{"id":949377,"date":"2026-11-02T02:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-02T02:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/949377\/"},"modified":"2026-11-02T02:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-02T02:22:09","slug":"odette-on-a-later-in-life-autism-diagnosis-it-completely-revolutionised-the-way-that-i-exist-pop-and-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/949377\/","title":{"rendered":"Odette on a later-in-life autism diagnosis: \u2018It completely revolutionised the way that I exist\u2019 | Pop and rock"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2021, just before the release of her second album, the Sydney singer-songwriter Odette \u2013 full name Georgia Odette Sallybanks \u2013 was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. As she said at the time<\/a>, this threw new light on the songs she had written in the murky depths of constant rumination. She renamed the album from Dwell to Herald \u2013 reframing from slippery interiority to public declaration \u2013 and threw herself into the promotional cycle with more ruthless honesty than ever.<\/p>\n

That rawness, and her signature dance between rich vocal runs and loping spoken-word rhythms, has won her fans worldwide, as well as four Aria nominations. Her first two records, including her 2018 debut, To a Stranger, were released on the major label that signed her when she was a teenager and one of the most hyped young songwriters in the country.<\/p>\n

The five years between Herald and her upcoming third LP, Blink, would be informed by another diagnosis that shattered and rebuilt the picture again.<\/p>\n

\u201cReframing has been the whole purpose of this record,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd Jesus Christ, my brain is different.\u201d<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sitting on a bench in a harbourside park in Sydney, not far from her shared flat. The water is sparkling, the sky is blue; a magpie trots past with a primo shred of golden croissant in its beak, and a delighted Sallybanks stops mid-sentence to congratulate it. She is animated and Zen as our conversation loops between the sunny topics (her girlfriend, the piano, crafting her own stage set out of cardboard at home) and the grimmer ones (genocides, billionaires, Ed Sheeran).<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m both relaxed and careful at the same time,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s such a good feeling, in my body: not drinking, just focusing on music and my relationships, and going outside, and I feel like a goddam newborn baby \u2026 Colours are brighter!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018I used to think there was so much value in whether people were thinking I was beautiful. Now I feel like I\u2019ve really embraced just being feral.\u2019 Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

In 2024, Sallybanks parted ways with her label and began writing and recording with her friend, the songwriter-producer Kiah Gossner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very mentally ill \u2013 I think I was still going in and out of psychosis when we started the album, but the record itself wasn\u2019t necessarily marinating in it. It was lifting me out of it,\u201d she says, describing her creative partnership with Gossner as \u201cone of the most freeing experiences of my life\u201d.<\/p>\n

In July that year she released the single Reverence on a tiny indie label, Beloved Records, and kept writing with Gossner. Then in mid-2025, within a short space of time, Sallybanks got two things: sober and an official autism diagnosis.<\/p>\n

Sallybanks was fine with the news; it was her mother who cried when she heard. On top of historical gaps in awareness of how autism presents in girls, doctors had also been blaming her behavioural issues on racist assumptions about her mother, who is a South African woman with Zulu heritage, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy whole life, she was just trying to get me help, and there was none, and look what happened,\u201d Sallybanks says. \u201cI tried to numb myself in substance abuse \u2013 I think that was my way of [masking] \u2013 and I ended up in all the wrong places, and it destroyed my body and it destroyed my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early intervention is \u201cso crucial to the success of autistic people\u201d, she says \u2013 and a later-in-life diagnosis can feel a bit like being handed an Xbox controller after decades of trying to play with a battered TV remote. Sallybanks says while she can\u2019t change past behaviour she\u2019s ashamed of, or get back the time that feels lost, she now feels as though she\u2019s finally \u201cshown up to [her] own life\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt completely revolutionised the way that I exist,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s revolutionised my music, my business skills, my friendships, my relationships, everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Odette looks out over the harbour. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Musicians who depart a well-resourced major label will often wax ambivalent about the joys and pressures of handling more things on your own. Sallybanks is the first artist I\u2019ve ever heard use the word \u201cmycelial\u201d to describe the process. \u201cIt\u2019s like the roots of [an album cycle] extend beyond the creative \u2013 organising tours and doing everything that usually I would have had a lot more support with,\u201d she says. This theme runs through the record like a root system: progress through necessary rot, growth that has gnarliness and ugliness to it rather than pink-bud innocence.<\/p>\n

