Butterfly Boucher was born on June 2, 1979 to a music-loving family living in Australia. She was the middle child of a family with seven daughters. Guitar was the first instrument Butterfly picked up when she was around seven years of age. Her dad persuaded her to figure out the instrument and learn playing it on her own. She learned to play other instruments such as piano, bass, and drums in a similar fashion. By age 10, her father taught her how to use a four-track recorder. Around age 13, she finished an album of 60 thirty-second instrumentals. Eventually, she began writing lyrics to form complete song structures and that's how she became a singer / songwriter.

She became exposed to the music scene around age 16 by joining her older sister Becca Boucher's pop-rock band, Mercy Bell, as a bassist. The band became such a huge hit in Australia that it was easy for them to secure a recording deal, to a major record label nonetheless. There was only one problem: Butterfly was too young to sign a contract so she had her parents sign it for her. Unfortunately, after releasing their first album, the label did not feel satisfied with the material for the second album so they let go of the band. It was time to seek a new audience and so Mercy Bell moved to the US where they almost instantly secured another record deal, this time with Interscope. The band got to play gigs in Los Angeles, Nashville and London. After three years of development and recording, the band was once again dropped and the album they were working on was never released.

With a strong determination to pursue a solo career in music, Butterfly decided to move to England. Armed with a laptop, she started writing and recording demos. The demos turned into fully-constructed songs and before she knew it, she had enough material in her hands for a full-length album. Her music made its way to industry veteran Mike Dixon, who helped introduce her to Brad Jones and Robin Eaton who then helped in producing her very first album. Butterfly went back to the US and settled in Nashville, Tennessee, where her producers were based. Buzz about her music reached several labels who then promptly offered Butterfly recording deals. Of all these record deals, she picked Geffen/A&M's offer as they were the ones who wanted to least change the album. But there were changes. Small things like her accent showing off in a single word (“can't"), which she was told needed to be re-sung in an American accent for American radio, had her going back into the studio for re-recording.

Finally, the debut solo album of Butterfly Boucher, titled Flutterby, was released under Geffen/A&M in 2003. Immediately after its release, songs from the album made their way into television shows and radio stations. There's another unfortunate side to this story: the label failed to promote the album as they were not sure how to market her music. In Butterfly's own words, “They'd say that I was too indie for pop and too pop for the indie scene." Despite this unfortunate circumstance, she did get her deserved attention when the world renowned Canadian singer/songwriter Sarah McLachlan picked her as an opener for her Afterglow tour. Butterfly spent hours at the merchandise table after each show, selling and signing over 20,000 copies. Even after all the buzz this generated, Geffen/A&M showed little to no interest in further promoting Flutterby. All they wanted was to move on to a new record.

What followed next would be a tragic experience for Butterfly. She wrote and recorded new material for the second album for about a year. With the help of American record producer, David Kahne, the second album was produced and delivered to the label in January of 2006. To make a long story short, the next two years were spent “pleasing" the label. Apparently, this label was the hardest to please as even when one of the unreleased songs became a huge hit after it was featured in a pivotal scene in the TV series Grey's Anatomy, they still wouldn't approve of the album. Not knowing how to market the album once again, they stalled on releasing the new album before offering Boucher to affiliate Polydor Records to release the album in the UK first. After the album was found to be too "American-sounding" for the UK, she re-recorded the album for the UK market with a Swedish producer. After the re-recording, they were all ready to release the album in autumn 2007, when Geffen/A&M suddenly blocked the album release, agreeing to allow the UK label to release the album only on the condition that the UK affiliate bought Butterfly out of her debt to Geffen/A&M for over $1 million USD. Polydor had no choice but to refuse the offer.

Freedom finally. In December 2008, Butterfly revealed to KGRL that she had finally gotten out of her record deal contract (as was seen in KGRL's Top 13 Albums To Watch Out For In 2009). Fortunately, she retained the rights to the new songs written and recorded during the deal. The new solo record Scary Fragile was digitally released on May 26, 2009 under Butterfly Boucher's own imprint Situation Operation / Nettwerk. The new album took a long time to release but the fans who have been waiting for it all those years were rewarded well. Scary Fragile is relentless from start to finish.

Currently, Butterfly is also at work with her new band Elle Macho, where she plays bass and does vocals. The two other members of the band are David Mead (guitars and lead vocals) and Lindsay Jamieson (drums and backup vocals). Their debut EP, iES Potencial!, is due for release on October 6, 2009.

KGRL is very proud to present our October 2009 Flower-Powered Artist, Butterfly Boucher. The lovely Australian singer/songwriter Butterfly Boucher joined KGRL in the studio for an exclusive performance shot in high-definition video and audio. Check out our CD review of Scary Fragile and take a peek at the stunning photos of Butterfly shot by our good friend Jeff Koga. There's also a comprehensive interview with Butterfly Boucher in video, audio, & transcribed form.

We're giving away 3 signed CDs of Scary Fragile. Just e-mail us at contests [at] kgrl.fm and tell us why you deserve to win. Don't forget that you can request a FREE copy of the FPA live session DVDs as well!

