INTERVIEW | JULY, 2000
by Dimitri Ehrlich

Imagine being a little-known artist who suddenly finds his paintings hanging between works by Picasso and Van Gogh. That's how Peter Salett felt when his songs got sandwiched between tracks by Tom Waits and Elliot Smith on the soundtrack to Edward Norton's Keeping the Faith. The Brooklyn-based singer has been playing around Manhattan bars and selling his CDs independently via his website for the past few years; while he has built a strong following, it's nowhere near the six million people who heard "Heart of Mine" in the movie. The song has a lilting melody that sways with gentle resolve, expressing hopeless romanticism in a way that it is hopeful nonetheless.

"It was the strength of Peter's voice and his old-school lyricism that really struck me," says Norton, who first met Salett when the two attended Columbia School of Theatrical Arts in Maryland. "Peter's got these wonderful melodies, but there's also a bittersweet longing in them that I was looking for.

Ultimately, the secret of Salett's success may lie in the fact that he's not doing anything trendy. "I try to write classic sounding tunes," he says. "And not be afraid to hark back to love songs from a time gone by."