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BBC: Estonia's 'electric' export
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By Tim Masters Entertainment correspondent, BBC News |
Estonian pop star Hannah is in bed, swathed in white sheets, bathed in sunlight and looking sultry.
Welcome to the opening scene of Hannah's latest video, Shadow on the Wall - a song she hopes will be her big break in the UK. But it could have all been so different.
Cut to the previous afternoon: Hannah is relaxing over a peppermint tea in the lounge of a smart London hotel.
"I got 40 different treatments for the video - about 15 were absolutely fabulous," she says.
"But some of them were extremely shocking, with an electric chair, prison scenes and really black humour. I said 'yeah, let's go for it', but then my plugger said 'you're never going to get on daytime TV with that video'."
Hang on, an electric chair?
"It was a very shocking idea," repeats Hannah, straight-faced. "It's one way to get publicity, but it's not who I am really."
With hindsight, Hannah's PR team made a good call.
Cultural ambassador
The singer - who is billed as "Estonia's big musical star" - is about to embark upon a UK schools tour and is an ambassador for Estonia's European City of Culture status in 2011.
A Marilyn Manson-style video would not have been good timing.
Hannah - or Hannah Ild, as she is known in the real world - has been a fixture in Estonia's pop charts for some 10 years.
She started piano lessons aged seven, wrote her first song at 13, and released her first album at 17. In the late 90s, she came second in her bid to represent Estonia in the Eurovision Song Contest.
After six albums, Hannah has swapped Tallinn for London, with the aim of breaking the UK market.
She admits that her last album, 2007's Everything is Changing, wasn't as successful as she had hoped.
"I didn't live in London at that time and you have to be here physically. I didn't understand anything about the global music market," she says.
Hannah has been working with songwriters like Steve Booker (who co-wrote Duffy's Mercy), with her sights set on the UK charts.
Her new album, also titled Shadow on the Wall, is due out by the end of the year.
Hannah hopes it will help throw off the Eurovision tag that tends to get placed on her as an artist.
"Eurovision is great fun, we won and we are not ashamed of that," she says, "but I think when then they hear I'm from Estonia, it's linked with Eurovision. I'm trying to break that link."
'Half-naked'
Now based in London, Hannah says she is enjoying the anonymity that a big city brings. So did she not get much peace in Tallinn?
"I can have my privacy if I want. If I go home, I prefer to stay at home. It is quite a small community and people are quite jealous with everybody who is a bit more successful."
Hannah says she's not interested in getting photographed falling out of nightclubs in London.
"I don't drink much. I have my self-control and I don't do stupid things."
So how does she relax?
"Sometimes I feed the squirrels in Hyde Park, but there are all the Facebook and Twitter pages to update."
She says she found Twitter difficult at first: "Estonians don't share their feelings!"
But Hannah - who studied media and marketing at university - does know what helps to sell records.
Here's what she told her Twitter followers during her video shoot the next day: "I'm in the bed, half-naked and singing the first verse..."
What's the betting she hasn't put that electric chair video idea in the bin just yet?
Hannah's Shadow on the Wall remixes were released this week. The single is due out on 22 November.
