Tears of a Clown...

I love playing live shows,” declares 19-year-old Eliot Pauline ‘Coco’ Styler-Sumner. “That’s all I’m in this for, really. The money and fame side of things, I couldn’t care less about. I mean, a bit of money would be nice, just to be comfortable, but the excitement of playing great shows is what I’m in this for.”

One suspects that even if her band, the curiously monikered I Blame Coco, totally bomb, the 19-year-old singer won’t ever be stuck for a few quid. As a daughter of Sting and Trudie Styler, Coco was born into a world of money, fame, glamour and, of course, music.
“I started playing guitar when I was about four – or at least I had one when I was four,” she laughs. “It took me a few years to get any good.”
Presumably Coco’s pops taught her a thing or two about a string or two?
“He gave me some pointers and I got lessons from different people, but mainly I taught myself. When I was about 10-years-old, I realised that I wanted to be a musician. I just wanted to be Jimi Hendrix, really.”
As it happens she’s not the only one of Sting’s children to become involved in the music business. Her half-brother Joseph Sumner is also in a band.
“He’s in a band called Fiction Plane who supported The Police on their reunion tour. They’re brilliant. But there’s just two of us who are sort of musical.”
Her film producer mother has also had some guiding influence. Dreadlocked and strikingly beautiful, Coco featured in Burberry’s Spring/Summer 2008 advertising campaign alongside the likes of Agyness Deyn and Lily Donaldson. In 2007, she and her two sisters had brief supporting roles in the movie version of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust. However, acting isn’t really an ambition.
“I like acting, but I don’t think I could really take it seriously. Not at the moment at least. I’m a bit of a one trick pony when it comes to stuff like that.”
Although I Blame Coco have signed a six album deal with Island, a listen to their debut single ‘Caesar’ – which features ultra-hip Swedish diva Robyn – should put paid to any charges of nepotism or favouritism. Coco actually sounds like a female Sting, all throaty vocals and lyrical literary references (one verse ends on the repeated refrain, “It’s the Lord of the Flies all over again”).
While it’s been reported that the album was recorded in Jamaica, it was actually made in Stockholm.
“There’s been a bit of confusion going around about that. Some paper reported that I’d gone to Jamaica and made the album there, but it was actually recorded in Sweden. There was talk a while ago that I was gonna go out there and hang out in studios and stuff, but I ended up in Sweden.”
Presumably that’s how Robyn wound up on the record?
“The guy who produced my album, Klas Ahlund, also produced Robyn’s record. It’s funny, everybody sort of knows each other in Stockholm. So we were just hanging out and I asked her to sing on one of my songs – and she was really up for it.”
How would she describe the album’s sound overall?
“Sort of driving punk disco! I think that’s how I’d describe it. You could call it electronic, but it’s really very much ‘80s synth influenced.”
And her lyrical themes?
“The songs are mostly about problems,” she explains. “Half the record, I think some people could relate to and the other half is all about me and my thoughts and it’s sort of like . . . the head behind the voice, really.”
So where’s her head at?
“My head? It’s alright now. Getting better. But no, I’m in a really good place now, getting ready for the tour and getting healthy.”
That question isn’t just about her mental headspace. Last year, Coco was rushed to hospital in LA after she fell in a restaurant and banged her head.
“I had what they said was a seizure," she recalls. "I’ve never had a seizure before. I stood up from the dinner table and just collapsed. There was nothing to break my fall so I cracked my head. Yeah, that was rubbish!”
‘Caesar’ has just been released and I Blame Coco are about to embark on a short UK promotional tour (although nothing’s confirmed yet, they’ll definitely be playing Ireland in the coming months). While she’s aware that begrudgers will bitch and whine about her privileged background, she’s both confident in her own abilities and philosophical about the facts of her life.
“Does being who I am make it any easier?” she muses. “Well, I think the grass is always greener. If I wasn’t in that position of who my family is, it actually would kind of make it easier in some ways. But then I might not have had the same interest in music if it wasn’t for my background. I’ve always had music around me. It’s not really a plus or a minus, it’s just the way it is. There’s not a lot I can do about that. I’m just gonna do my own thing and hope for the best.”