radionotes podcast episodes

Gracie Jean

by | Nov 20, 2022 | episodes | 0 comments

Gracie Jean

Gracie Jean‘s debut album is Romance Is Bad, though as firmly stated by one of the Singles I Don’t Wanna Sing The Blues Anymore – that’s because there’s been more than romantic challenges of the heart, there has also been health ones for both herself and those very close to her.

The singer, songwriter and storyteller of feelings from the East Coast of New South Wales joined us for this chat…

Click ‘play’ to listen… may take few seconds to load: 

IMAGE CREDIT: Esther Maria 

Our understanding is that since the chat was recorded and edited Gracie’s mother has passed. Wish to give our condolences.

SHOW NOTES: Gracie Jean album Romance Is Bad


To not miss future episodes follow us:

  • PlayPodcast – directs you, to the Podcast app on your device

….or you can search “radionotes Podcast” in your favourite podcatcher/app.

We can also be found on…  Instagram  –  Facebook  –  Twitter

In The Box: ZOE – Fire

Feature Guest: Gracie Jean

Next Feature Guest: Key Out

From The Archives: Josh Klinghoffer of Dot Hacker & Red Hot Chilli Peppers


If you’ve not already ‘following’ radionotes Podcast – we can be found on:

Spotify

ApplePodcasts

Google Podcast

and more…

CREDITS

Theme/Music: Martin Kennedy and All India Radio   

Web-design/tech: Steve Davis

Voice: Tammy Weller  

You can make direct contact with the podcast – on the Contact Page

Our chat with Gracie Jean is also available on Spotify & Podbean:

TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by the REV team – check to audio before quoting wider

John Murch:
Today we uncover and figure out whether or not romance is bad. Our guests might suggest it is or they have a fascination with Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. Gracie Jean, welcome to radionotes.

Gracie Jean:
Hello. Thank you so much for having me. And it’s so funny that you should mention Bad Romance because when I was working with Matt Wykniet recording my album, when we recorded Romance is Bad, he accidentally kept referring to it as Bad Romance for maybe three or four weeks.

John Murch:
Working with him in that studio, can you talk to us about that process? This is your debut album. You’ve released three singles from it.

Gracie Jean:
Never really been in a studio before and I’d never recorded… I’d done a couple of little recordings at uni just as part of assessments or helping other people out, but this is the first time recording anything original in the studio. But I think it was quite unique because Matt’s a friend of mine and he goes to my church and he’d done a bit of stuff with one of my friends. And so, yeah, I remember before we started recording we went out for coffee with my other friend, Solomon, and we just talked about my album and what the songs are about and when I wrote them and how I wrote them and went into the studio and started recording demos to a click track. And it probably wasn’t the most normal studio experience, there wasn’t any session band or any time pressure, or I wasn’t paying for studio space for example so there wasn’t any of that like, “Quick, we have to get this tape done today,” kind of vibe.

John Murch:
Would there be an understanding, there was a lot of conversation that happened before the recording as well without that rush, as you say?

Gracie Jean:
100%, yeah. We recorded in Stanmore, so we had a bunch of coffees at a cafe nearby and we talked a lot about it. And, yeah, I think Matt just really wanted to understand what the songs meant to me and what my plans were for the songs. And I’ve never recorded before, but I’m not sure that engineers generally do that, I don’t really know.

John Murch:
Track number four, My First Love, talk to us about that in terms of memories and coffee.

Gracie Jean:
Oh, my gosh. Well I think that that line was a little bit of creative licence because I’m not going to lie, there was never any point when I was like, “Eww, this guy has coffee breath.” It was an appropriate line to put in the song because one of the things we would do a lot was get coffee and that was just a big feature of what we did together. I remember actually introducing this guy to coffee. It’s so funny, he was not a coffee drinker and he had never been to a coffee shop. And so I took him to a coffee shop and a waitress came up and said, “What kind of coffee would you like?” And he just said, “Expresso?” And I didn’t correct him ’cause as far as I knew, maybe he just wanted a shot of espresso, I don’t know. Anyway, it came out and he was like, “What is this?” So anyway, he discovered what a flat white was that day and he drank a lot of them throughout our relationship.

John Murch:
But it’s also a reminder for when one is in a relationship and this album is in a way about relationships, but broader relationships we’ll talk about in a moment as well, asking for what you would like, but also knowing what you’re asking for.

