Lost & Found (Melissa Tkautz album)
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Lost & Found is the second studio album by Melissa Tkautz, relesead in the Australia on December 04, 2005. In 2005, Melissa officially launches her return to pop music, including the appearance of her surname Tkautz in her music name for the first time. She has recorded a cover of the 1980s Sheila E song "Glamorous Life" (written by Prince) and it debuts at number 31 on Aria Top 50 Singles. Not the big come-back she hoped for, but it's early days yet. Melissa's official web site is located at http://www.melissatkautz.com.au/ and her discography seems to ignore any chart success she had prior to this year!
Blond Ambition
Now 31, Tkautz was riding high in the early 1990s as a teenage soap star-turned-pop sensation for whom entertainment greatness seemed a sure thing. On the back of her starring role in soapie E Street, the 18-year-old Tkautz hit number one with her debut single Read My Lips. The follow-up, Sexy Is The Word, did similarly stellar business and a couple of ARIA awards ensued. Suddenly, a few years after a certain Neighbours star had parlayed soap success into pop gold with her cover of The Locomotion, Tkautz had raised the stakes and was making a serious grab at the mantle of Aussie pop’s girl most likely. Then came the fall. After a couple of other singles and the album Fresh made less of a splash, Tkautz’s pop career unravelled – the victim, she says, of mercenary management and her own naïveté. "At the end of the day these guys saw a girl that was on a TV show … and I suppose they wanted to make a quick buck,” she told Sydney Star Observer in the lead-up to a national promotional tour for The Glamorous Life and a new album, Lost And Found. “Even though I was 18, I probably had a 15-year-old mind. I had a very strict family, I wasn’t allowed to do much, and then all of a sudden you’re thrust into this world of music and you’re doing nightclub appearances. And I’d never set foot in a nightclub before. “I was very naïve and innocent and maybe too much so. “To go from school to a huge show like E Street was just so huge for me. When I look back at that person who I was, I think, ‘Oh my God!’ I had no idea who I was. No idea whatsoever.” Tkautz’s response was to abandon pop entirely. She traded music for appearances in doomed soaps such as Paradise Beach and Echo Point and, more recently, lads’ mag modelling work and a regular guest spot on TV hospital drama All Saints. The decade or so away from pop music has made Tkautz a more wary customer than the teenager who topped the charts all those years ago.
As an 18-year-old with a number one single, “I just thought this is it. I’ve made it. This is my life,” Tkautz said.
And today?
“There are always moments of doubt.
“Whatever happens will happen – you can’t control that.
“But I think because I’ve … come and gone and come again, I think I am mentally prepared for that.”
The prospect of “full creative input” lured her back to the studio to record Lost And Found.
The dance-flavoured work is a shift from her pure pop roots, Tkautz said, even if its lead single, a cover of the 1980s Sheila E effort, has serious bubblegum appeal.
“I didn’t want to do a stock standard pop album,” Tkautz said.
“It’s so nice to finally be able to listen to something that you have done and not cringe and not turn away.”
Did her earlier efforts make her cringe, even as she was recording them?
“Yeah, just because it wasn’t who I was.”
These days, observations of this type – about how Tkautz has learned from the hard times and now knows who she really is – pepper her conversation.
“You need to have highs and lows in your life to keep you grounded,” Tkautz offered at one point.
Or: “If you always be true to yourself and you always be who you are, then you can’t lose really.”
It’s the sort of sugar-coated cliché particularly favoured by pop divas in search of a renaissance, with whom Tkautz shares another key asset: an unquestioningly loyal gay fan base.
Since performing at the closing party of the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney, Tkautz has played at Arq and, most recently, at Stonewall’s eighth birthday. She’s also booked in at Arq and Melbourne gay venue the Exchange as part of her The Glamorous Life promotional duties.
“They make me feel good about myself. Their love for me as a performer just makes me feel amazing,” Tkautz said of her gay fans – even if their allegiance took time to develop.
“Because [at the beginning of my pop career] I was told what venues I was playing at, I didn’t do as many gay clubs back then,” Tkautz said.
“[But] over the years, in between that album to this album, the gay community’s support has been just fantastic. They have always been there for me. Always.
“And the Stonewall gig I just did – I mean we were dancing on the bar, for God’s sake. I just had so much fun.”
They’re the sort of fans Tkautz will be hoping make Lost And Found a more enduring success than earlier pop efforts.
But Tkautz the hardened realist is taking nothing for granted this time round.
“I can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future and I can’t predict how I’m going to deal with [possible failure] when it comes,” Tkautz said.
“If it doesn’t go well – God forbid – I’ll face that when I come to it.
“You sort of work on projects and you give it your all and you hope for the best. And if that doesn’t work then you tackle the next phase of your life.”
Tkautz Gets Personal On New Album
It's been 13 years between albums for Melissa Tkautz, the former Australian soap actor whose foray into music in 1992 earned her two ARIA awards. But Tkautz, who won fame in the early 1990s for her role as Nikki Spencer in E Street, and for her debut CD, Fresh, is back. After 13 years, Tkautz has released her second recording, Melissa Tkautz: Lost & Found, which she promises will give listeners an insight into who she is.
"A lot of people meet me and say I am the opposite to what they thought. They say they never expected me to be as down-to-earth and friendly," the 31-year-old said. "This album is a true reflection of me and will show people who I am through my lyrics that are written from personal experiences.
"This album feels like my little baby and while it's daunting to release something after all these years, people can say what they want about it because I am happy with what I have achieved." With tracks such as Goodbye Daddy, a song about losing her father Stefan to cancer in 1999, and Lies, about an ex-boyfriend's untruths,
Tkautz says listeners will relate. "In a relationship there has to be trust and when you know your partner is lying to you that's one of the worst things in the world," she said.
"It's funny because I actually had an ex-boyfriend ring up and ask if it was about him. Luckily for him it wasn't."
Tkautz, who is signed to independent label JRB Music, will also be back on television over the coming months.
She will appear in Network Ten's The Big Night In With John Foreman and Australia's Brainiest Musician.
Sydney Star Observer by Ian Gould
Track listing
- All I Want
- Southern Son
- Breakaway
- True Love
- The Glamorous Life
- Blink
- Waiting
- Lies
- Gotta Know
- Goodbye Daddy
- Sexy Is The Word 05 [Radio Edit] (Bonus Track)
- Sexy Is The Word 05 [Club Version] (Bonus Track)