Imogen Heap

Singer-songwriter

• Born: December 9, 1977
• Place of Birth: London, England

Contribution: Imogen Heap is a British singer, songwriter, and producer. She was nominated for best new artist at the 2007 Grammy Awards. Heap’s 2009 album Ellipse won a Grammy Award for best engineered album, non-classical. She has also gained attention for her technological innovations in the field of music.

Background

Imogen Heap was born in the London borough of Havering and raised in nearby Essex. Heap’s father was an executive in the construction industry, and her mother was an art therapist. Heap’s mother named her after the composer Gustav Holst’s cellist daughter, Imogen, in the hope that she would also become a musician.

Heap’s talent for the piano was evident at a young age, and she began to take lessons as soon as her feet could reach the pedal. By age eleven Heap had developed an impressive command the piano as well as the clarinet and the cello.

Heap’s parents separated in 1989, when she was twelve years old. She spent her formative years at the Quaker Friends’ School in Saffron Walden and the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon, where she was a driven student but one with frequent disciplinary problems. While at school she taught herself to program and sequence music on an Atari computer. As a teenager she aspired to compose orchestral music, until the demo tracks she had recorded for a school project were brought to the attention of music management executives.

At age eighteen she signed with the record label Almo Sounds and entered a recording studio to create her first full-length album. Released in 1998, iMegaphone was an eleven-track album of piano-driven pop songs, produced by venerated English producers Guy Sigsworth and Dave Stewart. The album did not fare well from a commercial standpoint, as Almo Sounds did little to promote it, but the album nevertheless earned the young singer widespread critical praise that included comparisons to prominent musician Annie Lennox. Despite the praise, when the major label Universal took over Almo Sounds, Heap’s contract was not extended.

Sigsworth and Heap reunited in 2000 and began to compose music collaboratively, ultimately forming the electronica band Frou Frou. The duo’s debut album, Details, was released by Island Records in June 2002 to a positive critical reception but small sales figures. Island would ultimately decide not renew the duo’s contract for a second album.

Career

Frou Frou’s dissolution and Heap’s growing dissatisfaction with the label system after two terminated contracts compelled her to self-produce her next album. She acquired the funds to do so by remortgaging her London apartment and establishing her own label, Megaphonic.

Around the same time, a track from her previous project, Frou Frou, had garnered Heap a new set of fans after the song “Let Go” was prominently featured in the 2004 film Garden State, the soundtrack to which ultimately won the Academy Award for best compilation soundtrack for a motion picture.

Heap’s sophomore solo album, Speak for Yourself, was released in 2005 and quickly became a critical and commercial success. The album’s release brought Heap still more international exposure, spearheaded by the singles “Hide and Seek” and “Goodnight and Go,” each of which were featured on the popular Fox television series The O.C. The album Speak for Yourself earned Heap a 2007 Grammy nomination in the category of best new artist.

Heap had been encouraged by her web designer to chronicle the making of Speak for Yourself in a blog. Through her frequent updates to the blog, she quickly amassed a growing legion of followers, who ultimately provided an important resource for Heap throughout the production process. She would later cite the importance of crowd-sourcing ideas and gaining confidence from the support of her fan base through social media.

Heap’s third album, Ellipse, was released in August 2009, quickly becoming Heap’s most critically celebrated and commercially successful release to date. The record was praised by music critics for its combination of electronic and rhythmic experimentation and for Heap’s moving vocal delivery. In addition to earning a Grammy nomination for best pop instrumental performance, the album won the 2010 Grammy Award for best engineered non-classical album. Her ethereal 2014 album Sparks also earned a Grammy nod, and she also collaborated with Taylor Swift on the Grammy-winning album 1989 (2014).

Technological innovation has become increasingly significant in Heap's career. Beginning in 2009 Heap experimented with and refined a pair of electronic gloves that enable her to control the speed, pitch, and other elements of her music with simple, expressive hand gestures. Her collaboration with the University of the West of England resulted in a new electronic musical instrument, Mi.Mu gloves, which won her a 2015 Webby Award. Heap's single "Run-Time" (2014) also employed a beta version of Intel's Run-Time jogging app to collect and layer ambient sounds over an electronic track.

Heap's music was incorporated into the London and Broadway stage productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child; she later issued The Music of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child in Four Contemporary Suites (2018), a condensed soundtrack.

Also in 2018 Heap reunited once more with Sigsworth for Frou Frou's Mycelia World Tour, which also promoted her blockchain music-distribution technology, Creative Passport, through workshops and conference presentations. In 2019 the band released the acoustic single “Guitar Song (Live),” their first in over a decade. In 2020, Heap hosted the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony.

Impact

Imogen Heap has persevered through the administrative upheavals of the music industry to become one of electronic music’s most widely known and respected artists. Heap’s ongoing musical experimentation, her idiosyncratic use of samples and sequences, and her haunting vocals have produced some of the most innovative electronic tracks of her time.

Heap’s early embrace of social media as both a source of and outlet for creative concepts was initially regarded as experimental but was ultimately pioneering in the many ways modern artists use social media to interact and collaborate with their fans.

Personal Life

Heap occasionally asks fans to assist her during the songwriting process, leaving options open for discussion or ballot on a message board on her website. She and her partner have a daughter, Scout; following that birth, Heap was candid about her struggle with post-partum depression.

Bibliography

Heap, Imogen. “Beyond Frou Frou: Imogen Heap.” Interview by David Dye. NPR Music. NPR, 27 Mar. 2006. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.

Heap, Imogen. "Imogen Heap Never Stopped Going In." Interview by Nazuk Kochhar. The Fader, 5 Nov. 2018, www.thefader.com/2018/11/05/imogen-heap-interview-harry-potter-score-blockchain. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

Heap, Imogen. Interview. Chicago Pride. Chicago Pride, 20 Feb. 2006. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.

Heap, Imogen. Interview by Paul Irish. Aurgasm. Aurgasm, 19 Oct. 2005. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.

Lynskey, Dorian. “It’s Just a Magic Thing.” Guardian, 27 Mar. 2006, G2 sec.: 21. Print.

McCormick, Neil. “Imogen Heap: All Hail the Online Queen.” Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 31 July 2009. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.

Rowley, Glenn. "Watch the 2020 Grammys Premiere Ceremony Hosted by Imogen Heap." Billboard, 26 Jan. 2020, www.billboard.com/music/awards/2020-grammys-premiere-ceremony-imogen-heap-details-8548981/. Accessed 20 Sept. 2024.

West, Naomi. “Imogen Heap: Fully Connected.” Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 14 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Aug. 2013.