The story of me, my strange obsession with Australian music, and some memories along the way.
11:52Let's begin with a story you may or may not have heard. It all depends if a, you know me personally, b, you have been reading this blog for a long time, or c, all of the above.
I grew up in France and, due to the COVID crisis, I have had to move back home. I now live in a tiny village north of Paris without traffic lights or a decent-sized car park for me to learn how to skateboard, and I am exposed to mainstream French culture daily.
I try, sometimes. Over breakfast, I will sit in front of the only music channel we've got (by music, I mean they're playing the same ten music videos on loop for most of the day, until you get to 7pm and then, you can move on and watch about five episodes of Pawn Stars on loop, before there's a low-budget action film, possibly starring Jean-Claude Van Damme) and I will attempt at finding something I like about the video in front of me.
The thing is, the vast majority of the time, the positive things I find are "I like her outfit" or "I like that guy's windbreaker," so it isn't going very well.
French mainstream culture is something utterly and intrinsically bizarre. A part of our collective psyche still believes in the French cultural exception, some outdated concept that leads us to have quotas of music that has to be in French on the radio and believe the sun shines out of our national backside. And at the same time, France seems to have completely given up on promoting music of any kind. You'll have the odd segment on the news, usually featuring someone who hasn't been on television in fifteen years, or someone related to an already famous artist, and that's pretty much it. We have one musical program, a classic called Taratata, but it's on at, like, eleven in the PM, in other words, not at a time when anyone is in front of the television, and the artists on it are usually famous already anyway.
The bulk of what's in the solitary, abandoned music channel is trendy rap about women and crimes, tacky rap about smoking weed and fancy cars with music videos filmed in football stadiums, remixes of ten-year-old songs, and white men with guitars and fedoras singing about how beautiful life is, how they love the village where they're from, and how we need to protect the Earth and the polar bears (but they're probably still eating foie gras at Christmas). Most of these songs have been written by the same dude. The only rock song we've got on there is the unexplainably present Summer Is A Curse by Australian pop-rock band The Faim. Why? No one knows.
This is, in all honesty, quite depressing.
Finding out it isn't the same in every country is still bamboozling to me. (Is bamboozling a real word? It now is.) A part of me believed it was the same everywhere across the world, a planet of mainstream culture promoting the sons and daughters of your already famous people, and not much else. The rest of me knew it wasn't so, but it didn't stop me from being bewildered when I realised it.
Having "alternative" as my favoured genre of music and half of my favourite bands being Australian led me pretty early on to find out what triple j is. For those who don't know, it is THE radio station down under, and its most famous segment is called Like A Version, in which artists cover other artists' songs. About a year ago, a random man in Sydney told me it was a government radio, and it entirely blew my mind.
Since the start of 2020, I have delved pretty deep into Australian music, and have often fallen into a deep dark hole of triple j videos on YouTube. (It's surprisingly easy. You'll listen to a song by an artist you like, and the suggestions will be a person you've never heard of covering Linkin Park or Avril Lavigne and, if you're like me and a sucker for a cover, you're there until the end of time, watching people perform In The End with a harp.)
A lot of bands and artists I appreciate, which, again, fall under the "alternative" umbrella, have been performing live from the studios and been broadcast for the country to hear, at a time of day when people are likely to have the radio on, ie, not the middle of the night.
A couple of days ago, something else about triple j and the multiple videos I have been watching hit me.
There are quite a lot of women involved in the process, and a lot of these women are playing rock music, pop-punk music, alternative music, are playing the guitar, the bass, or the drums. See, our representation of women in French mainstream music is limited to a very small amount of categories:
a- R'n'B singers with songs that don't always mean anything at all, but then again, maybe I'm too old to get it. (No matter what anyone ever leads you to believe, "tu hors de ma vue" is not a grammatically correct sentence in French.)
b- Girls next door with acoustic guitars who whisper into a microphone and are really pretty with minimal makeup on, and usually sing about love, but in metaphors that make no sense to the general public, but then again, maybe I'm not middle-class and cosmopolitan enough to understand.
c- Mylène Farmer. She's been majorly famous since the eighties, every single one of her songs is either about death or sex, again in metaphors I'm not sure I understand. To the best of my knowledge, she's the only French woman who consistently sells out stadiums and arenas all by herself, and she's got a bit of a rockstar mystique about her. Too bad she's also made it her mission to choose young protégées and have them sing sexually charged songs when they're sixteen.
