It’s not easy combining a successful singing career with the demands of family life, but they have somehow managed to do it

This interview was first published in 2001. Sadly, Chris Scicluna passed away in February 2022

They are arguably one of Malta’s trendiest couples. She with her slicked back, bleached blonde hair and a lithe figure which looks good in all the latest fashion. He with his dark good looks, and effortlessly casual style.

They are ‘Chris and Moira’ – the singers.  But they are also Chris and Moira, the married couple, parents of six-year-old Michaela.

For the interview they had chosen TGI Fridays, housed in what used to be known as Il-Fortizza.   The funky style of the place, with is eclectic mix of vintage Americana and early 19th century posters, is appropriate.  “Our choice of place depends on the mood. Here they make the best fajitas,” they both claim.  

Moira chooses a chicken fajita while mine is with shrimp.  As we busy ourselves filling and then rolling the tortillas, Chris is served with a crispy Cajun chicken salad.

I first remember seeing Moira in a music video, in which she did a brilliant, tongue-in-cheek cover version of Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares to You.  Her usually serious face breaks into a wide smile at this recollection.

“Il-marelli, you must have laughed!  We really enjoyed doing that. I had recorded that in Milton Keynes,” she remembers.

At the age of 12, a young Moira joined the school choir. 

“Every day after school, I used to watch Fame  and I used to tell my mother ‘Ma, I want to do that!’  And she’d say ‘well, when you grow older, you will maybe.’  I’d get the deodorant spray in front of the mirror and mime to a rock song.   And when the song finished, I’d pretend to be accepting the applause – mad, I know!”

She is laughing hard now as she demonstrates the scenario, her whole face lit up at the memory of that long-ago Moira who had such big dreams.  

Well, she was not too far off from the truth…

From the start, her aim was always to go abroad and ‘do something’ with her music.  Eventually, at the age of 20, she went up to London.

“I joined a rock & blues band as a singer.  I didn’t know anyone in the business, I just found out about them through the Melody Maker!  We were gigging here and there, always with our own original songs.”

It is the kind of gutsy, fearless thing which one does at that age.  Someone suggested she make a video, which is the one I saw.

“My Dad used to cry every time I left for London.  He used to make it very difficult for me.”

Can one blame him really?  All those worried thoughts which flit through a parent’s mind.  Moira, however, was a dutiful daughter, phoning home three times a week: “Ma, I’m fine, I’m enjoying myself, I’m having the time of my life here!”

(hmm, that’s probably what had them so worried!)

In 1992, while on a visit to Malta, she was asked by Joe Friggieri to sing his composition Tghidlix  for the Song for Europe festival.   

“It wasn’t written for me and I had to twist it round a bit, because it wasn’t really my style.”

She placed an impressive second in the year that Mary Spiteri won with Little Child. I distinctly remember her performance that night when her unique voice literally gave everyone goose bumps.

She went back to London for another year and in 1993 took part in the festival again with Love Me till the End , “It was very dramatic, it wasn’t me at all,” she says with a rueful smile.

When Willie Mangion won with This Time, she went to the Eurovision as a backing singer.   It was there she met a young man playing lead guitar, Chris Scicluna.

After they came back, they started meeting up, writing and rehearsing. Their composition More than Love  went on to win in 1994, taking Chris and Moira to Dublin for the Eurovision.

Chris, too, had visions of grandeur when he was young: “You want to be famous, you want to write songs.”

He picks up his side of the story: “I learned how to play the guitar when I was very young.  I started singing and got my brother Josè involved as well.  I wrote my first song at 11 or 12, and we participated in minor song festivals all over Malta, pushed by our parents.   One of our songs Hey Girl came first.  I used to be very shy until I started believing in myself and what I was doing.  Then a band called Starlights wanted me to play and sing with them and we ended up in Italy writing and recording an album when I was 17.”

After a year abroad, Chris was on a ‘high’ with music and felt that after working on the professional circuit he couldn’t go back.  So he put his guitar away for four years until he was asked to join the band Exit as a singer/guitarist.

The fact that both Chris and Moira had done their stint abroad probably explains why they are on the same wavelength.

“It’s fun trying to do things on your own,” Moira confirms with a satisfied air.

“It’s a must to grow up and become independent,” Chris insists.  “The fact that you leave your family and home country and go away for a particular reason is very important.  The thing has to mean a lot to you to be able to do that.”

