CD titles can come from the oddest places. Take, for instance, KT Tunstall's 2007 album Drastic Fantastic. She named it after equating the life of a musician with comic-book heroes. "You're flying everywhere, you're down, you're thrown around, and you're exhausted to the point where you can't stand up or speak," she says. "Drastic Fantastic sounded like the name of my comic-book life."
Tunstall grew up in St. Andrews, Scotland, the adopted child of a physicist and a school teacher. Her debut, Eye To The Telescope, was named in part because her father used to take young KT and her two brothers on late-night excursions into the observatory at St. Andrews University. Telescope came out in early 2006, showing off Tunstall's keen sense of pop melodies delivered in mostly straight-ahead rock arrangements. She was in her late 20s when she wrote and recorded the album, having already honed her skills in several bands in St. Andrews and London, and in Connecticut and Vermont.
The Grammy-nominated Telescope spawned the hits "Black Horse And The Cherry Tree," "Suddenly I See" and "Other Side Of The World" — she followed it later in 2006 with KT Tunstall's Acoustic Extravaganza, an album of both new and old tracks.
Provenance: St. Andrews, Scotland, though she now lives in London, England.
Latest release: Drastic Fantastic (2007)
© 2007 Nigel Music Media LLC. Used by permission.
KT Tunstall