Again, finding out it wasn't like that in every other country in the world blew my mind. You mean to tell me that some other places celebrate women in different genres? Invite women on the radio and they play instruments, and they are relatable, and don't have to fit into a certain category? You must be lying.
Except it's a real-life thing that's happening in Australia.
I understand it was a long-winded, roundabout way of getting to a list of music made by Australian women I have been enjoying a lot in 2020.
Before I get into the heart of things, I will go back to my first love when it comes to music made by Australian women: The Veronicas. Identical twins Jess and Lisa Origliasso, originating from Brisbane, have entered my life in circumstances I don't remember when I was seventeen. I remember downloading their debut album The Secret Life Of... and playing it every morning on my way to school on my old MP3 player, thinking this was the real deal. I had found IT! Girls in a pop-rock band! Girls playing the guitar! Girls in a rock band that wasn't fictional! Something to fill the pop-punk Avril Lavigne-shaped hole in my heart!
(I wasn't a big fan of The Best Damn Thing at the time and I couldn't relate to pink-haired Avril anymore, I was seventeen and life was a struggle, leave me alone.)
It's been a disgusting amount of years since I was seventeen, but I still love every minute of The Secret Life Of..., and I still know it all off by heart. Even though I had no clue they were Australian at the time, they were my introduction to what I would like to call The Badass Women Of Australia. A part of me freaked out a little (a lot) when I saw them on a big screen in the train station in Brisbane. Live music is but a distant memory, but I would LOVE to see them live someday. According to hearsay, they had a wall of death going on at Good Things Festival in late 2019. How sick is that?
(Side note: Good Things Festival had Parkway Drive and The Veronicas on the same lineup, and I have rarely heard of any festival which catered to every part of my personality like that.)
Another very important band to me when it comes to Australian music is Tonight Alive. Starting out as a pop-punk band, they tend to refer to themselves now as a conscious rock band. They deliver a message of positivity, kindness, being true to yourself, and not being afraid of being who you are at your core. They entered my life by accident, when I saw them support Young Guns in Manchester, back at a time when they only had one five-song EP out, Consider This. They used to still perform their iconic Punk Goes Pop cover of Mumford And Sons' no less iconic Little Lion Man live. From then on, I was hooked.
Their 2013 record/masterpiece The Other Side is one of my absolute favourite albums in the world, and it turned my life upside down. I genuinely believe I wouldn't be who I am as a person if it wasn't for this album. It's seen me through everything: depression, anxiety, undiagnosed mental health situations, toxic everything in my life, low self-esteem, recovery, break-ups, boys being terrible, you name it, Tonight Alive were there, holding my hand.
From the start, I have adored their frontwoman, Jenna McDougall, and found inspiration in her lyrics, her speeches on stage, and her social media presence. Tonight Alive are a positive, sunny, motivating presence in my life, all the soft, friendly reminders I could ever need, and I owe so much to them and their message.
In the summer of 2019, I performed the ultimate act of love for American pop-punkers State Champs: I went to see them play in Southampton, via Victoria Coach Station. It took me to two things, a, one of my now very good friends (Claire, this one's for you), and b, Australian band Yours Truly.
I very easily liked their energy on stage, as well as frontwoman Mikaila Delgado's warm, powerful voice. I bought a copy of their EP, Afterglow, kept them somewhere safe in the back of my mind and, when they announced new material for 2020, I came back to them and found myself impatient to check out their début album. Self Care came out on the 18th of September and is full of early-2000s pop-punk nostalgia. (For the little nod to every single one of my personality traits, the front cover is embroidery.)
