Interview with MeTalkPretty lead singer Uliana Preotu

MeTalkPretty is an alternative rock band from New York City with some international flavour. While three members of the four piece group hail from different parts of the United States, lead singer Uliana Preotu is originally from Romania. The group derives its influences from late ‘90s, early 2000’s bands such as No Doubt, System of a Down and others although don’t expect to hear Uliana ripping off Serj Tankian’s signature howls. MeTalkPretty recently released its debut five song EP We Are Strangers with a full-length to follow sometime in the fall/winter. Among some of its accomplishments, the band won the MTV VMA for Best Breakout Artist in New York City. We recently spoke with Uliana to get to know a little more about MeTalkPretty.

MeTalkPretty is a band from New York City that formed about four years ago. Give us some details on how you all met and created this band.
Uliana: We all met in New York City, everybody kind of moved from a different place to New York to find a band. None of us are actually from New York; I’m coming from way far away from the United States, from Eastern Europe. Our guitar player is actually from Orlando, Nate our bass player from Wisconsin and our drummer is from upstate New York. They were looking for a vocalist and I don’t think they were necessarily looking for a male or a female but probably more for a male. They found me online and when I contacted them I just said I’m a girl, I showed up and they were like “ok, well let’s try to jam and let’s try to get to know each other.” And it all worked out for us pretty well.

How would you describe the band’s sound? Who would you say really has influenced this band?
Uliana: Oh wow, we love so many bands collectively. My main influences are probably… my all-time favourite band is System of a Down but I definitely love No Doubt and Blondie you know, a lot of female fronted bands. I love Depeche Mode, I love the Cure, so we have that very dance element to the band but it’s also rock at the same time so we are kind of playing with the sound, the pop element and the rock element.

Now did you grow up in Romania? How did you first get exposed and interested in rock and alternative rock music?
Uliana: There’s a huge metal scene there which I am not the biggest fan of but there is a lot of rock coming from that. So all my friends are listening to rock and I got exposed to a lot of bands. I had to find through that big amount of bands, you know the ones I actually liked, I always look for melody, I always look for messages in the songs, those things matter to me a lot. That’s how I got exposed to rock… I started there (in Romania) with a band, I was listening to radio, I was watching music videos and wondering “what if I would have a chance to be in America to be like those musicians, to have those crowds screaming for me” and here I am today, I’m following my dream, I’m living the American Dream that’s for sure.

The group just released a five song EP at the end of July. How do you feel about it now that you’ve released it?
Uliana: This will actually be five songs off our debut album which is called We Are Strangers and the full album is going to be released in the fall. We put out five songs for five dollars on iTunes and we got an amazing response. It’s a long awaited album for our fans and friends and they are waiting to be able to grab the rest of the songs, the full album. So far it’s doing pretty well so we are extremely proud of this product, it’s our debut album, it’s our first chance to expose ourselves to the world and we worked very hard and we are very proud of it. Everything we wanted to do we did so we’re very happy with it.

Your first single “Wake Up!” just recently won the MTVU’s Freshman Award which I’m sure is a great accomplishment for the group. How did the song’s video end up winning this award?
Uliana: Everything we’ve done in our careers so far and every single step that we took we’ve had constant support from our fans and friends and they put us in places that we never dreamt we could be. We dreamt that we would take our music to TV and radio and all that but actually our fans made it happen. MTV chose five bands to compete with each other, their videos to compete against each other and there was a fan voting system… And as far as I know you guys (online media) helped us a lot as well in posting, you know announcements that we are in the contest and we want to really thank you all for that, people voted for us and we won so everything helped and you guys helped us with that so thank you for that. Thank you to our fans who voted relentlessly for days and days and nights.

“Wake Up!” has also been in a couple of video games including EA Sports’ NHL 2010 and The Sims 3: World Adventures. How did the song end up in these two games?
Uliana: Right now it’s also in Rock Band as well so if you want to have a little fun go try it out. One of the things that our management fought for a lot to get us exposure and we are really grateful to the people behind these games for including us in. NHL truly exploded, we were a very small band when we got into that game, we didn’t expect anything, we didn’t even know how these things work. People just fell in love with the song so much and we got a lot of letters asking for the lyrics, where to get the song, somebody took the song, ripped the song off the game, put a picture of us up on YouTube and it got over 90, 000 plays, fans writing “I love the song, I want the song.” So it was just amazing to see that happen, the song means a lot to us so we’re definitely grateful to everybody starting with our management. We worked so hard and now here are the results.

How does the band write songs? Do you all collaborate together or do one or two of you do most of the writing?
Uliana: It kind of starts, like Leon and I kind of try out different ideas, always an idea of a song that we pull out all the time. If we feel like it’s going to go somewhere we take it into rehearsal, there’s a big process and everybody gets involved and everybody gets to say something on the song and feel like they are part of it. We are a very democratic process, we go as far as voting for if something should stay or should go. Sometimes it’s funny but we want to make sure that everybody gets to feel like they are a part of the writing process.

You’ve played a few dates on this summer’s Van’s Warped Tour that will wrap up this weekend. How have these shows been going? Have you received some positive reactions?
Uliana: Warped Tour for us has always been an amazing experience and great exposure. We started playing Warped Tour three years ago and at that time we travelled with the whole tour but the next year we started combining it with other tour dates. We’re doing a tour this year but we didn’t want to miss the opportunity to be on the Warped Tour again so we dropped a couple of the last dates to be on the Warped Tour. We love doing it, it’s great exposure for us and they always treat us very well. We do really well on Warped Tour, our music appeals to a younger demographic as well.

It’s amazing; you have so many chances to connect with people, to connect to a lot of young people. We’re coming from New York City where most of the venues are twenty one and up. We love New York, I love New York but I think that one of the problems that a lot of bands starting have is that we can’t connect with a lot of people our age; we only play to like really older crowds. Warped Tour for us was what we needed; we want to play to people who are kind of our age, the younger audience. Our audience I know for sure is pretty wide, we appeal to older crowds as well but definitely the young crowd is, you know the one that is eager and wants to spread the word.

Do you have any other shows or touring plans scheduled in the coming weeks?
Uliana: We’ve been on the road for four months so we have two more dates on the Warped Tour in Idaho and Washington. And then finally a very well-deserved break in September, we are going to go home and have a big homecoming show; we are going to open for the band Filter at Bowery Ballroom. Then we will have the well-awaited CD release party in New York City and definitely going back on tour hopefully somewhere in October. We are looking to tour as much as possible.  [ END ]