Gracie Jean:
Totally. Yeah, it’s quite funny, especially when it comes to coffee, you got to know what coffee order you have. It’s always one of my favourite things when guys that my friends date know their coffee order. If my friends are dating a guy and he knows what coffee they like, I’m like, “Yep. He’s a good guy.”

John Murch:
You mentioned before about church. You’re currently a kids’ ministry coordinator at the Gateway Church.

Gracie Jean:
Yes.

John Murch:
What role does music play in that?

Gracie Jean:
Oh, I’m so glad you asked because that’s actually one of my favourite parts of my job is each term I teach all the kids a song. So we all learn it together and then at the end of every term we get up on the stage and sing it in front of the whole congregation. And it’s so fun. Kids love music. I’ve never met a kid who’s like, “I don’t like music, it’s boring.” They all love it. And last term I taught them a whole song with lots of lyrics and we all learned the Auslan, the sign language to the song as well. And I was just so amazed because you tried to teach those kids a bible passage or a memory verse that was that long. I don’t know if they would be able to learn it, but once you put a melody to it, it becomes so memorable for kids. And, yeah, it was so cool the fact that they were able to sing the whole song.
So yeah, we always do music at the start of every lesson and the kids really love it. You see all those stories on the news and elderly people with dementia, and what oftentimes the only thing they can remember is songs they listened to a lot when they were young adults. And so a lot of them can still remember hymns and still sing an entire hymn even if they can’t remember the names of all their children. It’s really wild, but music just has this way of getting into your brain and sticking there. It’s quite amazing.

John Murch:
Apart from the producer, how much of that religious faith have you put into this debut album? Or have you distanced yourself in a way? It’s still you because it is your faith, but how much of it have you put into the record? I guess I’m asking how much of a Christian album is this?

Gracie Jean:
I would say that it’s not explicitly a Christian album, which is super funny because I feel like from the perspective of potentially some people who are really devout Christians, they might think, “Why has she done this? Why has she released a secular album?” But in my personal opinion, because I love Jesus and that is part of every element of my life, there’s not really any way to explicitly separate that from the music that I create.
So even though there’s no overt Christian themes and these aren’t songs that were written for say congregational worship. I still feel like you can’t really separate those two elements. Yeah, so I would say it’s definitely not a Christian album, but I am a Christian and I made the album, that definitely influenced it a lot, yeah. I’m excited and happy that the songs are able to resonate with all people, not just Christians and that most people who listen to them feel like they can relate which is really cool.

John Murch:
For those that are needing that reference, I bring you back to the coffee kisses of track four, My First Love, God does get a name check in there, just for you that are looking for it.

Gracie Jean:
He does. And also in the track Overcome, that song I would say is a Christian song, actually. There’s a verse at the end that’s all about the faith that gets you through hard times. And then sneakily in the outro, my friend Solomon Steel plays on the electric this line that’s very reminiscent of the hymn, How Great Thou Art and not a lot of people pick up on it. This is kind of a secret, I haven’t really mentioned this in any podcasts or anything. But even Christians who have grown up in church hear that song and they don’t clock that that’s the melody that he’s playing. So I think it’s really cool, it’s like my little secret ode to hymns and to Christian music, the outro of the song.

John Murch:
Overcome was one of the earliest singles.

Gracie Jean:
Yes.

John Murch:
Place where run out of faith. So you are suggesting that even with the belief that you might have that you can actually run out of faith. That sounds like self-questioning of self somewhere.

Gracie Jean:
Oh, it’s definitely a thing though. When I wrote that song, it was 2020 and we were experiencing a lockdown and I was just really struggling with mental health. I’d just been through a really hard breakup and I was just feeling really hopeless. And the only thing I could really think to do was to lament, to be sad about what was going on. And yeah, I think it’s a problem that not just Christians, but all people have is like we’re just scared to be sad and we have this impulse to silver line everything and it frustrates the crap out of me. I get so annoyed, no helpful sentence starts with the words, at least. When you are sad and someone comes up to you and goes, “At least X, Y, Z,” it’s like, “No, just go away. Just let me have a whinge and stop trying to silver line everything.”
Yeah, I think Christians are especially bad at it. We feel guilty for being sad and not seeing any hope in a situation when actually I think those are the moments when we need to just be like, “All right, let’s just lament. Let’s just be sad.” That’s okay. We’re not going to get in trouble for doing that. And then I wasn’t actually going to release Overcome as a single, but at the time that I released it, which was January of this year, January 2022, one of my best friends died. She was only 23 years old and it was very sudden, it was tragic, it was terrible. I was like, “This seems like the perfect time for this song to come out.” I just think me and my friends and my family need a lament song where we can just be sad and we can openly say, “We feel like we run out of faith. There’s just nothing, there’s no silver lining to this.” And it was a very beautiful thing that we were all able to lament together and use that song as a platform to do so.

