Background and career
Leslie Feist (born February 13, 1976), known mononymously as Feist, is a Canadian indie pop singer and songwriter, performing both as a solo artist and as a member of the indie rock group Broken Social Scene. Feist launched her solo music career in 1999 with the release of Monarch. Her subsequent studio albums, Let It Die, released in 2004, and The Reminder, released in 2007, were critically acclaimed and commercially successful, selling over 2.5 million copies. The Reminder earned Feist four Grammy nominations, including a nomination for Best New Artist. She has received 11 Juno Awards, including two Artist of the Year awards. Her fourth studio album, Metals, was released in 2011. In 2012, Feist collaborated on a split EP with metal group Mastodon, releasing an interactive music video in the process. Feist has released six studio albums as of 2023. Feist received three Juno awards at the 2012 ceremony: Artist of the Year, Adult Alternative Album of the Year for Metals, and Music DVD of the Year for her documentary Look at What the Light Did Now. Additionally, she was nominated for four Grammy Awards including the Best Pop Vocal Album for The Reminder and Best New Artist.
Leslie Feist was born on February 13, 1976, in Amherst, Nova Scotia, Canada. Her parents are both artists. Her father, Harold Feist, was an American-Canadian abstract expressionist painter who taught fine arts at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. Her mother, Lyn Feist, was a student of ceramics from Saskatchewan. After their first child, Ben, was born, the family moved to Sackville. Feist is the niece of guitarist Dan Achen, who played in the 1990s rock band Junkhouse and had produced for numerous artists (Achen died in 2010 of a heart attack). Feist's parents divorced soon after she was born, and Ben, Feist and their mother moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, where they lived with her grandparents. They later moved to Calgary, Alberta, where she attended Bishop Carroll High School as well as Alternative High School. She aspired to be a writer, and spent much of her youth singing in choirs. At the age of 12, Feist performed as one of 1,000 dancers in the opening ceremonies of the Calgary Winter Olympics, which she cites as inspiration for the video "1234." As her father is American, Feist has dual Canadian–U.S. citizenship.
In 1991, at the age of fifteen, Feist got her start in music when she founded, and was the lead vocalist for, a Calgary punk band called Placebo (not to be confused with the English band Placebo). She and her bandmates won a local Battle of the Bands competition and were awarded the opening slot at the festival Infest 1993, featuring the Ramones. At this concert, she met Brendan Canning, whose band hHead performed immediately before hers, and with whom she joined Broken Social Scene ten years later. In 1995, Feist was forced to take time off from music to recover from vocal cord damage. She moved from Calgary to Toronto in 1996. Also in 1996, she was asked by Noah Mintz of hHead to play bass in his solo project Noah's Arkweld. She played the bass guitar in Noah's Arkweld for a year despite never having played bass before. In 1998, she became the rhythm guitarist for the band By Divine Right and toured with them throughout 1998, 1999, and 2000. She also played guitar for some live performances by Bodega, but was never an official member of the band. During this era, Feist also worked at The Rivoli and Lava Lounge, both popular Toronto music venues at the time. In 1999, Feist moved into a Queen West apartment above Come As You Are with a friend of a friend, Merrill Nisker, who then began to perform as electro-punk musician Peaches. Feist worked the back of the stage at Peaches' shows, using a sock puppet and calling herself "Bitch Lap Lap". The two also toured together in England from 2000 to 2001, staying with Justine Frischmann of Elastica and MIA. Feist appeared as a guest vocalist on The Teaches of Peaches. Feist appears in Peaches' video for the song "Lovertits", suggestively rubbing and licking a bike. Later, Feist covered this song with Gonzales (whom she met while touring with Peaches) on her album Open Season. In 2006, Feist contributed backup vocals on a track entitled "Give 'Er", which appeared on Peaches' album Impeach My Bush.
Feist's solo debut album, Monarch, was released in 1999. It is composed of ten songs, including "Monarch" and "That's What I Say, It's Not What I Mean". The album was produced by Dan Kurtz, who would later form Dragonette.
In the summer of 2001, Feist self-produced seven songs at home which she called The Red Demos, which have never been released commercially. She spent more than two years touring throughout Europe with Gonzales. In that same year she joined a group of old friends in forming a new version of Toronto indie rock group Broken Social Scene, adding vocals to many tracks after being forbidden to play guitar by de facto bandleader Kevin Drew. She subsequently recorded You Forgot It in People with the band. While on tour in Europe with Gonzales, they began recording new versions of her home-recorded Red Demos, which would later become her major label debut Let It Die. Let It Die featured both original compositions and covers. After the recording, Feist moved to Paris. While in Europe, she collaborated with Norwegian duo Kings of Convenience as co-writer and guest vocalist on their album Riot on an Empty Street, singing on "Know How" and "The Build Up". She also co-wrote and sang "The Simple Story" as a duet with Jane Birkin on her album Rendezvous.
Feist toured during 2004, 2005, and 2006 through North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia supporting Let It Die. She won two Canadian Juno Awards for "Best New Artist" and "Best Alternative Rock Album" in 2004. Sales of Let It Die totaled 500,000 internationally, and she was awarded a platinum record in Canada, as well as a gold album in France. Fellow Canadian Buck 65 appeared in the Feist-directed music video for "One Evening", which was also nominated for Video of the Year at the 2004 Juno Awards. In 2005, Feist contributed to the UNICEF benefit song "Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?" The track "Mushaboom" was used in an advertisement for a Lacoste men's fragrance, as well as in the film 500 Days of Summer. An album of remixes and collaborations, Open Season, was released on April 18, 2006. She lent her voice to the two tracks "La Même Histoire" and "We're All in the Dance" for the soundtrack to the 2006 film Paris, je t'aime.