It starts with Butterfly's sigh of relief. The song I Found Out is a classic rock track with a full band arrangement. Although it sounds like a full band went in to record this song, you'd be surprised to find out that Butterfly played all of the instruments, except for the drums. The music immerses us in its flood of heavy guitars, spunky bass, lively drums, and strong vocals with forceful conviction. I Found Out was written long before the problem with Scary Fragile happened, but with the recent release of the album, this song becomes a fitting proclamation of independence from the shackles of her former label. It's quite a tasty way to open the album.

For The Love Of Love reels us in with its tribal rhythm, flaunty jungle beat drums and monster bass. It feels like some travel agency ad because of the world-music sound. Heads will sway and fingers will tap while listening to For The Love Of Love. Despite sounding weaker than the two previous tracks in terms of the melody, it's a fun and refreshing song to relax with.

We're served a heavy-hitting rock-edged track in Just One Tear. The stanzas glitter with synth sounds and guitar upstrokes while the chorus booms with electric guitar riffs, billowing bass and drumbeats. Apparently Butterfly really loves the bass guitar. The highly-polished production quality stands out in this track.

With a classy arrangement and instrumentation, Gun For A Tongue hit our musical senses with perfect accuracy. The drums and bass are pumping but it's the piano that makes the stanzas sound so elegant. Like Just One Tear, Gun For A Tongue blasts us with a surprising twist of hard rock in the chorus. And while this song evokes a certain James Bond-ish feeling, the recent contest video Butterfly created featuring Gun For A Tongue forever changed the way we'll remember this song (even if we still think it would make a good Bond theme). For those of you who are wondering what I'm talking about, check this video out. It's hilarious! To counter that effect, there's also a Butterfly Boucher + Lovers Electric version right here – something that Butterfly talked about in our interview.

The darkest-sounding song on the album is the title track, Scary Fragile. It's a nice change of pace from the edgy stuff we've heard so far. Ditching the flamboyant sound of the previous tracks in favor of a simple acoustic-guitar-and-vocals combination works quite effectively. It's Scary Fragile – dark, moody, haunting. The addition of drums and other instruments past the halfway mark adds to the tension.

Ultra-catchy pop-rock plays next with Bright Red. This track elicits the sounds of Flutterby's Another White Dash. I do appreciate honest and clever lyrics when I hear them. "Help! And throw me a rope. / I think I'm drowning in shallow people."

Remember me talking about how Gun For A Tongue sounds James Bond-ish? Well, what we have in the following track titled Keeper is a bonafide James Bond theme, or at least it should be! The introductory bassline, apparently written during Butterfly's childhood, says it all. I can imagine all those silhouettes associated with James Bond movie opening credits, while this song plays. This is one of the album's highlights.

In what seems to be a follow-up from the theme of I Found Out, They Say You Grow comes next with the same intensity and classic-rock style of I Found Out. Aside from the majestic-sounding instrumentation, there are richly layered vocals that I consider one of the highlights of this track. The melody is gorgeous and it's the reason I instantly fell in love with this track. You can literally feel each note being played as it resonates the frustration Butterfly probably felt during the initial failure of her record label to support Flutterby. Looking at the current situation, the message is strongly reinforced: "I've been stuck and it seems like years / Finally free!" "My dreams are bigger than me / How will I get there? / Who will I have to be?" Kudos to you Butterfly for finding your way out of that tangled mess!

There's no denying that Butterfly loves grand-sounding instrumentation. Keeping Warm is a fine example of this. The piano-and-acoustic-guitar combo at the beginning of the song is heavenly and it only gets better when the rest of the instruments come in near the middle. The vocal harmony is immaculate. This track is truly adorable. I could listen to this song all day long.

The intro to To Feel Love made me think of Eye Of The Tiger. And that's where the similarities end as Butterfly indulges us with an auditory feast of outstanding instrumentation and lush vocal harmonies. This song was near and dear to Butterfly at the time it was written, and it shows with the expressive vocal work put into this track.

After hearing an action-theme-sounding track with Keeper, we are thrust into the dramatic tear-jerker A Bitter Song. With the emotional weight of the vocals and the tension of the basic piano-and-acoustic-guitar arrangement, it really feels like it's a bitter song. As a finale for an album chock-full of rock-tinged tunes, it feels like Butterfly never found the right place for it so she slapped it right on the end.

The long journey to the release of Scary Fragile is over. Butterfly Boucher can now proudly share the fruits of her labor of several years ago. What were the people at her previous record label thinking? This situation strongly reaffirms the truth about major record labels: it's not about music anymore; it's all about the money. If you care about music and real talent then support artists who stay true to their art. Scary Fragile deserves your attention.

Another White Dash
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Listen to Butterfly Boucher' responses in High Quality MP3 Stream using the player below:




Transcription excerpt from the interview:

KGRL: Can you sum up the events that transpired during your struggle to break free of your record contract?