The real game-changer in the History Of Little Old Me And Yours Truly was one of the singles released previously to Self Care, Undersize. A toned-down, unplugged number dedicated to one of Delgado's close friends, the song is, quite literally, one of the loveliest things I have heard this chaos-filled year. It's all warm and comforting, the kind of song that feels like a nice cup of tea and a warm hug all at once. (Bonus point: There is a dog in the music video)
There are two things I didn't usually do before 2020.
A- Listen to individual artists, apart from side-projects and the odd über-famous pop singer.
B- Listen to whoever was on the "Fans also like" section of Spotify, on account of "why the hell not?"
Jumping out of my pop-punk-and-emo-scene comfort zone is what brought me one of my now-favourite artists, Melbourne-native Alex Lahey. I knew of her before pressing play on The Best Of Luck Club, by way of a featuring on Stand Atlantic's Skinny Dipping (the re-recorded version of the song), and because I think I'd seen her name floating around tour posters when artists I like went to Australia. (Before any of this happened, she was supposed to play with Jimmy Eat World and City And Colour)
At this point, everyone is going to get bored of me saying "I thought this was IT," but I pressed play on The Best Of Luck Club and...This was IT all over again. There I was, listening to someone with conflicted and messy feelings, just like me, someone who didn't get invited to parties anymore and wondered if she could turn back time, and someone who reminded me not to be too hard on myself. (I believe you cannot be sad when you listen to Don't Be So Hard On Yourself. I mean, there's a sax solo. Before lockdown came back around for season 2, I would listen to it in, like, public transport, and feel like I was floating on air. That's the best feeling a song can give you.)
In the middle of all the mundane and specific but extremely relatable lyrics, there is the line "You've got champagne taste on a beer can budget," which has stuck with me as absolutely awesome, don't ask me why.
2019 single Misery Guts is featured on the soundtrack of the new Tony Hawk game (the most badass and punk soundtrack of all, if I do say so myself, the girl who can go on a ten-meter straight line on a skateboard if there aren't any obstacles and if the wind is in the right direction), and Alex's cover of the emo anthem of a generation, My Chemical Romance's Welcome To The Black Parade, is perfect, powerful, and Gerard Way-approved. What else could you possibly want?
Another artist I found through the magic game of looking through the "Fans also like" section of Spotify is Ruby Fields. She was a name I had begun to see appear when I started delving into Australian music, and I figured, at some point, that I should listen to her, again, because "why the hell not."
The real shift was when I saw a video she did for triple j, where she is being interviewed about how she started music and the like, and she takes us through how she wants to know how to build guitars from scratch and is basically learning everything there is to know about guitars.
I know nothing about guitars and music instruments. My musical career consisted in that one time I knew how to play the chorus of Green Day's Boulevard of Broken Dreams on the bass for about half an hour. I had a shit acoustic guitar at home, more of a toy than anything, and I tried playing on it when I came back home and, guess what...I had forgotten how in the space of a bus journey.
So I gave up.
I know nothing about guitars and music instruments, but, somehow, hearing the story of a girl who started learning how to play when she was a kid to impress boys and grew up to become an awesome musician who wanted to build her own guitar floored me. I think it's the exact moment when I realised that my own national culture never showed me women like Ruby, women I can relate to and who dress like me, women who are honest and wear their heart on their sleeves. I never get any of that anywhere else than my own scene and through my own research.
One day, when this world is okay, I'll find my way back to Australia, and I'll hear Ruby play Dinosaurs live. It's the most melancholic, bittersweet, heartbreaking, and relatable song I have heard in a very long time, and every video I have seen, as well as the live version for triple j floating around on Spotify, have given me a hell of a lot of goosebumps. I want to experience this, for real. It's really all I'm asking for.
