Biography

A singer with a message - One she wants to share.

The many lives, and many loves, of Miel de Botton are to be found throughout her sparkling new collection of songs.

Born and initially raised in Zurich, Switzerland, she was schooled in law at Oxford (Jurisprudence BA), then qualified and practised as a clinical psychologist and family therapist in Paris. Documentary producer, art collector, philanthropist, World Wildlife Fund Youth Ambassador. Recipient of an Honorary Doctorate from the Weizmann Institute of Science where she endowed the de Botton Institute for Protein Profiling and established the de Botton Centre for Marine Science. Mother, artist, musician.

Introducing Loved Ones

In terms of her myriad achievements, those are Miel’s lived ones – and this is Miel’s Loved Ones: a collection of songs split over three volumes that distills her history, her heritage, her family and her friends, and pays tribute to them all. After two albums, Magnetic (2015) and Surrender to the Feeling (2019), passion projects where she nonetheless admits to feeling “a sort of commercial pressure”, now the singer and songwriter has “relaxed into everything. I thought: I can really make this new music organic and take my time. And because it is all about my loved ones, I wanted everything to come from the heart. And for this to only come out when I was ready.”

Unhurried and unabashed about writing and recording a deeply personal set of original songs, Miel leaned into what – and who – meant most to her. French Chanson style, Europop, choral music, Ibizan dancefloor abandon, German-language spoken-word, a lovestruck piano waltz, Miel applies her limitless imagination and soaring voice to them all. On Loved Ones’ shining, luminous, diamond dozen songs, her interests and accomplishments roam far and wide. Near, too, in tender songs written about or with her intimate inner circle, including her beauty therapist (a survivor of domestic abuse), her childhood nanny (a 95 year-old legend) and her philosopher brother Alain (who refused to sing but, well, expressed his creativity in other ways). 

“From all different areas and aspects of my life, I’m blessed to have a lot of loved ones, including of course, my precious family. I wanted to honour them. But also,” Miel continues, “when I would tell my stories about the music business, recording, performing, being on stage, I could feel their interest – and sense that they wanted to join in. And I thought, wouldn't it be amazing to create a body of work where they could do that?”

Collaboration with Andy Wright

Facilitating that circle of collaborative trust is her wingman on Loved Ones:  producer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Andy Wright. As he has been for much of Simply Red’s career, Wright has been by London-based Miel’s side across her professional musical existence.

“He's very grounded,” begins Miel by way of explaining how their creative partnership, now 12 years deep, works so well. “I needed that, because obviously music is a rather scary enterprise to enter into. But Andy has been there with me, in the writing room, in the studio and across three UK tours. He has a reassuring, comforting nature, and is a very positive person. He's basically a superstar without acting like one,” she adds, laughing, of a well-regarded industry veteran who’s also worked with Annie Lennox, Simple Minds, Chrissie Hynde and Imelda May. “He's seen everyone, done everything, but he wears it so lightly – he never makes you feel intimidated.”

It was also a question from Andy many years ago that catalysed Miel’s creative juices. He had wondered: “How ambitious are you?”

Her reply: “Very!” The result is ‘Ambition’ a sweeping, soaring orchestral power ballad buoyed by the duetting voices of Miel and Andy.

Say it again: how ambitious is she? Ambitious enough to want a hit song. Cue a track with that very title. A pounding pop earworm that could light up night clubs across Europe, ‘Hit Song’ is the sound of Miel living her best life. Still, she admits that, despite its irresistible catchiness, she was unsure it would fit on Loved Ones. This, after all, is a collection of songs about other people.

“But then I realised: here, the loved one is me,” she says with a smile. “What do I dream of? Having a hit song! So I think it slots right in.”

Keeping up the BPMs and the ‘joie de vivre’ is ‘Immortality on the Dance Floor’. It’s a pure, warming blast of disco sunshine – a banger which, fittingly enough, was birthed in an Ibizan mega-club backroom.