John Murch:
It also allows, and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but it also allows for reflection as well. Some people suggest that that’s the time where they can actually, whilst they feel like they’re running out of faith, can find a reconnection with what it actually means to have a faith.

Gracie Jean:
Oh, 100%. That’s the true test, isn’t it? Can you still have faith even when you don’t feel it, even when you don’t have that feeling of happiness or joy? Can you still hold onto what you know is true, right? That’s the real test of faith.

John Murch:
It’s also the determination of why does faith need to be happy and cheery? Is there somewhere that-

Gracie Jean:
Oh, totally.

John Murch:
Is there somewhere that states that it needs to be such?

Gracie Jean:
No, definitely not. That’s not a thing at all. Yeah, so I’m a super big advocate for just being sad when you need to and lamenting when you need to and that song was definitely me trying to show people maybe what that looks like for someone to do.

John Murch:
I don’t want you to speak on behalf of your mother, but I want to know how you are feeling. It’s been quite a time for your mother over the last few years and I think there’s been moments of joy throughout that as well. How have you been finding a way to cope and to facilitate what your feelings are during that time?

Gracie Jean:
Well, yeah, so for those listening who don’t know, my mum’s been grappling with chronic heart failure for the past five or six years and it’s been just a big part of my life and a big part of hers too. And I think, yeah, if you couple that with everything else that’s been going on in the past two or three years with COVID, lockdowns, pandemics, me just kind of becoming a young adult, I’m 23, so I’ve been having a rough time. I’m not going to pretend that it hasn’t been rough, it has been. But I think vulnerability, learning how to be vulnerable and tell people that you’re struggling is a powerful tool for getting through hard things.
I think creativity for me is it’s an amazing way to process things that are going on and it’s a wonderful means of creating something out of your situation. And I also think that it’s taught me how important friends are. Community is so important and we weren’t created to do life by ourselves. We were meant to be surrounded by people to help us. And I think I’ve become so thankful for my friends, they’ve just been incredible. That’s probably the main way I’ve gotten through is just like, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this meme of a chihuahua that is tied to a bunch of helium balloons and is being lifted over. I feel like I’m the chihuahua and all my friends are the helium balloons. And that’s how I’ve been getting through.

John Murch:
Speaking of friends, I had the pleasure this morning, at time of record, to watch the Vanguard performance that you did a recital, I think you call it. There was two nights.

Gracie Jean:
Yes. Yeah, the Vanguard at the end of my three year music degree, all of the performance students have to do a recital. So I found a recital, we performed for 40 minutes repertoire of our own choice. Now I graduated during kind of one of the peak moments of the pandemic. And so our recitals were when we enrolled in the degree they were going to be live performances at our university. And then because of the pandemic, all our classes were online and they wanted our recitals to be online video submissions. So we were just going to set up similar to the setup you’ve got there, like a mic and just record on our computer and just use whatever we had, garage band or whatever. And so I was really sad to have to do my final recital that way because I’d been looking forward to it for my whole degree.
And so I was like, “You know what, no. I am going to book a venue and I’m going to sell tickets and I’m going to do a live show and I’m going to have a videographer come and film the show and I’m going to submit that video for my final recital rather than sitting down and filming in front of a camera.” It added a lot of stress and a lot of organisation, but that’s what I did. And so yeah, I asked all of those friends to be in my band. So I still remember who was in the band. It was my friend, Rihanna, playing the drums. And she is a singer-songwriter herself and she is one of the people who first kind of encouraged me to record my music. I never would’ve recorded if Ri wasn’t like, “Come on Grace, you need to record these songs. They’re really good. I would love to hear them.”
And she was amazing. And then I had my friend, Harrison, playing guitar and he was a friend I made at uni. I had my friend, Dennis, playing the bass, another friend from uni and the guy playing keys, I actually didn’t know him until the recital, but he’s from Goulburn or something and he just really wanted to be involved.

