Sarah Connor in Canada (Edmonton Sun)

Sarah in Canada
Edmonton Sun, April 2002

By MIKE ROSS

Out of the clear blue sky ... well, Germany, anyway, comes an artist who's not afraid to express her sexuality.

Nothing new, of course, but Sarah Connor appears to have lots to express.

The first impression the North American press has been given of this young Fraulein - who hadn't seen The Terminator before she chose her stage name - is a sexy Maxim Germany photo spread that makes Rolling Stone's infamous Britney Spears article look like Convent Quarterly. Boy, we wish we could show you the pictures. They're pretty steamy, let me tell ya.

Connor's music is very much along the same lines. Selections from her debut album, Green Eyed Soul, include slick, urban soul tunes like Let Us Come 2Gether and Let's Get Back to Bed - Boy! The single French Kissing - whose Suzanne Vega-derivative do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do verse gives way to a snappy soul chorus of the sort favoured by artists like Alicia Keys - urges listeners, in perfect English, to "do it" in various places: On the beach, down on the street, in the car, "wherever you are." The album is basically a musical diary of one passionate love affair. She's already a massive star at home, to the point that the German press made a scandal of the fact she wore a see-through dress on an awards show.

"It was a long dress, not very exciting at all," Connor recalls. "I have more sexy dresses than that. It was in the newspapers every day. It was so stupid. I thought, does Germany have nothing to worry about except whether I'm wearing underwear?"

"Um ..." I reply.

Europeans are always so frightfully ahead of the game on these matters. We weren't even supposed to know about Sarah Connor until the album release on June 18. We in the colonies relish the chance to get a jump on the hottest new artist coming over the pond - and thanks to Power 92, we did. In airing French Kissing weeks before it was supposed to come out, the local radio station sabotaged the carefully laid plans of the record company in breaking this delightful new diva in North America. These things happen. As a result of the premature attention, Connor included Edmonton on a "pre-promotional" visit this week - that's a smaller promo tour to set the stage for the real promo tour later on. Needless to say, The Edmonton Sun was interested. Very interested.

"You're not going to make this into a story about sex, are you?" chided the record company person.

Well ... yeah, sort of. Besides, who's making who into what here?

SOUL, SEX AND SENSUALITY

"Soul, sex and sensuality - that's what I call my music," says Connor, over a croissant and juice at the Hotel Macdonald. "I'm 21 and I'm very aware of my sexuality. I like to play with that on stage and provoke people. It's just how I am ... I think soul music and sex is very close together. Sex for me is not only the man and woman things. It can be a lot, anything that turns me on, a good song, for example. A song has to be sexy for me to like it."

Being German proved to be Connor's biggest hurdle when it came to singing R&B. Exposed early to music by Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin, she was six years old when she joined a black gospel choir in her home town near Bremen (the German town famous for the Brothers Grimm fairy tale). Later, after two years studying opera, she started hunting for record deals and found that would-be Svengalis were more interested in creating a dancing "marionette" than music. She fended off offers until she found a record company that believed a white girl from Germany could become the next Janet Jackson. Says she: "There were so many, what do you call them, the haters? People who do not believe that I could break R&B in Germany, or from Germany. I always said it's not a question of where you come from or the colour of your skin. It's my soul that tells me to do that. I grew up with this. Now, it's so funny, the record companies and clubs that turned me down say, 'Oh, if we knew, we would have done this or done that.' Now they can't pay me enough."

One advantage to entering new territory is that no one knows who you are, she says. Connor needs bodyguards in Germany, though her kick-boxing skills might come in handy. At the risk of getting booted upside the head, I try out a little high school German as we end our pleasant little chat: "Du bist ein sehr schones Fraulein," which translates roughly to, "Man, you are one hot chick!"

"That's so cute," she laughs. "Say it again."