 “I was with my extremely close friend of 35 years Luiz Paolo, who's actually in the videos for this and for ‘Hit Song’,” she says of the pair of dancey tracks that are being released to listeners in ‘Loved Ones’. He's Brazilian, extremely charismatic, loves dance music and helped with the disco aspect of this.

 As for the night that inspired the song’s creation: it was during a trip to superclub Pacha where the crowds and big-room DJ were proving a bit too much for the pair of old friends. “So we decided to leave. But then on the way out, we saw, behind a velvet curtain, a little room full of coloured lights and they were playing ’80 songs, all our favourites. Then we danced till three in the morning, just the two of us. It was so fun.” It seemed only fitting that, in the video they ended up making for the song, “Luiz and I were inspired by Wim Wenders’ ‘Wings of Desire’, my favourite film, so we’re both angels – nightclub angels!” she laughs. 

Further into Loved Ones there are deeper, more reflective moments. Miel’s mother contributes to the German-language ‘Meine Mutter’ a paean to maternal love. Miel’s beloved nanny is honoured, in French, in ‘Ma Ya’, titled after the nickname of the indomitable figure who once saved the young de Botton siblings from a scorpion. 

The influence of Miel’s much-missed father and his love of classic chansonniers like Piaf and Aznavour is paid tribute to in the beautiful French-language song ‘Mon Cher Petit Papa’. Indeed, his absence is one of the reasons we’re here today – a loss that kickstarted Miel’s desire to express herself after years working in different fields and helping others.

“There were actually two negative, horrible events,” she explains, “the passing of my dad and my divorce. Those made me feel for a time, obviously, very, very low. But then, gradually, as I emerged, I wanted to feel and give joy. And I felt liberated, in a way, because my father had been a rather strict judge of my life – making me finish a law degree, for example, I didn't want to finish.

“He was a really big person watching over my shoulder. And when he went, it was absolutely awful, because I adored him. But I did feel a liberation. So a few of the songs, in different ways, are about that on the album.”

Other members of her family are here, too. Brother Alain features on a chill-out/choral piece ‘Transcendence’.

“He's obviously a major loved one. So I approached him and he's like, ‘well, I don't want to sing, whatever happens!’ So he did a description of the song that he would like: he loves Genesis, so Phil Collins-type drums. And a mantra that's similar to Michael Jackson's ‘mama-say-mama-sa-mama-coosa’ from ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’’, almost, but not the same. And Latin chanting, so it was a bit Enigma-like. So all that was quite a challenge!” she beams. “But Andy and I worked on the music and I hope we nailed it! At least, Alain likes it!”

Wright also worked his wonders in his studio, The Qube in West London, wrangling the gang of Miel’s friends who turned up to sing on the chorus of ‘Loved and Respected’. It’s a mass, joyful singalong that captures the essence of Loved Ones – which is, in the words of the emotion-rich woman at the epicentre of it all, “a lot of warmth. I’d love people to be surprised and enchanted, maybe occasionally sad – the whole mix. But for me, it's definitely heart-led. I hope that means it connects directly from my heart to the heart of anyone who listens.”

The proof, it seems, is already there. Miel’s beauty therapist, her duetist and inspiration on ‘Freedom Song’, had her dreams of a singing career denied first by the restrictions of growing up behind the Iron Curtain and, later, by a considerably-less-than-ideal husband.

“And Cornelia said to me: ‘You can't believe how you‘ve completely changed my life.’ She stopped singing when she was 18, and her dream died. Now, finally, she’s having her moment. That’s exactly what I wanted this album to do for everyone involved and for me!“

Welcome to Miel de Botton’s world – a world of generous spirit and magical thinking. And welcome to her third body of work – for the loved ones she already has, and for the ones she’s about to make.

Loved Ones Volume 1 is out now, the first of three as part of the Loved Ones collection. Stream on all major platforms here, and watch the ‘Hit Song’ music video on YouTube.