Hello Magazine 26th January 2006

[Oksana]

Hello Steve!

Thank you for providing that article. Beautiful pictures!

Best of luck to Hayley on her new home in London! It makes me glad to see her branching out but still staying close to her family and homeland.

Oksana

[Dave]

stevehome said:

Thanks everybody for your comments, in answer to Peter's (Postscript) question, I spotted it on ebay, the listing was as follows:-

"HELLO!" MAGAZINE
EXCELLENT CONDITION
JAN 2006
~~~~~~
HAYLEY WESTENRA
New Zealand's teen songstress tells why she's moved across the world to make London her home.

cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7012616479&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWN%3AIT&rd=1

So there it is, I could find no mention on this site of the article, so I had to have it, the suspense from the title was killing me. Its the best ebay purchase I have made this year , excluding the 'Original' Wuthering Heights DVD of course!
Steve H

Hello Steve and everyone! I've been doing a little detective work since discovering your discovery. If you search on google for "Westenra Hello Magazine" you will find the following link on the first page of results (headed "HELLO! magazine - CONTENTS"

www.hellomagazine.com/magazine/contents/0902/

and listed on the Hello! page is...

HAYLEY WESTENRA How London's calling for the teen singer from New Zealand followed by

CHARLOTTE CHURCH teams up with Catherine Jenkins and Gavin Henson to fly the flag for Wales aaaarrghhhh!!!!!!!!!!!

If you then click on the Contents button, you go to this week's contents page at the following link: www.hellomagazine.com/magazine/contents/0910/ and this has enabled me to crack the code This week's issue is number 0910, Hayley's week is issue 0902. Steve, you gave us the date (26th January 2006) so all we now have to do is hit the "Back Issues" button to find out where to email or write; this is:

E-mail [e-mail]

Mail: Back Issues Department
HELLO! magazine
Wellington House
69-71 Upper Ground
London
SE1 9PQ
UK

and we can ALL buy a copy of the Magazine! Thanks again Steve - and Hello! to Hello! back issues department i.postimg.cc/9fYxy370/smilie-big-grin.gif

Cheers, Dave

[Stuart H]

Hi Dave

Thanks for your comments. My interest in Hayley being based in London is purely selfish. It is good news for the school where I am headteacher as Hayley has officially agreed to become a "friend" of the school and to visit as often as she can. The pupils love her music and she is a real inspiration to them. They are all still talking about her visit in November and are busy raising money for her UNICEF "bikes" appeal. She is definately good news for 450 pupils in an inner city school, so if she does base herself in London, although she will continue to tour the world as an international star, she will always return to London regularly. When I spoke to her about bases in November she told me that the only three viable centres were London, New York or LA. She added that she felt comfortable living in London so i was always quietly optimistic. Hayley has fans all over the world, not least in NZ and I know that wherever she "lays her hat" someone will be disappointed.

Stuart

[Joe]

This is an excellent write-up of Hayley with stunning pics. Thanks so much for including it here!

[stevemacdonald]

In the Hello article Hayley comes across as fed up with the persistent Charlotte Church comparisons. I am too. As performers they're different as knight and daaé.

However, there is a noticeable overlap in their song material. Charlotte famously sang "Amazing Grace" for the US President Bill Clinton at Ford's Theatre and made it one of her signature songs. Hayley chose to sing "Amazing Grace" for her US TV debut and made it a highlight of her NY Pops concert.

Here are some more they've both done:

Pie Jesu
In Trutina
The Water Is Wide
She Moves Through The Fair
O Mio Babbino Caro
Silent Night
Ave Maria - Caccini and Bach/Gounod
Bridge Over Troubled Water
Somewhere
Gabriel's Message

With at least a dozen songs in common these two singers will always show up together on searches. Since Hayley came along after Charlotte had fully arrived, she will need to stop doing material already strongly associated with Charlotte if she's sincere about wanting these comparisons to hush down.

[postscript]

When I spoke to her about bases in November she told me that the only three viable centres were London, New York or LA. She added that she felt comfortable living in London so i was always quietly optimistic. Hayley has fans all over the world, not least in NZ and I know that wherever she "lays her hat" someone will be disappointed

Dear Stuart.

It was very interesting listing her three possible bases. Following my earlier contribution to her 'fixed abode' being London and mentioning NZ was ideal for South East Asia, I did further think about ease of travel times for an international star. I wondered if she would choose NY or LA for her second flat, giving her three bases which would ease long-term jet lag enabling her to break twenty-four hour traveling into more manageable bite size pieces.

Of course there is the hassle of in and out of airports and increasingly she will perhaps be able to afford the more luxurious travel of sleeping couchettes. I wonder if she will acquire a second flat and therefore a third world base?

I think LA is just that far south to be clear of the San Andreas fault which of course makes SF so vulnerable but 'Frisco is a much more beautiful city than LA, or was when i last visited both of them, but LA is, of course, the more logical choice.

It is super typical of Hayley that settling in somewhere else she seeks to involve herself in the local community. Your school experience with her must have been quite exciting and to have the children involved in supporting her UNICEF bikes is a lovely international support effort.

Peter

[fusilier23]

Fed up? Dunno about that. It was stated that the comparisons do irritate her, and out of respect for her I've never made the comparison to her, though I did mention something about it to her dad after I heard she had gotten the Boston Pops gig, b/c Keith Lockhart specifically refused to hear that other singer and I thought that was kinda a feather in Hayley's cap to in fact get the gig. Yes, there is some overlap, but, let it also be remembered that the last time CC did "Amazing Grace" in public was just a month shy of three years ago, in Las Vegas, and most folks are starting to forget that now. That song is always going to be popular with Americans. Likewise Ave Maria and the Xmas pieces are pieces everyone does at some point, CC wasn't the first young soprano to do them, nor should she be the last.