I don't know if I should state that the next artist was brought to me through a game of "Fans also like" on Spotify, but here we are. 2020 didn't make it easy to find artists through typical channels. You just had to listen to other people's recommendations or get lost on music platforms.
I was wondering what "folktronica" meant when I pressed play on Alex The Astronaut's début album The Theory Of Absolutely Nothing, and I still don't know, if we're being honest. I imagine the folk part comes from the storytelling, because Alex's music is a lesson in storytelling, in true folk fashion. Her songs could be about quite literally any topic, from love (Christmas in July) to coming out (Not Worth Hiding), through teenage pregnancy (Lost) and abusive relationships (I Like To Dance), and Alex manages to make it all sound delicate, refined, subtle, and almost relatable. She takes you on a journey. There is a comforting feeling to her music, best embodied by single I Think You're Great, the ray of sunshine every single one of us needs in this chaotic year.
Music like Alex's is so far out of my general interests, and so far out of my comfort zone that I am still not sure how I ended up here, and it is a tiny revolution in itself.
You know, when I was a teenager and I listened to music on my old MP3 player and through football compilations found on YouTube (I was a lame kid, we know), I would listen to quite literally anything. I didn't have a scene. Sure, I had a preference for rock bands as a rule of thumb, but I didn't have a scene. I didn't call myself emo, or pop-punk, or rock, or any other anything. I just listened to music I liked. I'm still like this, I still surf in between several genres all at once, easily navigating from sweet pop music full of glitter and positivity to the heaviest of deathcore tracks, the perfect soundtrack to your slaughter in a moshpit. But at the same time, I very much consider myself part of a scene, and the endless game of the "Fans also like" section on Spotify and random triple j videos on YouTube expanded my horizons a little. In so many ways, it felt like being a teenager again, the girl who finds songs at random and keeps listening because she likes it, nevermind the genre.
I stuck with Alex The Astronaut because her music is lovely, and because I love the magic in the mundane. I love it when artists write songs so personal you could almost paint the scene along with the music. I love it when songs feel like snapshots of moments, like looking at a photograph and being given the context, what's moving behind the stillness. I stuck with Alex because she tells a story like no other, and it's so easy to sit back, get on board, and find yourself where she wants to take you.
The second artist from this list who is so far out of my general music taste did not, shockingly, arrive through the "Fans also like" or "Recommended for you" section of Spotify.
They found their way to me, or I found my way to them, however you want to put it, through a triple j Like A Version video.
I'm starting to get a little predictable there.
Remember Alex Lahey's cover of Welcome To The Black Parade? That's where it comes back.
I try hard, real hard, every time I am on a social media platform, to not read the comments. At the same time, I'm only human, a flawed one, at that, and it's almost second nature, sometimes, to scroll down after I have finished reading something or watching a video. After I watched Alex's cover of Welcome To The Black Parade, I did just that. Most of the comments are very kind, and a few of them were talking about the musicians playing alongside Alex, keyboardist Clio Renner, and percussionist G Flip, who a lot of people spoke about because they have got the largest grin plastered on their face from start to end. No one in history has smiled that much through any My Chemical Romance song.
And I didn't know anything about them, so I looked them up, and here we are.
G Flip, full name Georgia Flipo, is an Australian pop artist from Melbourne - what is in the air over there? How are you all so talented? They released their debut album in 2019, About Us, a pop, electronic, and sometimes acoustic beauty. The song range from absolute bangers that make you want to dance to emotional ballads, and it all retraces the highs and the lows of a relationship.
I tend to be picky with my pop music, or maybe I just don't find anything in the mainstream I can relate to. Or maybe I have convinced myself that I only like Taylor Swift and the odd album from the early 2010s. I don't know what it is with me and pop music that makes me so picky, I don't know why it has to tick so many boxes, but maybe it is why when I find some poppier music I like, I hold on to it and never let it go.