John Murch:
He was happy.

Gracie Jean:
Yeah, he was loving life. And I was like, “You are crazy. You literally, without any guarantee of payment…” Because I hadn’t mentioned that at the point that he volunteered to do it, he was was like, “Yep, I’m keen. I’m going to do it.” And did. And then the singers were Jenny and Abby. Again, two more singer-songwriters who sing and release music. Jenny Denny on Spotify, Abigail Wighton also on Spotify. And I was just inspired by them. They were a big part of why I’m doing what I’m doing and I wanted them to be my BV’s. And then another friend from uni playing the violin. And then at the end, my friend, Jordan, who I’ve just been friends with through my time at uni. And again, just in another friend who’s an amazing singer and who I’m really inspired by because he’s just doing the things. He’s gigging and he is singing and I was just like, “I want you in my recital, man. You’re a great singer.”

John Murch:
And knows about stage presence.

Gracie Jean:
Oh, has great stage presence.

John Murch:
Let’s look at the opening track. I Don’t Wanna Sing the Blues Anymore. Now this of course for me is about autumn, it’s about new beginnings, it’s a changing of the seasons. And of course that cardigan reference, which takes us back to the Vanguard performance a little bit, I feel like as a tip of the hat to Tay Tay and not in a bad way.

Gracie Jean:
Totally. And Jordan’s in that one too. If you hear that male backing vocal in the chorus, that’s Jordan from my recital singing. That song I wrote, we were heading into winter, that’s right. And I was living with just this bunch of really lovely girls that I got on with so well and I really loved them. It had just been such a hard summer. Mum had been really sick and I’d been feeling really stressed and really lonely and just really hot as well. I just remember being, it was one of my first Sydney summers. And Sydney summers are so bad because when you live on the coast, when it gets hot, you can just go and have a swim and you feel better. And also there’s like a sea breeze. It’s just easier to stay cool. In Sydney it’s like you have to catch the bus to the beach and it takes an hour or drive there, but you might not get a park. It’s just very hard to get to the beach.

John Murch:
I’m sorry to say this, Gracie, it’s why I stayed in Adelaide. You literally got a 35 minute bike ride to the beach and about another 35 bike ride to the hills.

Gracie Jean:
Yeah, so Sydney is beautiful, but getting to the beach is really hard and I was just sick of it. And then it started cooling down and it was time to put on cardigans and you could sit out in the sun and it wasn’t too hot. And I was just loving my housemates and I was just feeling really happy for the first time in a really long time. And I was like, “Whoa, this is cool. I need to write a song about this feeling.” And so I think that song perfectly captures how I was feeling. Just new season, I’m feeling really good. I finally stopped sweating, I’m living, this is great.

John Murch:
Talk to me about that idea of teaching future generations on how to deal with their emotions as someone who I believe deals with them more regularly than maybe others.

Gracie Jean:
It’s really hard because every parent is so different. You’ve got all these kids and they’ve all got different parents and some parents are really gentle parents and they’re feel all your feelings and “How are you feeling right now?” And when the kids are crying and being really naughty, it’s like, “Well, how are you feeling? And why are you frustrated?” And then there’s other parents who are just like, “No, go and stand outside.” So I’ve had to really be careful ’cause I don’t want to impose my ideals of what I think raising kids should look like on all of these other people’s kids. I think there’s a balance. Sometimes I see a kid getting more and more worked up and more and more frustrated and I’m like, okay, this kid needs to just be asked if they’re okay. But then I’m also like, if a kid’s being really foul and just mean and naughty, I’m not going to be like, “Oh, are you okay?” I’m usually a bit more like, “Okay, no, that’s not acceptable.” It’s a bit of a balancing act.

John Murch:
And I’m thinking music is that great avenue to calm over some of those waters by saying, “Look, you can be a brat or you can come and join us for choir.”

