Nicole was made-up with pop sisters’ act
Jewish Telegraph, October 2000
on the right
SINGING sisters Christine and Sharon Muscat lived up to the title of the track Count On Me from their debut album, One.
For the Australian teenagers currently touring Britain with Britney Spears could truly be counted on when their make-up artist, Nicole, went to them with a problem.
‘‘Nicole is always whinging,’’ 19-year-old Christine, one half of Sister2sister, laughed. ‘‘She always says she wants to meet a man. So we say, ‘where’s the problem in that’ and she replies that he has to be Jewish.’’
Sharon, 16, continued: ‘‘Last year, we wished her ‘Merry Christmas’ and she corrected us that it should have been ‘Happy Chanucah’. She always said that she wanted to go to Israel to discover her roots, but she felt that living in Australia she was too far away.
‘‘When we were last in England we had some spare time so we talked her into going to Israel. We wanted to go with her so we could see all the things she had been talking to us about, but we couldn’t fit it into our schedules.’’
Christine added: ‘‘She loved it there, but she still didn’t find a Jewish husband!
‘‘Nicole would love us to perform in Israel, so she could show us around. Hopefully that will happen in the near future.’’
Discovered
Sister2sister are already huge in their homeland. They’ve had a number of top five singles and their album went gold on release there. Their single, What’s A Girl To Do, reached the top 15 in Britain.
‘‘Our dad was a singer and guitarist,’’ Christine said, ‘‘so we grew up with music in the house. We’d do backing vocals for him when he performed and then we’d take over the show.
‘‘We attended the Performing Arts School in Sydney, where we were discovered.’’
Ralph Carr, head of Standard Records, actually saw the girls separately and didn’t realise they were sisters when he said he wanted to sign them.
Christine and Sharon have written 40 songs and picked 12 for the album One.
‘‘We didn’t expect our first single, Sister, to do too well, but it just blew up,’’ Sharon said.
Their first trip to Britain saw them supporting Five, followed by a show with Steps. They then toured America with B*Witched and Christina Aguilera before signing up for the Britney tour.
‘‘Britney is so lovely,’’ Sharon told me. ‘‘We didn’t really get to know Christina, she’d walk past us a few times. But Britney is such a sweet girl. She leaves the audience amazed.’’
One downside of being on Britney’s tour was that Sister2sister missed out on performing at the closing ceremony of the Olympic Games.
‘‘We were so homesick during the Olympics,’’ Sharon said. ‘‘We had a choice to make of staying in Britain or going home and we had to stay because of our contract.
‘‘It was really hard to watch, but we were also proud to see all our friends performing.’’
Gaining
Christine says that the girls are often labelled ‘manufactured’ because they are young and energetic and have all the attributes of a ‘manufactured’ group.
‘‘It’s only a matter of time before people know who we are,’’ she said. ‘‘We’ll still be here in five years.’’
They also don’t believe that they are missing out on anything. Their father is their sound engineer and their mother is also with them, while their dancers have been their best friends for more than 10 years.
‘‘We are seeing every country and touring with the biggest pop star in the world, so we aren’t missing out, we are gaining,’’ Sharon said.
They also revealed that Steve Werfel, who co-wrote What’s A Girl To Do, is also Jewish.
‘‘He’s always speaking to us in Hebrew,’’ Christine laughed. ‘‘We never know what he’s talking about.’’
Sharon also revealed that although the girls wear ear monitors on stage so they can hear themselves, she likes to take one out so she can hear the crowd.
‘‘Our third song starts off acappella,’’ she says. ‘‘When the music starts the crowd goes crazy. I love to hear that.’’
