SALLY INTANGIBLE Sally Shapiro
Jul 09, 2008
Holograph, construct or real girl—disco queen Sally Shapiro is perfection you can’t touch.
BY LAVINIA JONES WRIGHT
The DJ puts the single on his deck and it spins hypnotically. A voice breezes by like a cool gust of wind whispering I wish you never knew/How I feel for you. The honey-sweet tones bounce as a soft dance beat leaps in and your feet start to move. The mesmerizing track, “He Keeps Me Alive,” is a single from Swedish disco siren Sally Shapiro’s debut album Disco Romance (Paper Bag) which was released in the US and Canada in late 2007 to critical acclaim.
Disco Romance is currently receiving no less than two facelifts—at presstime, Remix Romance Vols. 1 and 2 were set for back to back releases in April and May, respectively—with famed electro artists such as Skatebård, DFA’s Juan MacLean, Jon Brooks and Lindstrøm taking their shot at improving on the near flawless dance gems while fans and critics were getting their second and third look at the woman behind the songs.
Shapiro’s voice evokes ancient tales of sailors lured to the rocks by the sweet melodies of dangerous women. When she sings, her reedy soprano is at once sultry, innocent, delicate and dark. The sharp “s” and guttural vowels of her Scandinavian accent add the exotic touch to her vocals, making them the perfect soundtrack to dance floor sex.
Disco queen Sally may be, but diva she is definitely not. Shapiro is so cripplingly shy that she not only refuses to perform live, but also eschews phone and in-person interviews and insists that no one be in the room when she’s recording. Including her producer.
After being treated to my own email interview with Shapiro, the answers to which were practically verbatim copies of another interview she did last year, I started to wonder something that other writers have also suspected: does she even exist? All of these endearing and strange quirks could either add up to one very magical piece of electro-perfection or to a person created, very cleverly, with marketing in mind. After all, it’s undeniable that we are drawn to what we can’t have, to that beauty that we have never seen know must be there.
Sally’s responses came via her producer, Johan Agebjörn, the mastermind behind Disco Romance and Sally’s emergence. “When we had been singing Christmas songs together he had said that I had an italo disco sounding voice,” writes Shapiro. “He had made this track “I’ll Be By Your Side” that he needed a singer on, so he played it to me on the piano and asked if I wanted to sing on it. I liked the track so I said yes.”
Shapiro’s relationship with Agebjörn began eight years ago when they worked together in an office (the company name is absent from her responses) and passed mixtapes back and forth. They bonded over a mutual love of dancey pop music. Recalls Shapiro, “Some tracks on my tapes were Madonna “Material Girl,” Limahl “Neverending Story,” T’Pau “China in Your Head” and Nixon “Anorak Christmas.” Some songs on Johan’s tapes that I particularly liked were Valerie Dore “Get Closer,” Italian Boys “Midnight Girl” and Squash Gang “I Want an Illusion.” We both like poppy, romantic electronic disco music. The melancholic feel of, for example, Valerie Dore in particular provided inspiration to our musical project.”
It would take the duo a few more years to start the recording, and then another year to finish it. “The actual recording of my voice goes pretty quickly once it happens,” Shapiro explains, “but I need to be in the right mood to sing, so sometimes we postpone the day of recording a few times.”
Once Disco Romance was released in North America, it was two short months before it was being spun and remixed compulsively by fellow electro artists. Shapiro was delighted, even going so far as to say that some of the remixes such as Jon Brooks’ remix of “Skating in the Moonshine” on Vol. 1 and Dyylan’s remix of “Hold Me So Tight” on Vol. 2 are “better than the originals.” Agebjörn sat down with Paper Bag Records and chose the tracks, a mixture of enthusiastic newcomers—Woodhands and The Canescos experimented with live instruments to add new dimensions to “Anorak Christmas” and “Hold Me So Tight” on Vol. 1—and sage older voices: Alexander Robotnick gave “Anorak Christmas” a fun 1980s teen bounce on Vol. 2.
One of the strange things, though, is that everything else about Sally Shapiro besides her mysterious sound is completely ordinary. When asked what kinds of music she listened to growing up she merely replied, “children’s music and later pop music,” with not one but two nods to the Eurovision Song Contest. She claims no eclectic interests, and maintains her decidedly dull laboratory day job.
Even more suspicious is that Sally Shapiro isn’t her real name, merely an alias invented by Agebjörn in the spirit of accessibility, choosing the name because they liked the alliteration and the Italian feel. They claim that the photo of the pretty blond that graces the purposefully cheesy cover of Disco Romance is an actual photo of Sally, but considering that she came to her own album release party in disguise, how do we know it’s really her?
What’s more, how would all those musical splicers who worked on Remix Romance feel to find out that they just remixed a ghost? Or is it the eerie feeling of something strangely absent yet still warm that makes dance music so sexy? Maybe that is the reason that Sally is such an ideal candidate to become the princess of nightlife. It doesn’t matter whether she exists or not — that said, she was spotted twice in NYC this past March, deejaying with Agebjörn at the Plug Awards on night and at the Mercury Lounge the next —because her spectral mysteriousness is generous, but not overbearing, loving but not needy. She is the perfect woman.
[Photo Credit: Frida Klingberg]
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