7:30 p.m. Sunday
Lions Park, 400 S. Flood, Norman
PASNorman.org, 307-9320
free
The sweet, sincere Maggie McClure might not seem too imposing in person, but she’s huge in Japan.
“I was sent a picture of the display in one of the record stores over in Tokyo — a life-size cutout of me. That was a little weird to see,” said the Normanite, laughing. “Then they sent me another photo with my album on the shelf in between Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift. It was kind of surreal.”
The quaint, indie-pop singer — in the vein of Norah Jones and previous tour mate Sara Bareilles — inked a distribution deal with a Japanese label, and while you won’t find cardboard cutouts of McClure in stores stateside, she’s made progress in reaching more familiar audiences.
Songs from her self-titled debut and follow-up EP “Good Morning & Good Night” have brought a little sincerity to TV shows like “The Hills” and “The Young and the Restless.”
“I try to write stuff that is straight from me,” McClure said. “I think people can connect to the sense of realness the songs have, and I think it’s pretty cool that they can hear the song and know that it’s not made-up, and was written to touch people’s lives.”
Now in her mid-20s, McClure has been laying the foundation for this career for nearly as long as she has been alive: performing, dancing and singing since preschool, and writing her first songs before hitting double digits.
“I found the lyric sheet I wrote when I was, like, 8 years old. There was still the verse, chorus, bridge. It was crazy that I even knew song structure back then,” she said. “There’s a little more depth and maturity to it now, but you’ve got to start somewhere, I guess.”
Having performed solo for so long, recent years have opened the alluring chanteuse to working with others, including fellow Okie Shane Henry, even if it initially was odd.
“At first, it was a little weird. ...
I’ve done it a lot over the last five years,” McClure said. “The songs we started turning out were really good. It was just adding another person to the mix that made it a little better than I could have made it alone. I definitely have a new appreciation for collaboration.”
She recently appeared at Los Angeles’ MUSEXPO, the international talent showcase that helped introduce pop stars Katy Perry and Jessie J — drawing ever nearer to realizing her goal of being huge all over the world.
“My wildest dream at 13 was to be famous, but I had no clue I’d be a singer-songwriter, playing piano and playing songs that really mean something to me,” McClure said. “Doing what I’ve been doing, I hoped it would happened, but never knew how it could. It’s pretty awesome.”