Gracie Jean:
Totally. And it’s so funny, I was actually doing this experiment with the kids which was so cute, where I was teaching them about how God can help us in troubled times, he can give us peace. I said, “Okay, I want you to all be really peaceful and still and just sit quietly and breathe deeply.” And then I put on some instrumental, heavy metal music and they just couldn’t help themselves. They all started wiggling and air guitaring and then they were just rocking out. And I was like, “I told you to be calm and sit still.” And then I got them to try again. But this time I played some very peaceful piano music and it was a kind of like an illustration to show them how hard it can be to stay peaceful when there’s a lot going on. But yeah, it was cool. It was showing the kids how music can manipulate their emotions and it was cool, yeah.

John Murch:
On this record, you use that device of a piano to play with emotions through Forgettable. What was the inspiration for it being a piano driven song? Some people might say it’s Missy Higgins-esque, but I don’t think so. I think it’s something else. A device that was used way before Missy.

Gracie Jean:
It’s actually so funny because it’s me playing the piano on that track. And when Matt showed me the track, when he’d first kind of done it, I didn’t realise and I was like, “Oh, I love that, this is piano. It sounds beautiful.” And he was like, “Yeah, that’s you. That’s you playing.” Yeah. So I think the reason it’s piano driven is because Matt was saying that he really wanted one of the songs on the album to be piano driven. He was like, I think one of them has to be because all of my music’s very guitary, very acoustic guitar. And I think the other reason was because one of the ways that the tracks was that I would come in and I would play on a Midi keyboard to a click track and I would sing. Matt would build the track around that and then I’d come back and I would do the vocal take over the top of his new kind of creation, what he’d made.

John Murch:
What was the first piano you experienced?

Gracie Jean:
When I was a kid, I had this CD and it was Roger Woodward, he’s a pianist. And I had a CD and a little CD player and I had the Roger Woodward CD and it was just him playing covers of classic piano, Walking in the Air and Clair de lune, all those really iconic piano solo pieces, Debussy, like all of it. I loved that CD. I played it all the time. It was so funny because I forgot about that CD. But I listened to it a lot from age of three to maybe six. And then I found it again just in a box or something when I was 11 or 12. And I played it the amount of imagery I could see of my old house from when I was a kid. And the flashbacks to my childhood were so strong. And yeah, music’s crazy. It can really give you strong nostalgia. I would love to find that CD again. I have been searching online for it, but I haven’t been able to find it. But yeah, the Roger Woodward piano classic CD was my first experience of piano.

John Murch:
Can we, if you don’t mind, talk about your grandfather’s influence on your musical career?

Gracie Jean:
Yes, of course. Yeah, because he was hugely influential and I love talking about him. He died in 2014, so it’s a real shame that he never really got to see the fruits of what he was doing when I was a kid but he really believed I was a good singer. He was dead set. “You are a good singer.” And so he would in primary school and early high school, pay for my singing lessons, but he’d also drive me to them. And it was almost an hour each way to singing lessons because we lived in a kind of random area.
So he would drive me all the way there and all the way back. And then when I got a bit older, he helped me learn an instrument. So I started learning the flute when I was a bit older and did that all through high school. He showed up to everything, classical performances, exams, lessons, whatever he was at all of them. He was a bit mad at me because he was a clarinet player and I didn’t choose to learn the clarinet. I choose to learn the flute, but he got over it.

John Murch:
Track three is Weight of the World. This dives into, I believe, your diagnosis of clinical depression and self-doubt. How has that influenced this record?

Gracie Jean:
Well, it’s hard to say because I always thought quite a lot. I thought everything on this record is very much the thoughts of the depressed person, those kind of untrue thoughts that feel really true. But it’s funny because everyone’s relating so hard to all of these songs and I’m like, “Oh, maybe this is just very human and everyone feels like this at times.”
So yeah, it’s interesting. I kind of thought it was just a me thing, but actually now with it being listened to by people, I’m like, “Oh, it’s very universal. All of these doubts and these sad feelings I’ve been feeling.” But yeah, Weight of the World was definitely written from this place of just frustration with specifically, and I don’t think this is a depression thing, I think this is just growing up female, wanting to be skinny, being obsessed with being skinny and feeling such a failure because I wasn’t.

John Murch:
Have you felt that sort of weight as the song would suggest of social norms or is it internal criticism not related to social norms in any way?

