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'I'm surprised and elated': Windsor musician cracks the charts — in Italy

'I'm surprised and elated': Windsor musician cracks the charts — in Italy

The sounds of Windsor singer-songwriter Crissi Cochrane will be heard by a new audience overseas after she signed a new deal with a record label in Italy.

Her 2014 album, Little Sway, will be re-released there on Nov. 16 after contracts were finalized last summer.

But that doesn't mean she hasn't already made an impression on the European music scene. The album's opening track, Sleep in the Wild, was released as a single in Italy on Oct. 26 and was played heavily on European radio.

"They have a built-in network of more than 2000 stores and shops and restaurants where they send their music, so they've got my music in rotation there."

The adaptation of her album to a foreign market will come with a slight modification, however.

"They did change the title of one of my songs. They changed A Damn Shame to More Than I Can Have. It was mostly because the song was used in a TV show and they didn't want it to get too confusing on the back-end when it comes to reporting royalties and whatnot," said Cochrane.

The cover of her album will also be getting a facelift when it's released in Italy.

"My artwork on my version of the album was based on a photograph that I had a friend of mine paint. No one ever saw the actual photographs themselves," she said, adding the real-life photos will be used for the European cover art.

Hear Crissi Cochrane's Sleep in the Wild by tapping the player below:

'I don't know any Italian'

Cochrane, who admits to not knowing a word of Italian, was recently asked to collaborate on a "bilingual" song with an Italian singer. During the recording, she decided to "take a stab" at singing a verse and chorus in Italian.

"I had to listen very closely and really try and match the lyrics. I'm not sure that my pronunciation was any good, but I'm going to get some Italian-speaking friends to take a listen and give me a critique," said Cochrane.

She said she's not sure exactly how the Italian record label first heard about her, but she suspects it's because of her 2016 Spotify hit Pretty Words, went viral on the streaming service.

"It's been listened to almost 12 million times all around the world, so I have a feeling that's probably what attracted their attention."

Hear more from Crissi Cochrane on the CBC's Windsor Morning:

Cochrane said she would love to go to Italy one day for what she calls a "tourcation" — an opportunity to see the country while performing for local audiences.

As for how she feels about the entire experience, she said she's "surprised and elated" considering her album didn't "translate into anything outside of Spotify" when it was first released for Canadian audiences in 2014, Cochrane said.

"Sweden actually has a very large listenership for me. Italy might've showed up a little bit, but I didn't think that someone would reach out to me from Italy and try and get something happening there."