Ralph goes from Good Girl to Rich Man

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This article was published 14/03/2020 (2410 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s a scene in the 1996 film That Thing You Do when the members of the band at the centre of the story, the One-Ders, hear their single on the radio for the first time. There’s lots of screaming and jumping and hugging; they felt like they had finally cracked into the industry in a real way.

Toronto-based pop artist Ralph (Raffaela Weyman) had a similar moment the first time she heard her most recent single, Gravity, on a Top 40 radio station. Her career has been on a steady incline since the release of her debut full-length, A Good Girl, in 2018, but it was that event that sticks out in the 29-year-old’s mind as a milestone.

“That is a pretty surreal moment,” she says. “We were like, ‘Oh, OK, that is a good sign.’ Me and my manager keep joking that 2020 feels like a good year, 2020 feels like our year. It was a joke when we first started saying that, but now, you know what? It almost does, like, it feels like it’s this clean slate; 2019 felt like a remainder, it felt like the last straggler before a nice, clean… even the evenness of the numbers comforts me.

The songwriter says she and her manager, Laurie Lee Boutet, have been telling each other that all their efforts would pay off at one point.

“If there is such thing as karma, we deserve a little bit of it because we work really hard and we try to do things as gracefully as possible,” she says.

Ralph, who was nominated for Dance Recording of the Year this weekend at the Junos in Saskatoon (the event was cancelled over coronavirus fears), also recently started her own record label, Rich Man Records, with Boutet. The label is meant to be a home for pop artists, including Ralph, that will provide a nurturing environment for artists trying to find their feet in terms of songwriting, branding and creative direction in a competitive and difficult industry.

“It’s just another outlet for us to be able to continue our careers in music and broaden them a little bit, too,” says Ralph, who is excited to broaden the spectrum of what she can do within the music industry.

“I think it’s a really awesome and smart way for me and Laurie to continue protecting ourselves within an industry that’s all over the place,” she says. “There’s no real reliability in being a music manager or an artist manager and then an artist, so we were also like, ‘What else can we do to keep thriving and keep ourselves interested and challenged in this industry?’”

The Rich Man Records name was inspired by a quote from Cher, one of Ralph’s idols, whom she describes as a “force.” Apparently, Cher’s mother once said to her, “Honey, you need to grow up and marry a rich man.” To which Cher responded, “Mom, I am a rich man.”

“I always thought that was so funny,” Ralph says. “And the double-entendre of the fact the music industry just is largely male dominated, and I don’t mean that in an attacky way — there are so many wonderful men in music that I work with and that have supported our growth and career — I just mean it as a fact that it is still male-dominated. And it’s cool for two young women to have a label called Rich Man Records. It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek.”

Having the ability to take a step back from her own work and focus on helping others (or on writing songs for film and television, which she also does on occasion) has the added benefit of a fresh pair of eyes and ears when she does return to composing for her Ralph persona.

This summer, the singer performed the Mariposa Folk Festival in Ontario, which reminded her that it’s easy to lose your way when you’re focused on one aspect of your music.

“It was a bit random, because obviously I don’t do folk music anymore but they’re trying to expand, so they had (performers from) a couple different musical backgrounds,” she explains. “We did this workshop there with other musicians… and I just loved the jam of it.

“It just reminded me that music isn’t just this one niche thing you’re doing. It’s so multifaceted, so make sure you’re tapping into those thing or else you’ll tap out.”

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel