(Thanks to Kaeyln for sending this to me!)
March 22, 1999
Flying High With Sky
By TANYA DAVIES -- MacLean's Magazine
Sky is not your average pretty-boy, flash-in-the-pan pop group. Sure, young
girls squealed and asked for autographs when James Renault and Antoine Sicotte,
both 26, were on a promotional tour last month. Yes, the Montreal duo are blond
and good-looking, and their album, Piece of Paradise, became the highest-selling
Canadian debut its first week, and sold 100,000 units-to go platinum-in the
first month. But what sets them apart from the other boy pop bands is that
Renault and Sicotte are very much in control of their artistic vision. "That's
my ultimate pleasure, knowing I have a record that I can say I'm proud of," says
Sicotte. "We wrote all these songs, we did the arrangements, it's completely
us."
Montreal native Sicotte and Renault, from La Turque, Que., met at a Montreal
recording engineering school in 1992. "We happened to be sitting next to each
other," recalls Renault, "and Antoine looked pretty weird, wearing leather
pants." Replies Sicotte: "Looking at him, I thought the same. He had a long
beard and I'd never seen a guy my age with a beard." Although the two had
little in common--except a love of the same music--they started a band and
dropped out of school. They produced a five-song extended play record, America,
which they released on their own label in 1997. When 43 Quebec radio stations
played it, Sky landed a deal with EMI Music Canada in February, 1998. "They were
looking for a pop act," says Renault, "and definitely we are. But we can be a
long-term pop act." New York City-based Arista Records thinks so: the recording
company recently signed the group to release Piece of Paradise in the United
States, Britain and Japan. "My role in this whole project is to be the
visionary," says Sicotte. Adds Renault: "And the decisiveness--I can't make my
mind up about anything."
back to the articles
back to the mainpage