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Nuns sign to Decca
By CMU Editorial | Published on Monday 26 July 2010
I love press reports to the effect that a bunch of French Benedictine nuns have “signed to Lady Gaga’s record label”, as if acts in contract to Universal’s classical division Decca in Europe hang out with artists from the American pop labels elsewhere in the mega-major’s empire. No mention that the nuns are also now label mates with the Pope.
Anyway, the French nuns are the latest religious signing to Universal, and have been signed up after a long search for the best God fearing types to sing some Gregorian chants. Anyone worried that, by doing a deal with Lucian’s lot, the nuns will be collaborating with the devil, need not worry. St Joseph has given the project the all clear. And we don’t mean Universal UK chief David Joseph. No, the real deal.
In a statement, Rev Mother Placide Devillers from the abbey near Avignon where the signed up nuns reside said: “We never sought this, it came looking for us. At first we were worried it would affect our cloistered life, so we asked St Joseph in prayer. Our prayers were answered and we thought that this album would be a good thing if it touches people’s lives and helps them find peace”.
According to The Guardian, because the nuns must shun all contact with the outside world, the recording contract had to be handed through a wooden grille for an Abbey representative to sign it. And record producers will never be in the same room as the nuns while the album is recorded. Decca MD Dickon Stainer is quoted thus: “Although the nuns do not leave the convent, the whole world will now hear the true beauty of their singing”.