Moira’s family, too, has always backed her. “My Dad did not believe in outside lessons while we were still at school.  But after Form 5 he told me, ‘if you want to go and get some voice tuition, now’s the time…!’  I thought ‘wow, my Dad!’ I never expected him to go all the way.  So, I went for voice lessons with Antoinette Miggiani and Joe Huber.”

As both of them point out, the basis of any kind of music, whether rock or classic, is always the same.  By the age of 15, Chris had already reached up to Grade 8 in classical music theory. 

“With any instrument, the best foundations are classical,” he says firmly.  “The voice is an instrument and studying lirika  and classical theory for an instrument are a must.”

Moira adds that, “the voice is just like handling a guitar.  Whether you sing from here (pointing to her throat) or from here (pointing to her abdomen).  The more experienced you are, the more you can fiddle around.  I learned breathing and a lot of techniques.”

In London she also took an eight month course at Elaine Shepherd’s where she learned how to stand on stage while singing and how to hold the microphone.

Musically, they have fitted together quite well.  Chris’s forte is composing the music, describing his attempts at writing lyrics, “a total loss!”

“It does not come naturally to me like music does.  I’m into the mood of the song but then I drive Moira to finish it with the lyrics.”

As for Moira, she has occasionally written both words and music, and also plays guitar.

“We tend to give each other ideas.  If, for example, Moira writes a set of lyrics and has a special message to pass on, she tells me what the mood is, if it’s slow, how it is projected emotionally.  And the same goes for me.  Take B-Song, our recent single.  I wrote the music and I told her that I specifically wanted to write about myself and she elaborated and finished it. It was a united effort.”

A look at the lyrics clearly shows that Moira managed to capture exactly what Chris was feeling: “I want to be/What no one else is/ I want to feel a little different.”

In Misbehaving, another new single, the beautifully expressive melody is enhanced when Chris harmonises with Moira, their voices complementing each other perfectly.    

I ask Moira what inspires her.

“It’s just a particular mood I get into when I sit and write.  But don’t tell me, ‘write me a set of lyrics’, because I can’t do that.” 

As ‘Chris and Moira’ they have released two albums: More than Love, Night to Day, and several singles.

I ask what happened to the stage name Krave.

“Krave is just another dimension to be able to do different music – it’s more mainstream stuff.  Now we’ve gone back to Chris and Moira.”

Krave was also created because ‘Chris and Moira’ was known as the duo who went up to the Eurovision, “and for a while we hated that.   We wanted a fresh start to show the public that there’s more to us.”

OK, it had to come, we could not not talk about Eurovision. Other participants have come back with mixed feelings, loving it, hating it, regretting ever doing it. Chris gives his opinion.

“Look, it’s a nice experience.  We loved it.  But going to the Eurovision to become famous is a mistake. Going there for the experience is the right attitude, but you’re going to come back to where you left, it’s not a breakthrough at all.”

And how do they feel about taking part in a festival which in some countries is considered a bit of joke?

“Well, we knew what we were going in for, so you take it in that spirit.”

For these two, of course, the Eurovision also holds happy memories of when they first met.

“I had the best time of my life that week,” Moira says, eyes shining. 

“Really?!” Chris tells her, astonished.  “I didn’t know that!  Because you met me?”

“No,” she teases him.

I ask Moira how the ‘falling in love’ bit happened:

“We were waiting to go on stage and I grabbed the guitar and started singing a song and he really liked it!”

Chris nods: “It’s very true! I really didn’t used to like the way she used to sing, projecting her voice in that screaming mode!   So when I heard this lovely, soft voice, it was like going from black to white, and I told her that’s what she should be doing.”

Glancing at each other almost shyly as the memories flood back, they are both relaxed, laughing and enjoying the reminiscing.

After hearing her real voice, he suggested that they should collaborate with their music, and when they returned to Malta “it started”.  

“I think I fell in love with him because he’s a bit crazy,” Moira says, and she bursts out laughing again at the look on his face.  They seem to be soul mates.

We talk about their composition I Believe in…, sung by the female trio Times Three (Eurovision, 1999).   Trying to be as tactful (but as honest) as possible, I point out that, coming from them, this very commercial pop song was a bit like ‘selling out’.    From the song itself to the three beautiful, stylish girls who sang it, it was a very manufactured, calculated, albeit successful move which somehow did not tally with their own music.

“It was a whole product,” Chris admits openly. “In today’s pop world, that is what’s selling right now.  When I see bands like Destiny’s Child, TLC and All Saints, I would say that had Times Three taken it seriously they would have been there, but they refused a record contract for two albums.  They threw it away.  There are people out there who would die for that.”

