“I love having a million different things happening and I love learning,” she tells Zan Rowe on Double J’s Take 5.<\/p>\n
“I love learning new ways to be creative.”Hear Meg Washington Take 5 with Zan Rowe<\/a><\/p>\n Washington conjured a treasure island writing new album, Gem. She takes you through her “oasis” songs for her Take 5.<\/p>\n But even with all her successes, Washington has been wondering lately: “Why make music in capitalism? Especially when it’s no longer your only gig?”<\/p>\n There was one answer she kept coming back to.<\/p>\n “Because it’s in my nature. If I was on a desert island all by myself and there was nobody to listen to me, I would still sing because I’m there,” she says, with a laugh.<\/p>\n That’s a feeling the singer-songwriter tried to capture in one of the songs off her latest album, Gem<\/a>, ‘Honeysuckle Island’.<\/p>\n In it, she sings: “It’s all or nothing.”<\/p>\n As she tells Rowe: “I really do think that you have to completely surrender to the mission. You can’t half try.”<\/p>\n Gem \u2014 which is Meg backwards \u2014 is Washington’s first album of original music since she left her major label and went independent a few years ago.<\/p>\n Striking out on her own led her to reflect on what it means to be a musician.<\/p>\n Gem exposes Meg Washington’s dreams and aspirations. (Supplied: Batflower Records\/Michelle Pitiris)<\/p>\n “I had to renew my vows to myself and to ‘The Muse’ and whatever my art practice means to me,” she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n “[And] it means the same thing now that it did when I was 14.<\/p>\n “[Now] I’m kind of showing up, in a [way] that before I didn’t really feel like I had the capacity to.”<\/p>\n Polishing a Gem<\/p>\n Washington approached making Gem, her fifth album, a bit differently to her previous records.<\/p>\n “In the past, my songwriting’s been very autobiographical,” she says.<\/p>\n But writing deeply personal songs \u2014 about, for instance, a broken engagement<\/a> for her second album There There \u2014 can have unintended consequences: Washington found herself “re-embodying” difficult emotions night after night on stage.<\/p>\n “[On Gem] I wanted to write what I wanted to happen, not what was actually happening,” Washington says.<\/p>\n “[I got to] sing about things that felt good.”<\/p>\n Meg Washington says Gem was like a place that she created in the songwriting process. (Supplied: Batflower Records)<\/p>\n But it wasn’t just the lyrics that Washington wrote from a fresh perspective; it was also her music.<\/p>\n While in the past she might have thought \u2014 even subconsciously \u2014 about how to get her song on the radio, Washington approached Gem with no such expectations.<\/p>\n Instead, she wanted every song to use live instrumentation \u2014 “There are no machines in the music” \u2014 to build a stripped-back “landscape of a world”, which she has described as a “tropical fantasy beach world”.<\/p>\n Washington told ABC News Breakfast earlier this month: “[Gem] is a concept album that I wrote about being on a treasure island.”<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n “Historically, I’ve always populated my songs really densely with stuff: information, chords, lyrics, things, images, blah, blah, blah,” Washington explains.<\/p>\n “There’s always a ‘big sing’. There’s always a huge note in the bridge. Every song has got so much in it.<\/p>\n “When I was writing this record, I was really conscious of having enough space in the music to enjoy myself and for the audience to enjoy themselves too.<\/p>\n “[I wanted] to have the record be like a church or like a quiet place to go.”Meg Washington’s Take 5 songs:Sade \u2014 ‘No Ordinary Love’The Bangles \u2014 ‘Eternal Flame’Kevin Morby \u2014 ‘Harlem River’Eugenio Bennato \u2014 ‘Ogni uno’The Roches \u2014 ‘Hammond Song’<\/p>\n That’s something she was able to do with the assistance of her singing teacher \u2014 the same one she’s had throughout her life \u2014 who helped her with her technique.<\/p>\n “As I’ve gotten older, my voice has really mellowed,” Washington says.<\/p>\n “I used to push a lot of air through all the time, but now I’ve learnt how to close my folds.<\/p>\n “Over the last five or so years, I’ve really found just singing to myself, with myself, really unlocked a new relationship to my voice.”<\/p>\n Instead of being a musically complex album based on her experiences, Gem then is both a manifestation, and a statement of intent.<\/p>\n Making gravy with Paul Kelly<\/p>\n One of the clearest examples of that manifestation is on album closer ‘Fine’, featuring Paul Kelly.<\/p>\n Meg Washington says Gem is a concept album that she wrote about being on a treasure island. (Supplied: Batflower Records)<\/p>\n In the song, Washington and Kelly declare: “I’m the reason that I sing,” and “I’ve been looking at the future and everything’s gonna be fine.”<\/p>\n ‘Fine’ also appears in the movie How to Make Gravy, as sung by a choir of prisoners, including Brendan Maclean. It won Washington, Maclean and the choir an AACTA Award for Best Original Song.<\/p>\n “I was writing it in the apartment at the same time that we were writing the film,” Washington recalls.<\/p>\n “We were looking for a song for the choir to sing in the movie and I was tying myself into knots and ribbons trying to figure out what they would sing about and what it would be and what it would say.”<\/p>\n Waterman suggested using ‘Fine’ in the movie, leading Washington to think about what the song would mean from an inmate’s perspective.\u00a0<\/p>\n “[It’s] the same sentiment: an affirmation to the future,” she says.<\/p>\n Things came full circle when, on December 21, or Gravy Day<\/a>, last year, Washington was playing a gig in Melbourne, and Kelly joined her on stage to sing ‘Fine’.<\/p>\n “It just was awesome to sing together,” she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n “It felt really natural for him to be the other voice on this [album] version of it.”<\/p>\n Meg Washington says having Paul Kelly feature on the album version of Fine just brought everything home. (Supplied: Batflower Records)<\/p>\n Writing songs was a respite for Washington while she was making How to Make Gravy.<\/p>\n “It was a familiar place in which I kind of know what to do,” she says.<\/p>\n It also gave her the opportunity to reconnect with her raison d’\u00eatre; that thing she’d be doing on a desert island.<\/p>\n “For the first time, the garden was a garden again,” she says.<\/p>\n “When you start making your passion your career, you turn the garden into a factory and other people come and work there. And it can be sort of gnarly.<\/p>\n “But with this record, there was nobody else. And it was just a peaceful, quiet sanctuary that I just loved dwelling in.”<\/p>\n Hear Meg Washington’s full interview with Zan Rowe on the Take 5 podcast<\/a> and ABC listen app.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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