Lights (singer)

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Lights
Birth name Valerie Poxleitner
Born 1988 (age 19–20)
Timmins, Ontario, Canada
Genre(s) Pop music, Indie, New Wave, Girly-pop [1]
Occupation(s) Singer/Songwriter/Model
Instrument(s) Vocals, Keytar, Keyboard
Label(s) Indie
Associated acts Old Navy
Instant Star

Lights is the stage name of Valerie Poxleitner, a Canadian synth pop singer and songwriter best known for her songs "February Air" and "The Last Thing On Your Mind", featured in 2008 Old Navy commercials.[2]

Her live band members include Adam Weaver on synth and Maurie Kaufmann (BOY, the 6ixty8ights) on drums. Lights is currently managed by Canadian musician and radio personality Jian Ghomeshi.[3]

She has been compared to Vanessa Carlton for her piercingly high pitched voice. Lights is one of a few female singers in the late 2000s, including Kate Voegele, Katy Perry and Tristan Prettyman that are influenced by 1980s New Wave singers and 1990s feminist singer-songwriters and making a return to traditional pop music in the rap and hip-hop monopolized 2000s pop landscape.

She has also collaborated on music for the television series Instant Star.[4]

Lights has listed her influences as Björk, Phil Collins and European production based music such as The Knife.

She is currently dating Rob Dyer, founder of Skate 4 Cancer.

Contents

[edit] Early life

Lights was born in Timmins, Ontario. She was raised by missionary parents and spent much of her childhood in various parts of world ranging from the Philippines to Jamaica.[5] She currently lives in Toronto. Lights grew up in a musical family, the daughter of Eric and Virginia Poxleitner, and sister to Jessica.

When asked about when she wrote her first song, Valerie has said "I was eleven, and I learned three chords on the guitar it was the first time I really learned how to play guitar and I wanted to write a song with them so I went down to my mom and I said pick a number between 1 and 150 and she picked 5 or something, I can’t really remember the number, but I went and opened up the Bible and there was 150 Psalms already written so I went to the number she chose and wrote a song with that and that kicked off the biggest thing of my life.".[6]

[edit] Start of her career

Lights, at the age of 15, tried for a modeling casting held by Wal Mart. During the set up, one of the makeup artists heard her sing. The people who heard her instantly praised her voice. In the same day, Lights met her soon-to-be manager and a few weeks later, negotiations were in talk.

Soon, Lights began writing for Sony Publishing. This led her to meet Christopher Ward, who set up her meeting with Epitome. Lights was able to participate in one of the many songwriting camps for the show Instant Star. She has cowritten three songs for the fourth season with Luke McMaster. Ironically enough, Lights was one of the people who originally auditioned for the part of Jude, which ended up going to Alexz Johnson.

For the past year, Lights has worked on getting her music to the masses and with her meeting with Old Navy, Lights was able to set a deal of promoting her music.

[edit] Songs

  • "February Air" - 2006
  • "Its Over Casanova" - 2006
  • "Year of the Cure" - 2007
  • "I Owe You One" - 2007
  • "Last Thing on Your Mind" - 2007
  • "White" - 2008
  • "Ice" - 2008
  • "You Got The Girl" - 2008 (CD:The Breaks by The Tremulance)
  • "Drive My Soul" - 2008
  • "Move (Get Down)" - Unknown
  • "Ghost" - Unknown

[edit] Album

On March 11, 2008, the EP was released on US iTunes with the tracklisting as "February Air", "White", "Drive My Soul", and "The Last Thing On Your Mind" and was added to the Canadian iTunes store shortly after. The EP was then re-released on April 22 with two additional songs, "Ice" and "I Owe You One". The new version of the EP is only available in Canada through BestBuy, HMV, or iTunes. As of May 27 the EP is available through iTunes in the U.S.

Lights EP
Ice?
Drive My Soul
Februrary Air
I Owe You One
The Last Thing On Your Mind
White

Verizon has taken her Old Navy featured songs and made them into ringtones.

[edit] Charity

Lights has been a supporter of Skate 4 Cancer, and has recorded a song called "Year of the Cure" for the charity.

[edit] References

  1. ^ MySpace.com - LIGHTS - Toronto, CA - Indie / Pop / New Wave - www.myspace.com/lightsnoise
  2. ^ "Old Navy brings "February Air" to Buenos Aires", Advertising Age, February 11, 2008.
  3. ^ "Two local artists get international push on music service", Torontoist, October 2, 2006.
  4. ^ "Writing music for Instant Star", Toronto Star, August 28, 2007.
  5. ^ Lights makes us happy | Toronto Music Scene - Indie News + Interviews - Toronto Music Scene - Indie News + Interviews
  6. ^ http://www.instantstar-online.net/interview2.html

[edit] External links

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