A year after they met, Chris and Moira got married and had Michaela, who is now six years old.

“The responsibility is incredible,” Chris says of being a father.  “I hate it sometimes, having to be responsible, practising fatherhood.”

“I don’t really like having to do the ‘Mummy’ role,” Moira immediately agrees.  “It’s a bit too much sometimes. It’s a big job to be a mother. Sometimes I get fed up with myself, having to ask her to do this and that!  And I keep thinking, Ma, imagine what she’s thinking of me!”

Chris wants to make sure he is not misunderstood: “Michaela is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.   I want to be such a good father that I have given up my music at times for her.  My priority is Michaela because she is my daughter.”

Moira tells me how drastically her life has changed: “Before it was me, me, me, me, me and me!  Now it’s all her. The minute she was born, right away…” her voice trails off and her expression becomes beautifully maternal.

“It was overwhelming,” Chris recalls, smiling.

Michaela is very aware that her Mum and Dad are well-known singers, but is already showing signs of her own strong personality.  When someone passed a comment that ‘she is Chris and Moira’s daughter’, she went up to them and said “I am Michaela!”

Moira has always stood out for her unique sense of style; a look which is utterly hers.  Chris, who works as a hairdresser, is forever changing her hair colour. Image is very important to both of them.

“When you are doing music, it goes with time and fashion.  The product has to look what it sounds like.  Image is a must in what you do, so Moira cannot look like a ‘mother’ and play like a headbanger,” Chris points out. 

In contrast with other performers, they have deliberately opted for a low profile.

“We like to be selective.  We are there to do music, we are not selling ourselves to be popular  so that we go to TGIF and people say, ‘ara Chris and Moira’.  For example, chat shows where we don’t perform, we don’t do.”

As for being married and working together, Chris feels that it all depends on how you handle it.  “We know who we are and what our roles are, and we’re both happy with ourselves.  Unless we’re fed up of each other as husband and wife and want to stop living together, unless that happens, we’ll be together.”

They have adapted to all the changes in their lives but Moira firmly believes that it is an advantage that they are both performers.  
“Some people don’t like you to be in the limelight when they’re not.  They don’t understand it.  It would not have worked out otherwise.”

“I would not have married her if she was not a performer.  It is impossible to live with an artist, especially if he’s a guitarist!” Chris adds.

After much laughter and embarrassment, they describe each other:

“Chris is very moody and sensitive.  He makes a great Dad and husband  And a great guitarist and a great composer.”

It was Chris’s turn: “I’m going to bring it down to one word…she’s inspiring.  Artistically, she is.  She’s good.  As long as we’re still sailing, it’s alright.”

Turning serious, they talk about the difficulties of keeping a marriage going strong.   

“The problem with today’s couples is that no one wants to give in,” Moira says.  “Even with me in the beginning it was very hard for me to give in.  But then you have to give yourself and your partner a chance.  Some people don’t: the first thing that goes wrong, boom, that’s it, I’m out.   And it’s a pity when there are children.  But it hasn’t happened to us.”

“You have to have an understanding” Chris says.  “We both have the same priorities.  When it comes to switching from your family duties to the artistic, that is hard, to get out of the routine.   Normally, I am the driver, I have to push her.”

Before Michaela, Moira points out, her attention was solely on music and writing.  “But she’s more important than music. I love her to bits and wouldn’t do anything to change that. Motherhood affected me, so sometimes it is hard to make that switch.”

When it comes to raising their child, they are very traditional, strict and believe in a basic Maltese family upbringing.

“This is not a case of showing how cool I am to my public with how I’m raising my child,” Chris says.  “She has to be normal.  When we are out she is either with my parents or Moira’s parents.”

Their albums are selling well abroad and they have commitments for tours in Europe, which means leaving Michaela behind.

During a tour in 1999, despite lucrative offers, all they could think of was coming home to their daughter. “I was crying every day!  The last week, I was counting the minutes.  I just wanted to leave,” Moira remembers. “I couldn’t take it anymore because she didn’t want to talk to us on the phone, she was so angry with us.”

I see a change in Moira, she is less ‘hungry’ for success, and she admits that in her eyes, they have already ‘made it.’

“At the end of the day it all boils down to what really satisfies you.  I mean if an opportunity came up, we would think about it, of course!  But I don’t crave it like I did before.”

Chris, too, believes that they have their priorities right.

“When we’re in a bad mood and feeling negative, we think, what are we doing here?  We both fit in more abroad.  But Malta is a nice place to raise kids.”