Georgia Marley
If you enjoy indulging in unique and groovy sounds with hints of folk and electronica, then Georgia Marley is the artist for you. Her smooth guitar sounds accompanied by lush vocals and hard-hitting lyrics will transcend your singer-songwriter expectations and deliver something excitingly unexpected.
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I got the chance to chat with Georgia about her debut album Yearning, and this is what she had to say.
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What's the vibe been like leading up to the release of the album?
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Oh, my God. What do you mean, like just like how I've been feeling?
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Yeah, like how have you been feeling, has it been crazy? Has it been pretty chill?
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Yeah. I mean, it's been pretty chill. I mean, I feel like it should be pretty crazy, but I've been ignoring everything... just in hardcore denial about it really. It's exciting because like I've done merch for it so I've got the Zine and the cassette, and I recently went and printed it out all the Zines and that was really fun. That was when I realised that, oh it's happening now. So I guess in that kind of aspect, it's been fun and exciting. But I'm also super scared, but also just refusing to acknowledge it at the same time.
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I feel like the first anything is kind of like your baby.
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Yeah, exactly. This album, I feel like I could have thought it out better. It's something that I've been thinking on for ages. I did my songwriting degree and while I was doing that I thought, oh, let's do an EP. And it was probably with completely different songs, but that's kind of where it started. So last year I started getting really serious about trying to put something together. I've still got so many songs that aren't even on the album that aren't being released... there's so many! But I just wanted something to do with them. So I wanted to do an EP or an album or something and it just kind of turned into how can I find a way to string them all together and make it cohesive.
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Yeah.
And there were about... Ha! Now that I think about it, a lot of them I wrote last year, which is weird because I just kind of assumed that I wrote them all before that. But I didn't have the intention of writing an album called Yearning, if that makes sense. Like, that came very much at the end.
Where did the title come from?
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Well, in the past couple of years I've been coming really into my sexual identity. I identify as a queer woman and that started being really obvious last year. And because I'm on Twitter so much, Yearning is such a lesbian thing on Twitter, you know? So, I wrote my first gay songs last year, and then I went overseas and I had this moment where I was like, oh, my god... Women! [Laughter]. So I came back and I wrote the song Enjoy The View, which is track four on the album, and from there I was like, wait, hold up... this is it. And Yearning is actually a lyric in it, so makes a lot of sense.
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Do you wanna explain a bit more about the LGBTQ+ Yearning thing for those who don't understand?
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OK. So especially in lesbian circles, yearning is just a way of describing the feeling of a crush except it's just so intense... I don't know how to describe it and feel like I'm going to say it wrong. I don't want people to get mad at me! But to me, it's just an intense feeling of wanting. And, I mean, I've spent a lot of time feeling lonely. So it's that feeling of wanting that accompanies the loneliness, if that makes sense. If you don't get it, watch Portrait of a Lady on Fire and you will understand. It's a French movie, it's about lesbians and it's pretty good.
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Awesome. I'm going to watch it.
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Yeah, it's really good.
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Image: Sophie Hill | @sophie.jpg
So the three songs that you've released, they're all going to be on the album which is great. How many songs are on the album?
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There's 10 altogether. I put out the first two not knowing what the album was going to be like. So I feel if they kind of almost don't fit in honestly, because at that point, it was gonna be more of a look at my mental health situation. And I guess it still is in a way, because it's just about me and who I am.
I think if you're going to do anything for your first album, do that.
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Yeah. I feel like if I'd known the album as it is now, I don't know if I would have put them on it, if that makes sense. But I wanted to put them on there. It just made sense. Also, it meant, I didn't have to do as many new songs so made it a little bit easier for me.
And then you produce a lot of your own music as well?
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Yeah. It's all produced by me in my bedroom. And all of it, except for the first song, was also mixed by me.
I did I Hope This Feeling Doesn't Last in uni. Actually a couple of them, I did for uni. I did I Hope This Feeling Doesn't Last and used it to do a little production thing for an assessment. And it was pretty much exactly how it sounds now... I think I tweaked a few things, but I basically didn't touch it for a year. And then I took it to Antonia Gauci, who mixed it for me and she did such a good job. That's such a good song and I'm so proud of it. I'm really glad it was the first song that I put out.
And then I did a couple of the other ones in uni. Like, for example, About You which is the second last one on the album. I was doing that one in uni as well, except that sounded very different back then. Now, it has a really big build at the end, so it was really different before. Also, I just kind of didn't know what I was doing. I started going to like these electronic music workshops that were put on in Parramatta. I learnt how to use Ableton and that was really good for me. It completely changed the way that I produce music, because before that I was having to record each thing individually and I didn't have many sounds. And now I feel like I have a lot more options in terms of creating sounds and using different instruments, even if I don't necessarily have them with me physically.