Gracie Jean:
It’s definitely a lot more internal. I think no one’s ever walked up to me and said, “You’re not attractive or you’re too fat.” Or whatever. That’s never happened. It’s something that constantly would ruminate around my head at that time. And I think just watching movies, you never really see a fat heroin in a movie or an unattractive main character, hardly ever. Scrolling Instagram, every influencer, every model seems to look the same. And then watching just anything online, yeah, it just felt like there was only one type of beautiful in the world and I was not living up to that standard. And it was starting to feel really heavy. And so that’s why I wrote that song.

John Murch:
But even you yourself said that someone’s unattractive. You’ve made that judgement of that person.

Gracie Jean:
Totally.

John Murch:
And I say that totally politely.

Gracie Jean:
Yes and no, but it’s so true. And you would never go up to your friend and say, “Oh, you’re an ugly…” You just don’t think that about other people. You are a lot meaner to yourself than to anybody else. And it’s very interesting.

John Murch:
And of course those comments may I say, are then a self projection onto someone else of what you’re probably thinking of yourself for whatever reason you’re thinking that as well.

Gracie Jean:
And it can become a real kind of rabbit hole and you really have to break out of it. But I think I was also getting really sick of all of the like, and you may have experienced this too, just people always being like, “Oh, but you’re so much more than what you look like. And beauty comes from within.”

John Murch:
Hey, I have a face for radio. I’m fine with it. Do beards matter, Gracie? It’s in reference to track number five –

Gracie Jean:
Yes, Whatever Goes. I was dating a guy who had a beard and it was a very iconic feature of his was that he had this beard and yeah, it was funny because I had this actual dream that he shaved it and he looked so different. He looked so different that I kind of felt, in the dream I was freaked out by it ’cause I just felt like there was a stranger in the room with me, woke up and was slightly annoyed at him for shaving his beard in my dream, even though he hadn’t done that in real life. And he was like, “Okay, you’re mad at me for something that I did in your dream. Cool.” But yeah, with dubious manner, in answer to your question, I would say yes, beards do matter.

John Murch:
We’re currently in conversation with a Gracie Jean. The brand new album is called Romance is Bad. To be clear, it’s not bad as in Bad Romance, more of a case of things bad can happen and make you feel a bit bad as well. I’ve recently, Gracie, been listening to John Richards’ the Runcast that’s out on KEXP. It’s a podcast of new release type music and he has a chat and he’s a runner, John Richards is. I’m not a runner, but I do like my mind to think that it’s running sometimes, particularly when I’m trying to get a task finished. That’s how I use your idea of running music. But for you, I believe you are a runner. Can you talk to me about that and how important running is?

Gracie Jean:
Oh, I’m kind of interested in this idea of your mind running. You want your mind to feel like it’s running. It’s really cool-

John Murch:
To get from one task to another to another. It used to be that thing of doing three minute tracks. By the end of this three minute track, particularly when I could see the timer as a broadcaster. You’re on radio, see it clocking down. It’s like, I want to get something finished by the time that hits zero.

Gracie Jean:
That’s really cool. I like that. I need to give that a go. But yes, I do run not my mind, but my legs. And it’s something I’ve been doing for a while, probably since high school. Last year I ran three half marathons or something stupid. To be fair, there wasn’t much else going on last year so I just kind of had to do something. It’s amazing. I don’t take anything, I don’t take my phone or the Earbuds or anything but I think about music a lot while I’m running. I used to listen to a lot of music when I was running. I have a old playlist on my Spotify that has all the songs I used to listen to.

John Murch:
I think Dua Lipa is on there.

Gracie Jean:
Oh, she would definitely be on there, for sure.

John Murch:
I ended up listening to more Dua Lipa than I cared to listen to before interviewing a Christian who was a singer-songwriter. I’m like, something doesn’t fit here.

Gracie Jean:
Me and my friend, shout out to my friend, Isabelle Knight, but we just love listening to also just rap music sometimes and just booty popping to it. It’s kind of random. I don’t know why we do it, but yeah, what have I got here? I’ve got, yeah, Physical, Dua Lipa. Boss Bitch by Doja Cat. Tempo, little Lizzo and Missy Elliot collab. Yeah, no, and I often actually do sometimes bring this playlist back when I’m forced to run on a treadmill for whatever reason. ‘Cause treadmill running is really boring. So sometimes I do put on my fun, good old workout playlist which has got a lot of Seal on it too. I mean, if anyone’s looking for some great recommendations to run to Schoolin’ Life by Beyonce, King Kunta by Kendrick Lamar, another great one. Best Song Ever by One Direction, all incredible for running or working out to.

