Paloma Faith

Early life

Paloma Faith Blomfield was born in the Hackney area of London on 21 July 1981, the daughter of an English mother and Spanish father. Both of her parents were raised in Norfolk. Her parents separated when she was two years old and divorced two years later. She was raised by her mother in Stoke Newington, although she maintains a close relationship with her paternal grandmother. As a child, she took ballet classes in Dalston. After completing her A-levels at City and Islington College, she went on to study for a degree in contemporary dance at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance in Leeds, while working as a hip-hop dancer at the nightclub LoveDough. She then studied for an MA in theatre directing at Central Saint Martins College of Art...

2007–2008: Career beginnings

Faith's first foray into music began when she mimicked famous soul and jazz singers including Etta James and Billie Holiday, whom she admires and cites as influences for her own work. She met her managers Jamie Binns and Christian Wåhlberg of Lateral Management in 2007. Binns had been tipped off by the producer Peanut, a client who had recently worked with Faith in his studio and been impressed. He met up with Faith shortly afterwards and was "completely blown away", later saying, "I wasn't sure what this girl was going to do – she was an actress and a singer – but there was just something about her in that artistic realness that when I came out of the meeting I called Christian and said, 'We have to do something with this girl!'"

Acting career

In 2007, Faith appeared in an episode of the BBC police drama HolbyBlue portraying a thief. She was cast as Andrea in St Trinian's in 2007. Faith was also cast in Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus as Sally, the girlfriend of the Devil (played by Tom Waits) in 2009. She appeared in the horror film Dread as Clara Thornhill. She later starred in the Channel 4 series Coming Up and the short film A Nice Touch. Of getting the part, she stated: "I don't think they even knew I was an actress. I went to an audition and they said that they liked my interpretation of the character and I said, 'I'm just being myself'." In 2013, she appeared as cabaret performer Georgia, in a television adaptation of P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings...

Upside Down

"Upside Down" is a song by English recording artist Paloma Faith from her debut studio album, Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful? (2009). It was released in the United Kingdom on 15 March 2010, by Epic Records as the fourth single from the album.

"Upside Down" was written by Faith, Andrew Nicholas Love, Jos Hartvig Jorgensen and Belle Sara Humble, and it was produced by Love and Jorgensen

Background

Faith performed the song on Simon Mayo's BBC Radio 2 show on 18 January 2010 and became Scott Mills' 'Record of the Week' on BBC Radio 1. "Upside Down" was released by Epic Records on 15 March 2010. The song was accompanied by the B-side "Technicolour".

Music video

The video, directed by Chris Sweeney, was described by Faith as looking like "a kind of Kelis/André 3000 type video". Ryan Brockington of the New York Post called the video "amazing", but added "see if you slowly walk backwards searching blindly for an exit". A writer from Sugarscape called it "the sunniest video in all the land".