Butterfly Boucher: I know it sounds like we had such a happy beginning. It was exciting for a little while with the new record label and they released Flutterby, and I got a couple of really good tours. Then it came to recording this recent album, Scary Fragile, and I'd kind of worked at home for about six months because we'd chosen a producer but he wasn't available for months and months because he was very busy. So eventually I got into the studio with him, and we finished the album that I'd started at home for about three months. I actually delivered that in January 2006, and the record label just really didn't respond to it which is never a great sign. I'm up against Pussycat Dolls and Ashley Simpson and people like that. We were on the same kind of label but [requiring] completely different ways of marketing an artist.

I kind of don't understand why they would sign somebody like me. Having been through this now, it just doesn't make any sense. They're just not set up as a label to stick by an artist and keep pushing them like they used to, like [with] Sheryl Crow or something. It wasn't until her third single. That's when she broke. But we didn't even get to my second single on the first album. It's just changed, you know.

Anyway, I finished that album and they were very quiet, and they didn't really say "Great" or "Not great." They just were a bit quiet, so my management very quickly started to talk to the UK affiliate label and tried to get them interested and see if they wanted to break the second album first, and they were very excited. They had been waiting for me to be able to go over there, actually, and me too. I'd been dying to get over to Europe and tour. So they were very excited and [said] "Yes, we'd like to go with her second album and be the ones to break it." You know, break her. But the only problem was, they didn't really like that album that I'd just finished. They felt that it was too American. I don't even know what they thought. They just wanted me to work with somebody else.

So, I ended up pretty much recording a whole new album, another version of Scary Fragile and they were very excited about that and they were going to release it, and then the American label stepped in again and said "Actually no, you can't release her. You can't have this unless you pay X amount of dollars or buy her out of a deal." Or whatever. Something like that. And the UK [label was] just not going to do it, so that was two versions of this album that were just shelved.

So we talked....I needed to get out of my deal. Obviously it wasn't a good match. It wasn't working. Their response was "Why don't we just get her into the studio and just do another album?" I'm like "I just spent three years recording two albums for you. Obviously you're not on the same page." So it took about a year to get out of the deal and negotiate it and I was able to get my masters back for those two versions. That's why I'm able to release it right now. Two weeks ago I put out the first version, which I felt was true to the album that I wanted to do for the second album.


KGRL: You were saying that you created two versions of Scary Fragile and released the first version as the official record. Just how different is the second version?

Butterfly: Well, in my opinion some of the songs are a little bit wimpier. We [had] re-cut a few of them and they were just approached all wrong. Also, I got to a point where I was a bit confused. By the time I did the second version, I was really just trying my hardest to please [the label] and figure out what they wanted, which is not a great way to work creatively, and I got to a point where I didn't even know what was good or bad anymore with my songwriting. It's terrible to reach that point because that's what you rely on as an artist: your gut feeling and whether you think a song's good or not. But really, there was no helpful direction from the label, so I [was] just left just trying to figure out what I [was] doing wrong, rather than focusing on creating great songs and amazing art or something.

So...the second version to me, because of all that emotional stuff that went into it, is a little bit tainted for me, but I have friends that heard it and they thought it was still very very me and thought it was great. I did some songs that aren't on this version that I've released now. There [are] a few songs that didn't make it on there, which are strong songs but they just didn't make sense as a group of songs for this version, so I'm hoping to use them in the next album or using them somehow.


KGRL: Speaking of cohesiveness of the album, the last song "A Bitter Song" sounds very different from the rest of the songs...

Butterfly: I just slapped a bit of song on the end of the album. It seemed like the only place because it is quite a dark song, even though it's talking about trying to write this song to feel better. It's a pretty simple kind of thing. I don't know. It just made sense as a finishing song. Hopefully it was more hopeful than dark. Anywhere else on the album it felt like it slowed it down too much, so I put it there. But that was a special song to me, and I really wanted it to make the cut on this album, which was great. In the end Grey's Anatomy picked it up. That was actually when the label wasn't doing anything with it. It was just sitting on a shelf but Grey's Anatomy put it in an episode of theirs but way before the release of this album, which was a shame [because] the label still didn't even pick up on that that was a good thing. They just let it go by.


KGRL: Speaking of movies, two of the tracks on Scary Fragile look like they will fit a James Bond movie, Gun For A Tongue and Keeper. Of the two, Keeper sounds the most likely to be a main theme. The instrumentation is simply Bond-ish and evokes the stylized silhouetted intro of all Bond movies. Is James Bond one of your influences in writing these tracks?

Butterfly: When I was younger, I loved soundtracks....I really enjoyed instrumentals. I used to love all the Peter Gunn stuff, the James Bond [soundtracks] and all of that. Every bit of that I just ate up and loved. That lick on Keeper—I got my first guitar when I was seven—and that was the first thing I ever wrote on a guitar....I think there's a video somewhere. No, there's a photo of me and I'm holding this massive guitar and I'm just this tiny little girl playing that lick, and I was so proud of it. I didn't think about ever using it in a song until this last album when I was just mucking around. I'd programmed a beat on Pro Tools and I just started jokingly playing my little riff and I was like, "I should use this!" All these years later, and I used it, so that made it on[to] the album and my seven-year-old self wrote that bit.


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