John Murch:
I want to get back to because there’s good news on your mother’s front or as good as it can be at this time.

Gracie Jean:
Yes.

John Murch:
And yet again, that’s her story, not yours. But I just want to acknowledge that there is some good news in, if people are like, “Oh, that sounds heavy.” Well it is, but there is some light within that story as well. Can I ask you this question, if it’s not sharing too much about her life, what music do you and your mother share?

Gracie Jean:
Oh, okay. That is a good question because mom and I do not share much when it comes to music. She doesn’t listen to a lot. She’s not a heavy consumer of music. And if she is listening to music, it’s quite rare. It’s like, oh, she’s decided to put music on today. That’s quite interesting. But my mum loved, when I was a kid, she loved the Bee Gees. And so there’s a couple of Bee Gees songs that are super nostalgic to me because mum always played them in the house and in the car. We both, in the car for some reason, just absolutely go off to Life Is a Rollercoaster by Ronan Keating. Do you know that song?

John Murch:
Going to be in my head sometime before the end of this chat and I’m not going to sing it back to you.

Gracie Jean:
It’s just such a funny iconic. We just love it.

John Murch:
Because I know that’s going to hurt me later remembering that song. Daniel Powter’s Bad Day. There you go. Two for two there. You give me Ronan Keating. I’ll give you Dan Powter’s. Bad Day.

Gracie Jean:
I actually, I had to do a dance to that song when I was in dancing as a kid, so I’m definitely like, “U-oh. Here it comes.”

John Murch:
How do you dance to that? Okay.

Gracie Jean:
Random. Yeah, it was a very specific type of dance. It was called Physical Culture, Physie, if you will. Physical Culture, also known as Body Culture is a health and strength training movement that originated during the 19th Century in German, the UK and the U.S. It was a thing when I was a kid and it’s like a movements designed to increase strengths and fitness and flexibility and you do it to music and it’s a lot of marching and stretching and it’s a weird mix of military and dancing. It’s very strange, but a lot of people did it in the ’90s and the early 2000s.

John Murch:
In primary school we had to do dance moves in the physical education type of dance move that we’re suggesting I guess there, to things like Abba. We weren’t as cool as you.

Gracie Jean:
Oh, okay.

John Murch:
I think your dad lives overseas these days. Is there a musical connection with them?

Gracie Jean:
Oh, no. So my dad lives in Coffs Harbour, not quite overseas but it’s pretty far away. It’s like four hours away.

John Murch:
I thought he was in Malaysia. My bad research.

Gracie Jean:
No, he’s married to a Filipino. Yes, he does spend a lot of time in the Philippines and he was born in Malaysia, weirdly enough. Dad loves music, he listens to a lot of music. He’s always listening to music. But he loves that Aussie rock. He loves his Dire Straits, he loves the Eagles, he loves all of that sort of stuff. Matchbox Twenty, but I mean, I like it. I can get around it.

John Murch:
For the record, Matchbox Twenty were never an Australian band.

Gracie Jean:
No, but he just loves that vibe, like that music that would get played in an Australian pub. And also I think dad’s my biggest fan. He’s very devoted to being the hype man for my music career.

John Murch:
I think he was doing a good job over at TikTok.

Gracie Jean:
Oh my gosh, my dad on TikTok. I cannot, yeah. My dad has a TikTok channel, comments on all my videos, but he also posts his own videos.

John Murch:
How excited are you now that the record’s out?

Gracie Jean:
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited because it’s just been so long. It’s been such a long time in the making. I think I started working on this with Matt 2020, two years ago. But these songs have been written anywhere between 2017 and 2020. I’ve been singing on them for so long and then recording them for so long and then also we would record and then there’d be a lockdown and we wouldn’t record for ages and then we’d do a bit more and then there’d be another lockdown. So it’s just been the longest process ever and I’m excited to get them out because I love these songs and they feel like my friends. But I’m just really excited to have them out so that I feel like I’ve got space in my head to think about writing again and thinking about writing more songs, but also because I love these songs and I’m so excited that people can hear them. That makes me really excited.

