering she did a few days ago as the headliner of Sydney’s Mardi Gras.
Ora appears — this time, her hair is suckered to her head in thick braids — and sits happily on a stool next to her guitarist, chatting amiably to the crowd before slipping into an acoustic version of ‘Bang Bang’ (somehow, astonishingly, the Axel F melody comes off beautifully in an acoustic context). What really stuns is Ora’s voice — rich, honeyed, pitch-perfect, it’s a cut above most of her peers.
She wraps up ‘Big’, and pauses for a second, looking annoyed. “Hmmm there was a line I wanted to hit in that a bit better,” she says, before asking whether she can do the track again to get it right. The crew nod — there’s enough time, and this isn’t live anyway — and Ora looks relieved. We run through ‘Big’ again, and Ora hits the mystery run.
Under all the ‘Who?’ bluster and reality TV shows, Ora possesses an enviable gift.
‘Anywhere’ is the highlight of the quick set — voluminous and warm. It’s a nice reminder that, under all the ‘Who?’ bluster and reality TV shows, Ora possesses an enviable gift.
She’s currently in the middle of making the followup to Phoenix, and when pressed for any details, she’s classically broad (“all I know is I love music”). No one can predict Ora’s next move — perhaps least of all, herself. Over the course of her career she’s dabbled in everything; the only constant is her movement, her malleability. She doesn’t belong to any narrative, and we can’t pin her down — a prospect which is infuriating for the general public, but perhaps ultimately freeing. Sometimes bops don’t need a narrative.
“Exploring never stops — what is pop music now?” She exclaims when asked whether she’s searching for her ‘signature’ sound. “Pop music…no one really knows the blueprint anymore. You’ve got hip-hop music that’s #1 in the charts, you’ve got rappers that are like popstars now. It’s just about having a great song, a good record that you love and that you trust and that you believe in.”
Rita Ora and Imanbek’s Bang EP is out now via Warner Music Australia.
Jules LeFevre is editor of Music Junkee. She is on Twitter.