As I mentioned earlier, I found G Flip through that Welcome To The Black Parade cover, because no one has ever smiled this much through a My Chemical Romance song. (And maybe I was drawn by the sheer enthusiasm) They are a drummer, and I find this even cooler. I love that some of the artists mentioned in this play multiple instruments, have so many different layers to their art.
And I'm a huge, HUGE fan of the homebuilt drumkit.
When I was a teenager brought up on music-based reality TV shows, I was a sucker for a good duet. At the age of twelve or thirteen, I spent hours listening to my favourite CDs and imagining how to split the song in two to create a TV-worthy duet out of it. (Again, I was a lame kid.) I have lost all interest in any of these programmes now, but one thing has carried with me - my love for a good duet.
They are aplenty in my favoured scene, however you want to call it, even though we call them featurings instead. At this point, which band has not recorded a song with Mark Hoppus, Derek DiScanio, or John Floreani?
My main beef, or maybe that's too strong a word, but my main issue with most features like those is that they usually include the guest artist somewhere in the background, or performing one line out of the song, just for the fun of including their name on the credits. It took me such a long time to figure out featurings sometimes, just because I couldn't recognise the voice hidden under all the instruments and harmonies and whatnot.
This is where Slowly Slowly comes into the picture.
In their 2020 full-length album, Race Car Blues, there is quite the excellent single, Safety Switch, which includes, guess what, a featuring with another artist, Bec Stevens. And, for once, a too-rare occasion, the guest vocalist isn't just adding some background harmonies on a loud chorus. Nope. Forgive me the reality TV-worthy word here, but Safety Switch is a proper duet, the kind of song I will always be a sucker for. At times, especially in the verses, it feels like a call and response situation instead of just a subtle, hidden featuring. Bec isn't just a guest vocalist, a featured artist. She is part of the song.
And she is a wonderful part of the song to say the least.
So, me and all my 2020 resolutions, we looked her up on Spotify, and we pressed play on her 2016 EP More Scared Than Me, and then, on 2019 follow up, Why Don't You Just.
Remember how this part started with my teenage love of duets?
It carries on with my neverending teenage love of sad, acoustic songs performed by women, the kind of songs I would listen to on my old CD/MP3 player on the bus, staring out of the window, imagining myself in some sort of complicated tryst like I was the heroine in a film. (Obviously, this scenario takes place at a time when I didn't speak enough English to understand how crushingly sad the lyrics are.) This is how it feels like when I listen to Bec Stevens. Like I used to when I was a teenager whose main care in the world was taking the same bus as the boy I had a crush on. And, pardon my French, but it feels fucking fantastic.
As first heard in Safety Switch, Bec's voice is absolutely fantastic. It's soulful, and strong, and powerful all at once, and it carries emotion so well every song feels like a punch in the gut, whether you relate to it or not. I have rarely ever heard a line as mundane as "Well, your place , it's a ten-minute drive from mine" carry so much intensity and pain. Imagine the talent one has to have to make you feel things by just saying that someone else's place is a ten-minute drive from theirs.
And, you know me. I've always been a sucker for a sad song.
The moral of all of this is... 2020 was a complicated year for all of us, and if I have been reminded of one thing, is that music can cure your growing pains, it can stay by your side when you feel alone and isolated, and it can put a smile upon your face. We may not have got the opportunity to see our favourite bands live, and God knows when we will be able to again. In the meantime, music is still here.
Take two minutes to listen to that band your friend talks about all the time, even though they sound like a broken record saying how much they love them. Take two minutes to click on a suggestion on YouTube, or have a browse into the "fans also like" section of Spotify. Listen to a band you don't know on your favourite record label. Check out the whole album of that one song you liked off the radio or the television.
Before this year started, I was pretty much out of bands I had never seen live that I wanted to see, bar The Veronicas and twenty one pilots. The list is full again. There might be a twenty-five hour flight minimum to this, but the hope exists, and it's more than enough for me.