Oscar Davis\u2019s artwork for Blink<\/p>\n

Desiccated, wild textures thread through the lyrics \u2013 \u201cAlencon lace \/ all dried remains\u201d; \u201cwas I just a briar that your sleeve was snagged on?\u201d \u2013 interspersed with contrasting squishes of mud and primordial goo. The album cover, by artist Oscar Davis, is a pyrographic sketch of impossible delicacy on a cardboard panel, ripped corrugated edges visible. There\u2019s something pleasingly perverse about drawing a plant using fire on the remains of other, deader plants, another strange loop, beauty through breakdown.<\/p>\n

\u201cI used to think there was so much value in whether people were thinking I was beautiful, and whether people thought I was like, sexy and cool,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd now I feel like I\u2019ve really embraced just being feral.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her molasses-rich voice has never been better framed \u2013 the spareness of her first two records has relaxed and let life get in through the cracks, with oboes hunting around the edges and syncopated jumbles that had me hunting down old Tuneyards albums for a revisit. (Associated Bandcamp tags<\/a> and Spotify mix tapes<\/a> reference \u201cgutter folk\u201d and \u201ctrash pop\u201d.)<\/p>\n

Her other tic as a composer-arranger are \u2013 back around again \u2013 circles and loops. On a line by line level she favours these claw-handed little ostinatos, spiky and teasing (like the one that hooks you in from the beginning of her 2017 debut single, Watch Me Read You), and I ask if she\u2019s conscious of the habit, or has a name for it. She does, actually. It\u2019s Eric.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just comes out and shreds, and then he\u2019s like, \u2018All right, bye!\u2019\u201d she laughs. \u201cI wrote a lot of this piano when I was, like, super duper manic. So playing it back and learning it now, in my normal life, is like, \u2018Why? Why did I do this?\u201d (\u201cTake it away, Eric!\u201d she cries on standout track Seahorses, before, well, shredding.)<\/p>\n

Blink also starts and ends on the same note \u2013 in a nod to one of her biggest influences, Joanna Newsom, who does the same on Divers \u2013 \u201cto pay homage to this idea that we are constantly circling the same idea\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u2018Even the quietest person, we do violence against ourselves.\u2019 Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

An idea that Sallybanks keeps circling: that just as she can be both relaxed and careful nobody is ever just one thing. \u201cI\u2019m a woman, and I\u2019m brown, and I\u2019m autistic, and I\u2019m all these things. But I\u2019m talking about being alive. Everybody knows what that feels like,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven the quietest person, we do violence against ourselves \u2013 we abuse substances, we yell at each other when we\u2019ve got road rage.\u201d Community and creativity, she insists, can rebuild some of what we\u2019ve lost.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s all this anger festering inside us, and we have all these little outlets [we could use to channel it] \u2026 I think that that\u2019s what I\u2019m trying to sing to. We\u2019re all kind. We\u2019re all terrible and kind, and we get to \u2013 we decide for ourselves how we want to live.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blink by Odette is out 6 November via Beloved Records<\/p>\n

Odette\u2019s songs to live by<\/p>\n

What music do you clean the house to?<\/p>\n

At the moment I do most things to Choke Enough by Oklou. It helps me relax.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the song you wish you wrote?<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t really think like that. I really love the song Nausica\u00e4 by Cameron Winter.<\/p>\n

If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?<\/p>\n

Ghosts by Japan or Cores by Da Lata \u2013 maybe that\u2019s the end credits though.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a song you can never listen to again?<\/p>\n

I especially listen to those ones because I argue with my own limitations every day. It\u2019s hard to listen to Cosmia by Joanna Newsom even though it\u2019s one of my favourite songs.<\/p>\n

What classic song should be stripped of its title?<\/p>\n

I Just Called to Say I Love You. That song is like being stuck in a lift.<\/p>\n

What is the first song\/album you bought?<\/p>\n

The first proper album I ever bought myself I think was Cherry Depression by Beach House. But if we\u2019re going way back to iTunes, probably something by Justin Bieber.<\/p>\n

What song do you want played at your funeral?<\/p>\n

Excellent question. I want my corpse to do an animatronic strip tease to Angel of the Morning by Juice Newtown.<\/p>\n

What is the best song to have sex to?<\/p>\n

Fr\u00fchlingsstimmen by Johann Strauss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2021, just before the release of her second album, the Sydney singer-songwriter Odette \u2013 full name Georgia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-949377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}