Truth be told, I always thought of Pie Jesu as the pre-fall CC's "signature" piece, and Hayley's never done that one to death, and O Mio Babbino is common in this genre (Holly did it too). The best remedy for this issue is time. As both singers continue in their respective directions they will become more and more distictive, and this will die down. Now, if Hayley wanted to silence this, she could always take a leaf from Andrea Bocelli, who has his personal assistant present interviewers with a printed statement that he will not discuss his disability and would prefer not to have the subject broached, or from Charl, who to this day refuses to discuss her natural father except to spew hatred for him. It'd be a simple matter to have Steve Abbott or Giselle take the reporter aside before Hayley comes out and tell the reporter which subjects are off-limits. The problem with that is that reporters and editors may give Hayley less glowing coverage if that is done, as it could be perceived as her getting high-handed about a relatively unimportant thing. But, in the end I guess we have to leave that in the hands of Hayley and her staff.

[Dave]

For anyone in the UK who wants the "Hayley" issue of Hello magazine, this is what you do:

To order back issues to a UK address, please write to us at Hello! Back
Issues Department, Wellington House, 69-71 Upper Ground, London, SE1 9PQ.
Please include your name, address, issue number and a £3.50 cheque or postal
order made payable to Hello Ltd. This price is per copy and includes postage
within the UK. We post the issues out the same date that we receive payment.
If I can be of any further assistance, please contact me.

From other Countries, I guess you'll have to email them first at [e-mail] to find out how and how much to pay.

Steve, can you confirm that we need to order Issue 902? Cheers!

Dave

[Steve H]

Hi Dave,

I can confirm that the issue is 902, well done with the digging around for the correct way to obtain back issues, It looks like I only did half the job!

Perhaps the other reason we all missed it was that there was no mention of the article on the cover:- see below:



So now you know what to look for when you all go to the Civic Amenity Sites (Rubbish tip to you and me) at the weekend to hunt through the old mags!

All the best, Steve H

[postscript]

Fed up? Dunno about that. It was stated that the comparisons do irritate her, and out of respect for her I've never made the comparison to her

Hi Fusilier. You raise an interesting point about her possibly being 'fed up'. I think if it was any one of us responding we would use a rather basic phrase describing relieving our tensions but I think Hayley used that term 'irritated' deliberately. It is NOT the same thing as being 'fed up'. I think there are two aspects.

1. Hayley does not let things 'get to her'. So 'irritated' simply states an unemotional case and she moves on.

2. Hayley appears to steer a very difficult course between diplomacy and frankness. For most people frankness would often come over as abrupt or rude. For Hayley, her frankness is in fact an open honesty and open honesty in someone like Hayley is packaged with awareness of other people and being receptive to them.

Hence she might appear diplomatic and might appear to be mistress of guile. However, I don't think her diplomacy is diplomacy. It appears as diplomacy but in fact derives from basic courtesy. I don't mean she isn't savvy about the need to come over to a wide range of people with diverse views as neutral, being very careful to keep her personal opinions on a range of subjects to herself.

One certainly would not blame her if there was a degree of artifice in the way she presents herself, because that is recognising the world as it is and doing 'the necessary on the world's terms'. But what I think is so utterly incredible about her is that in all aspects she is simply herself and who she is, on anyone else but Hayley would come over as Miss Goody Two Shoes in whose mouth butter `would not melt'. But she doesn't! come over that way

In this, she is actually representative of a large number, perhaps the greater majority, of young people today. Unfortunately, for some reason, the public has a generally negative view of young people making Hayley as a person seem even more extraordinary than her v voice alone makes her. In truth, I think she is more representative of young people today than many oldies care to acknowledge. I think society is turning full circle back to the older style of basic civility and good manners but the bad news sells the papers.

So, Hayley's 'irritated' I think is indeed no more than that, an irritation which she quickly shrugs off to 'get on with her life'. I don't think Hayley is capable of being 'fed up'. Were she close to that emotion she would find a positive way of moving on, skirting that mood completely and leaving it in the lay-by.

Peter

[fusilier23]

I don't think Hayley's a "goody two-shoes," I think she just knows how to behave, a rare enough quality in people her age these days where a lot of them glory in having poor attitudes. I was there once too, and I had a pretty poor attitude toward a lot of things, basically I was going to do what I wanted to do, say what I wanted to say, and the Devil with anyone who didn't like it. That was wrong then and it's wrong now.

Hayley has apparently not fallen into that rut, and that's good, but I'm sure she can still get annoyed at minor troubles, get stressed, cry when she's hurt, and so on. She is still very human, and has, thankfully, never appeared too good to be true.

I am still of the opinion that as time goes by the comparisons to CC will fade. Hayley has about six things going for her to keep her on the right track, most notably #1, her family, with two good, solid long-married parents, I won't go into the rest, no one's interested in hearing that litany again. Just give it the time.

[stevemacdonald]

postscript said:

... I think LA is just that far south to be clear of the San Andreas fault which of course makes SF so vulnerable but 'Frisco is a much more beautiful city than LA, or was when i last visited both of them, but LA is, of course, the more logical choice.

The Los Angeles area is very much at risk from the San Andreas fault, but there are smaller faults closer by which can do considerably more harm, specifically the Northridge which on 17 January 1994 spawned the costliest U.S. earthquake since 1906. There was a lot of fight in that little dog.


Edit: I tidied up the quote tags.
Richard