Initially I started with such an acoustic indie singer songwriter folk sound, and now I've like definitely headed into more electronic vibes, I mean, I feel like genre is dead anyway and people should be able to do whatever they want. But I just think it's really interesting because from the moment I started using Ableton, my whole style changed. I just think that's interesting.
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If you look at artists that you've been inspired by in the past you can compare your past self to them, but then at the same time, take what you learnt from them and turn it into your own sound. I think that's really special.
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Yeah. And I mean, I'd like to think that I do that. I'm not particularly good at it in in my head... but I'm sure that other people disagree with me.
Image: Sophie Hill | @sophie.jpg
So, what was the driving inspirations behind your album, because I've read you're very inspired by Julia Jacklin and others similar as well.
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I've always been obsessed with really good lyrics. And growing up in high school, I was like so, so obsessed with Elena Tonra, who's the singer in Daughter. She's so good.
Lyrics has always been something that I've wanted to be really, really good at. So I'm very inspired by women especially who are really good at lyrics. It's very diverse because I wouldn't say that Elena Tonra and Georgia Maq from Camp Cope have a similar style in lyricism, but I adore both of them. So I'm very inspired by that. And it's definitely influenced me to try to be more verbose.
I feel like I definitely lean towards a Camp Cope kind of style of songwriting. But I think that the Daughter part shines through in other ways like how I play guitar. Then when I got into Julia Jacklin a couple of years ago, that changed everything because I don't think I've really listened to anything like that. I mean, Courtney Barnett, Julia Jacklin, Stella Donnelly; they're all women who play guitar and sing and they sound so beautiful. But I hadn't really seen that before? Or at least not that I remember.
And then I found Soccer Mommy who's a DIY artist from America and I love her stuff so much. In her early work you can tell it's DIY, but it's still so good. And her songwriting is just... I adore it.
So I feel like I've probably taken bits from each of these artists, and I've kind of - not like intentionally - but put it in my own music. So it has definitely shaped the way I hear music and the way that I write. A perfect example is Alex Lahey. Wow, I'm just namedropping all these people haha!
Haha! I'll tag them all and they can share your music.
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[Laughter] Yes! So Alex Lahey. I found her and Ali Barter and they're rock people, but they song write. And it's all rock songs. So, from that, I wrote my first rock song. And I listened to it and it sounded like an Alex Lahey song, so that was really cool. But it's really bad and I'm never going to put it out [laughter].
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You're experimenting with style, It's good!
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Yeah. But I feel like for me at least, the way that I learn how to do different styles is that I listen to the songs and then cover them, and then it's something that I can translate into my own work. I just love songwriting.
So, Yearning as an album. Was there a light bulb moment where you were like, Aha! I'm going to make an album!
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Yeah, it definitely was. I could probably find the conversation that I had with my friend where I was like, I'm going to do this. Because so many times, I would message them and I was like, oh, I'm gonna make this EP and this is the idea for the front cover, and this is the title and the track-list. So I guess Yearning was the only one that stuck; it just made so much sense, and I had such a clear idea for it. I've documented the whole process actually. I have like a little log book.
Initially it was going to be a bigger album. But then I wanted to put it on vinyl, so I was like, well, I can't have it be over 40 minutes then, and now it's not being printed to vinyl, but it's the same size anyway.
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You've got the cassette which is really cool.
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Yeah, I'm really excited about that.
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And they're available on Bandcamp as well with the Zine!
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Yeah! I got a Zine designed by someone I worked with when I worked at Maccas. Her name's Geraldine. She's a really cool graphic design artist. I've loved her work for years and I've always wanted to work with her and I just hadn't found an opportunity, and we had one! I couldn't have done it better.
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Is it like a lyric book?
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Yeah. It's like a little lyric book. It's got all the lyrics in it and then a little illustration on each page that she did that matches the song. And then I wrote a line or two about what the song is about and that's pretty funny... I'm very excited about that. It's not really sunk in yet that it's happening. I feel like I should be freaking out more.
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[Laughter]
Like when I was when I was uploading the songs onto DistroKid to distribute them, I was watching a movie with my friends over Zoom. I actually accidentally almost released the album early because I forgot to change the release date from that day to June. So I almost released it in the middle of April, with no warning. That was a panic.
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If you weren't making your own music, what would you be doing?
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I genuinely have no idea. I seriously think about this so much because I've wanted to do music since I was like five years old. I remember - well, I don't know if I made this up - you know, when you have a memory, you just don't know if it actually happened.
Haha, yep!