John Murch:
You mentioned earlier though, that you are surprised of the mindset or the breadth, the length for which these songs are going as well. Is that a warming experience for you to know that it’s not just you?

Gracie Jean:
Oh, totally. Every time that someone messages me and says this song, for example, like Little Mountain Home really hit me in the feels, I can really relate. I’m so thankful for it. It just makes me feel thankful that I’m able to put to words and music something that lots of people have been feeling. It’s just really special.

John Murch:
What has been one of your favourite mountains to observe?

Gracie Jean:
The mountains that I had in mind when I wrote that Little Mountain Home song was the Blue Mountains, Blue Mountain National Park, New South Wales. I’d never been to the Blue Mountains until I moved to Sydney and moved in and house shared with friends who were from the mountains and whose parents still lived there and was able to go to the mountains with them and visit and hang out at their houses. And I was like, “Whoa, this place is really magical.” There are so many gum trees, probably the Blue Mountains.

John Murch:
And also that corresponding thing about someone who might live in the mountains has a particular demeanour about them, possibly a different purpose about them compared to someone who’s in the flats.

Gracie Jean:
Yeah, I think so. There’s this, my friends that are from the mountains, they’re all so creative and they’re all so artistic and they’ve all grown up in the bush, so they’re very like, they love nature and they love the bush and this ability to appreciate what’s around them. And then, yeah, I guess I like that idea of contrasting it with someone who lives in the valley who just isn’t in a point in their life where they’re able to do that as much. It’s quite a cool metaphor, I think.

John Murch:
Romance is Bad, is the name of the album. Does that mean you have to go through another bad experience of romance for the next record?

Gracie Jean:
Definitely not and actually I called the album Romance is Bad mostly because it’s intriguing and it’s the title of the song Romance is Bad, but I don’t actually think romance is bad. It’s like what I was saying before about lamenting, I think you just sometimes have to say how you’re feeling even though you know it isn’t true. And that’s how I was feeling at the time.

John Murch:
But there’s also the case that you’ve learned from those experiences as well.

Gracie Jean:
Yes, I’ve learned a lot from all of them and none of those feelings, all those experiences are things that I wish I didn’t have to go through. You learn from all of it.

John Murch:
Have you played these songs to the people they’re for?

Gracie Jean:
Yeah, I think so. I think everyone who’s got a song that is about them has heard it. I’ve even sent it to them and said like, “Hey, this is about you. I hope that’s fine.”

John Murch:
Did any of those hope it’s okay resulting in a song being taken off the record?

Gracie Jean:
No. I don’t know. It’s pretty scary. I’ve talked to a few friends about this other songwriter friends. How much power do you give them? Would you actually be like, “Hey, you just say the word and I’ll scrap this.” Do you actually, I don’t know, but thankfully I didn’t have to come to that decision.

John Murch:
Let’s talk about the responsibility though you have as a singer-songwriter, writing those kinds songs. How much does that weigh on the process for you. What essentially is a very private situation being broadcast through a song?

Gracie Jean:
The less the people listening to it know you, obviously the less private it is, which is kind of weird because normally that works in the opposite direction. Part of it is the only people that really know six to 10 really close friends and then everyone else is just listening to a very generic song about relationship. That kind of brings me comfort. Once they’re out in the world and people listening to them, it’s not for them to think about me, it’s for them to reflect on their lives.

John Murch:
So we’ve mentioned you haven’t given up on romance, but it is a critique of the idea of romance. May that be through movies or the admiration for people are in books and the life they led as carpenters. What do you think you can or have done as a singer-songwriter to give a more realistic view of romance is about?

Gracie Jean:
Hopefully I’ve just taken it off the pedestal. It seems that in society it gets put on this pedestal of it’s the most important thing that can happen to you and it’s the best kind of relationship you can possibly have is a romantic one. And I just don’t think that’s true. So hopefully I’ve just taken it off the pedestal a little bit and levelled it all out. And that’s kind of what this song’s about really is like friendship is actually really beautiful. Music is actually really… Like, yeah, there’s this sense in which romance isn’t the best, it isn’t the top of the mountain. It’s just another cool thing that you get to experience in a life full of cool things.

John Murch:
Gracie Jean, congratulations on your record. Thanks very much for joining us on radionotes.

Gracie Jean:
Thank you so much for having me. It’s been so fun chatting to you.

 

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *