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Biography
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Part 2
Auditioning
for Popstars wasn't Katie Underwood's idea - it was someone else's. She
explains: "A friend of mine phoned me up a few days before the Melbourne
audition and told me they were looking for people who could sing and dance, she
said 'I know you can do it, promise me you'll go to the audition.' So I said
sure I'll give it a go. Now I've never auditioned for anything in my life, but I
was trying to get into music at the time, so I thought it would be good
experience, never dreaming that I would get through. I just thought I'd give it
a shot. The short story is that I made it through to the end - but very
unexpectedly."
In
case you hadn't guessed it, Katie's the philosopher of the group. Asked who
she'd most like to meet, Katie's answer revealed much about her. "Madonna,"
she stated, before adding "...if I didn't think that she wasn't completely
over people who wanted to meet her."
Her
next choice was more unusual - noted intellectual Edward DeBono. "I
remember seeing an interview he did with Andrew Denton," she recalls,
"and he was one of the few people who ever left Andrew Denton without
words."
Katie
began her performing career at the age of nine playing the wicked queen in Snow
White "I thought I was rather good," she laughs wickedly.
Then it was on to the Adelaide Girls' Choir and a performance that should have given her stage fright for life. "I did a solo performance at the Adelaide Festival Theatre in front of about 2,000 people when I was about 11," she says, "and I was petrified. It was a song called 'Why Me' and to this day I still remember it clearly. At the time I was singing it I was so frightened and I was so pathetic, I had this young person's kind of voice, and the house came down in tears - half because I was sounding so pathetic and half because it was a cutesy little song. But I think mostly because I sounded so pathetic and they all felt sorry for me."
But
what didn't break her only made her stronger and following years of incredibly
dedicated hard work on her vocal technique and range that most recently included
singing jazz, Katie has entered the rarified world of the Popstars...
And what a shock it's been. "It was because between the space of actually entering the auditions and being accepted was only a month," she states.
"So there was only one month to conceive and consider that I could move to
Sydney, then actually doing it... And I think for the last three months, even
though we've been doing a lot of stuff, I haven't quite caught up to the reality
of what's happening."
So
the big question is, when reality does catch up with her, will she still be the
same old Katie?
"Fame
will change what I do and who I spend my time with but it won't change me as a
person," she states confidently.
Perhaps
that's got something to do with the people she chose as her heroes - her
parents, who she picked "because they're still happily married after 25
years and are fairly cool and accepting, so they're pretty cool in my
books..."
That's
not to say Katie doesn't have huge hopes and dreams for the Popstars project -
"I hope it's going to last a long time and we get at least a couple of
albums out of it - which would be great. To go overseas and break the American
market would be a huge plus, the UK would be great. But mostly I think I want us
to just stay together long enough so we feel like we've achieved
something."
And
helping her along the road to her goals is someone very special in her life.
"The best piece of advice I ever got was 'Never say never,'" she
states. "It was actually in a dream I had about my grandmother who passed
away a few years ago. I remember it very vividly and so I always keep that with
me."
Fame, money and adulation will all be very nice, thank you, for Katie, but there is one thing she would swap it all for. Asked what has been the worst thing about her radical change in life, Katie doesn't hesitate to reply:
"Lack of sleep on a regular basis!" Sleep, nah, that's for wusses - not Popstars!
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