Central Coast NSW country-pop artist Ella Powell has been evolving her sound and storytelling over her last few singles, and her latest, ‘Hate My Clothes’, has the most intriguing title yet.

As Powell tells me in this new interview, the song began as a feeling rather than a concept. She had a verse and a chorus and took those to co-writer and producer Ben Horsley, who has worked on her last two singles.

The title of the song was Horsley’s suggestion, and it is not a song about Powell needing a new wardrobe but, rather, about finding an identity – something that most humans go through in their teens and early twenties, and which can be more pressing for artists in an era when brand is so important and artists are trying to, well, make art.

Powell started performing at eight and released her first proper single, ‘Paper Town’, in her mid-teens – it’s a song she tends to keep in her set, despite releasing several singles since, because it brought many fans to her for the first time. She is now in her early twenties and, for the first time, says she knows exactly who she is as an artist and exactly what she wants to make.

A year or two of releases are already mapped out, writing sessions are ongoing with Horsley, and production on new material has begun. At the core of Powell’s songwriting is a drive to tell stories. As she tells me, she writes several songs simultaneously to reduce attachment to any one, and is comfortable abandoning material that isn’t working, which is a discipline she has developed over years of writing. Her ideas come from overhearing conversations, scrolling book titles online, and using random word generators as prompts – I hadn’t heard of anyone using that last one, and am now intrigued!

It’s always exciting to see what Powell comes up with next, and also lovely to talk to her, so I hope you enjoy this conversation.

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The last time I interviewed Michael Cook – known as Cookie – from the Darling Downs (Queensland) alt-country and bluegrass band Rusty Pickups, there was a donkey outside the studio at Possum Creek, where the band recorded. Naturally, when we spoke again recently about the band’s new album, I Don’t Think About You at All (… some days), I checked in on this unofficial extra band member and also on the band’s recent successes, which included a New Zealand tour.

Rusty Pickups were originally a four-piece, then became a five-piece – and are now back to being a four-piece, as founding member Waylon Katz is heading off around Australia on a months-long odyssey which will count him out of any band activity for a very long while.

‘Rusty Pickups is a table we’re all lucky enough to have a seat at,’ says Cookie. ‘Right now his chair’s pushed in, but it’s there for him to pull out again when he wants to come back.’

In this interview Cookie talks further about the ‘table’ that is Rusty Pickups and how it has kept providing for them all, which was the main aim. He has set goals and they’ve kept reaching them, not through crossing their fingers and hoping but by putting in the work and taking chances and opportunities.

It was Katz who wrote the album’s title track, drawing on conversations he’s had in his work as a therapist. Some other songs are written by Cookie, and they are what he calls clear-eyed rather than self-pitying: honest assessments of hard things, including addiction, the passage of time and the unexpected depth of feeling for a very small dog he rescued, named Princess Bubblegum.

The story about that dog is an example of why it’s always great to let interviews flow where they want to go – great stories often result. And it’s also why this interview is on the long side, but Cookie is always interesting to chat to, so a longer conversation is usually on the cards.

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At the start of this interview I say I’m a Melanie Dyer fan, and that’s because she writes songs that can encompass a whole life, as in her recent single, ‘Golden Girl’, or cut right to the heart of something in a devastating way, as in ‘What You Didn’t Say’, from her 2022 album Between You & Me, or just be out-and-out entertaining because of her ear for melody.

As she talks about in this new interview, she discovered the magic of what could be created by combining music with chords at a young age. She would lock herself in her room to write a song then emerge at the ad break to perform it for her parents. She was the youngest person accepted into the Talent Development Project at twelve, training in songcraft, stagecraft, performance and networking alongside musicians from across multiple genres.

‘I’ve spent my whole life doing this,’ she says. ‘I’ve never known a life without it.’

Dyer’s latest single, ‘If She Only Knew’, is a love letter to that girl growing up on a farm in regional New South Wales, learning chords on her mother’s guitar and dreaming of a life in music. The song was written in Nashville. with Karen Kosowski and Emma-Lee, which whom Dyer wrote her hit ‘Memphis T-Shirt’. There were some tears during the writing session for this song which is, says Dyer, ‘equally heartbreaking and cathartic and inspiring and hopeful’.

‘If you really feel like you're destined to do something, don’t give up on yourself. That’s what this song is saying.’

Dyer’s early dreams have taken her all the way to Music City, where she’s lived for over a year, playing live regularly and writing a lot. Given how often Dyer is asked to co-write with other artists, it’s perfect that she’s now in a place where songwriting is woven into the fabric of daily life. And it’s still a source of wonder to her.

‘I hear melodies in my head,’ she says. ‘They just come out. And that’s still this crazy, magic thing to me – inventing and crafting something from scratch and weaving your emotion into it.’

Young Melanie’s dreams have indeed come true, and listening to Now Melanie talk about that, and much more about her craft and her songs, is hugely inspiring.

Listen to ‘If She Only Knew’ on Apple Music

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