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So I have a memory of watching Australian Idol when I was five years old and just turning to my mum and being like, that's gonna be me one day. And it's just kind of never budged. It started as, oh, I'm going to be a singer. And then in high school when I started playing guitar it turned into I'm going to write songs and be a musician. But yeah, I've just literally wanted to do it my whole life and I cannot think of one other thing I would want to do really.
Well, actually, if I wasn't writing, if I wasn't like actively being a musician and I was like still the same person, I would still be wanting to work in music. I mean, I still want to... I want to work in music. But it's so hard to get a job. I'd love to work in like in management or something like that. But I get stressed very easily, so it's probably not the best job for me anyway. Or bookings or just literally anything. I'd love to work in radio... something like that.
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Yeah. Just anything in the industry.
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Yeah. Just music man, music all the way.
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Was there a moment when you started to act on your dream of working in music?
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I have no idea because it's literally always been there. I don't remember if I cried when I got into uni for the music degree, but I remember it was really important.
There was a day when I was in year eleven and I had to write a song for a class assignment. It was super angsty because, high school angst, and I wrote a song called What Was the Point, like, that's literally how angsty it was. I put it on my Tumblr account and it got 500 listens or something. And I was like, what? Oh, okay I can make music. It was weird.
I also put out a fake song in 2018 called If I Ask. I put it out under George, which if you're a true fan, you may remember that [laughter].
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I think I do actually!
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Oh, don't! But it was on Spotify and I stayed up until midnight to listen to it when it went up on Spotify, and I think I had a little cry and I was like, oh, this is crazy. But like, I hated that song. So I took it down. It's not even up anymore.
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Honestly, my friend has been really pressuring me to redo it. And I actually did rerecord it a few weeks ago, but it's very different now. I might finish it, you never know. But it was trash.
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So the professional music thing, it just kind of happened?
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Yeah. So the workshops that I went to, the electronic music ones, it was a weekly workshop and they would have mentors come in and talk about what they do in music.
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Did that cost anything?
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No! It was free. It was really cool. Yeah. I remember they had Lupa J come in and they had Annie Bass and Rainbow Chan. And they had Antonia come in who mixed my first song and that's how I met her. They all just talked about what they do in the industry and how you can do things and we learnt how to make songs and about like booking and all of that type of stuff.
They weren't expecting us to come from somewhere and they weren't expecting us to, like, actually do anything, they were just kind of there to help. I'm still very involved with that community. And that's been really helpful in my growth as a musician and as a person in the music industry. It's been crazy. I don't think I would have put out an album if it wasn't for them. Yeah. I love them. It's ICE by the way. Information Cultural Exchange in Parramatta. We love them.
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So when your album comes out on Friday and people are going to listen to it for the first time, how do you want them to listen to it?
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I definitely considered the order of it and the flow. So with the first and the last song there's a bookend feel to it. I did try and make the order good. So I would at least appreciate if people listened in order.
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There's something very daunting about the idea of people actually listening to the lyrics though. So I'm not sure if I would tell them to do that. Just listen to it while you're reading a book. Just have it on in the background. Or I mean, listen to it if you want, but just don't tell me. That's so terrifying to me.
Especially when everyone starts asking you what specific lyrics mean, it's personal you know.
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I've thought about that a lot because a lot of it's very personal to me and - I'm not going to be very specific here - but one of the songs that I wrote at the end of last year because a friend of mine decided not to be my friend anymore and I was very sad.
So, I don't care if people listen to it, but like, if people ask me about it I probably won't answer. I kind of want there to be an air of mystery but also, at the same time, I want people to ask me about it, but I don't want to have to answer their questions.
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Yeah.
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I mean, I'd love to answer questions about all of the songs, but also they're all very personal and the people that they're about still very much in my life. So I don't necessarily want to tell them.
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It's for other people to listen to and make their own meanings.
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Yeah! I can't wait for that. I hope people enjoy it.
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Awesome. So how does it work with Bandcamp? You get a digital download?
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Yeah. Also, Bandcamp is waiving their revenue fees AGAIN on June 5th which is the album release day, so I get 100% of the profit. So you'll get a digital download for pretty much anything that you buy on that day. How it should work is that if you buy the Zine you'll get a digital download. So if people don't want the cassette and the Zine, then they can just buy it digitally and that's fine.
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I always try to encourage people to buy a digital download and just download to your phone rather than stream it.
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Yeah, you just don't get anything from that. I've made like $15 the whole time but my music has been up on streaming services. So we love Bandcamp!
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Yeah, for sure. Get on Bandcamp guys! Thanks for chatting Georgia, can't wait for the album release!
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Thank you! Can't wait for people to hear it.
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