By ANDREW FLYNN
TORONTO (CP) -- With pop music riding a huge surge in global popularity, Sky is hoping there's no limit to what its own catchy, hook-laden material can achieve.
Antoine Sicotte and James Renald, the Montreal duo behind the rookie act, are counting on the fact that being considered "pop" -- a term that could freeze a rock musician's blood 10 years ago -- is no longer uncool.
Unapologetically, they trace their musical lineage to cheerful, cheesy '80s pop acts like Wham! and Michael Jackson. But they also cite older influences like Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan.
"We have all kinds of influences. We love good songwriting to start with,"says Sicotte.
"Stylistically, we don't craft our songs to fit any kind of niche,"adds Renald.
"We tried a lot of different styles. Since we're musicians, we didn't find a lot of that stuff challenging enough for us. After you write 15 songs with drums, bass and a heavy guitar, you can only do so much."
Sicotte and Renald were eager to join in with the hype that EMI, their record company, poured out to promote the band's first record.
"We knew that for the music we were doing we needed a good push to get out there, because it's not really like rock where you can do a whole lot of clubs and build a following slowly,"says Sicotte.
"You've got to come in with a big bang and then if you can get through that you're OK."
Though the single Some Kind of Wonderful was released to radio in October, the album Piece of Paradise was held by EMI to avoid getting lost in the Christmas rush.
The big bang came later. When it was finally released in early February, Piece of Paradise debuted at No. 6 on weekly sales charts nationwide.
"We got a lot of flak for the fact that it's so poppy,"says Renald.
"When you listen to the lyrics they're not pop at all, they're completely twisted kind of crazy lyrics,"Sicotte interjects.
"For us even though it was musically pop, we always wanted to offset that with a different element,"Renald continues.
Sky began when Sicotte and Renald met in a Montreal music college in 1992. They worked on class projects together, and began collaborating on extracurricular music, writing songs and playing together.
"Once we found out what we could bring to each other in songwriting, our different strengths, we started recording a whole bunch of songs with that kind of vibe, that dynamic,"says Sicotte.
In 1995, they started their own record company, Phat Royale, recorded a five-song demo CD and self-produced a video. Soon after, they were getting played on radio in Montreal and the video made it into rotation on MusiquePlus, MuchMusic's French-language video station.
On the surface, Sicotte and Renald are unlikely pop stars. Where most Top 40 acts these days opt for a squeaky-clean Backstreet Boys-style image, Sky is a little more outlandish. Sicotte has a shaved head and tattoos and Renald has a dyed-blond alt-rocker look.
"The whole image thing came surprisingly easy for us,"says Sicotte.
"My mom's a fashion designer in Montreal, so all the way through my life fashion was always something that I've enjoyed -- put colours in your life. I've always loved to dress with cool stuff."
So far, they've also refused to resort to relying on image at the expense of playing their own music.
"For now, everything that's happening on stage is completely natural, there's nothing prepared,"Sicotte says. And when they perform live, they bring a band along -- there's no relying on taped music.
"No way would we ever, ever do that,"he says.
"A live show for us is about live -- it's about the moment. If a dynamic is there at that moment, that night it will create an energy.The second you start playing with a (digital audio tape) or a machine in the back you cut all that possibility of being spontaneously creative."