INTERVIEW: Stephanie Cherote on debut single 'Summer Love': "I am inspired by artists who reach in and offer something from their own interior."
Stephanie Cherote, originally from northern NSW, has been on a long and winding road that lead to the release of her debut single ‘Summer Love’ in June, quite possibly one of the most haunting and mesmerising songs you will hear this year. Growing up enamoured of 1960s music, at age 25 she entered a national songwriting competition in which she won Australian Singer-Songwriter of the Year & Unsigned Artist of the Year. She soon found herself in LA and a meeting with founder of Interscope Records Jimmy Iovine. During initial songwriting sessions however she chose to step away from the record deal out of a desire to gain more life experience. After moving to New York, where she wrote and performed at open mic nights, Cherote returned to Australia where she crowd funded $20,000 to create her debut album Some Holy Longing. Recorded over a week at The Grove studio, the album features a 12-member orchestra made up of players from The Australian Chamber Orchestra.
With a deep, rich, emotive voice which brings to mind Lana Del Rey, Nico and Stevie Nicks, Cherote’s music is mature, moving and utterly captivating. With her album due out later this year, Stephanie Cherote is a remarkable new talent we should all be excited to hear more from. We recently spoke to Stephanie about her music, her career and the creation of ‘Summer Love’.
Hey Stephanie! So good to chat to you. How have things been for you for the past few months of isolation and lockdown?
Hello! Thank you for checking in! Well, I have an almost two-year-old son so aside from planning an album release and playing a few shows, I have been in the baby bubble since giving birth. Lockdown feels very much like an extended version of that! I did feel more susceptible to the dynamics of the collective human buzz – being pushed and pulled according to politics, media, conspiracy theories, restrictions etc. so I probably went a little further into self- preservation - spending more time in the veggie garden, preparing meals, resting. I think it was overwhelming in the sense that we were being instructed to stay home and put everything down, resign from the matrix so that we can recover from a highly threatening and transmittable glitch. It goes against our traditional narrative that is to show up, fight, and conquer. We aren’t used to being validated for inaction. I think - and hope - we are coming out the other end with some replenished wisdom within ourselves about our accountability to the world and to others.
Congratulations on the release of your debut single ‘Summer Love’ it is absolutely beautiful. Can you tell us a little about the inspiration behind the song?
Thank you. I suppose a seasonal and evolving sense of longing inspired ‘Summer Love’. The song transformed according to the chapters of a rather nomadic life I was living and the different impressions I was reaching into at the time. Musically speaking, I could hear the string parts while I was writing the lyrics, chords, etc. so it became essential for the vocal and guitar to sit within an orchestral world, one that would rejoice in the story.
The song was created in a number of countries - Australia, USA and Costa Rica. Can you tell us some more about the creative process behind the track?
’Summer Love’ started in the humble form of a poem. Written one afternoon after a melancholy kind of day at the beach in Sydney. The poem was very child-like, I was exploring my picture of ‘love’ in an innocent and uncomplicated context.
I revisited it two years later in Costa Rica, I was traveling alone and found myself by the sea, thinking about the perspective I had of ‘love’ when I wrote that poem. I assembled the words with chords and then again, it just got stuck in the back of my mind for some time. A few years later I was in New York, sitting at a coffee shop in the East Village thinking about the song. I felt that the lucid idea had transformed into an elusive longing. I wasn’t so clear on love anymore so I finished the song by coming back to it with some questions. I think that is how it is, as we get older. The firmness we have around our projections as a kid weakens a little, so we reach into philosophy or ‘wisdom’ to reconcile our delusion.
You worked with members of the Australian Chamber Orchestra on the song, what was that experience like?
It was incredible. We allocated one day in the studio to record string arrangements for 10 songs on the album. The producer and I stayed up all night the night before going over the arrangements and we printed them literally five minutes before the musicians arrived at the studio. I thought, and I was told, I was being over-ambitious but from the very first note the orchestra played, I realised I was working with exceptionally skilled people! I cried my eyes out during the recording of ‘Summer Love’
After winning a national songwriting competition you had the opportunity to work with major record labels but chose to remain an independent artist. Why did you choose to go down this path?
I was still developing as a writer and the A&R guys at the labels wanted me to get a chunky repertoire of songs, quickly! They were sending me to these “hit-maker” writing sessions and they just felt so contrived and stifling and I guess, painful for me. I was asked to sing these punchy pop-by-numbers songs with lyrics like “money makes the world go ‘round, people can be up, people can be down”. I thought I was there based on the merit of my song-writing but I realised that these companies had me “clocked-on” and time was money. The whole experience was confronting but it was defining for me as an artist. It gave me real-life practice in a world that I’d been conditioned to think was the ultimate landing, as an artist, but as it became clear that it wasn’t right for me, it transformed into an opportunity for me to extract myself and go further into the work. It wasn’t an easy adjustment, for the most part I thought I’d blown my big chance and pissed everyone off, but I wouldn’t have made this record or made much sense to myself had I’d signed up.
You raised the money for your debut album through crowd funding. How was that experience and was there ever any anxiety that you might not reach your goal?
Absolutely! I was so terrified of starting the crowd-funding campaign. A friend of mine who is a musician and had crowd-funded before was really persisting that I do it but I kept finding excuses as to why it was a terrible idea. It wasn’t until I came down with a really nasty case of tonsillitis that made me delirious and somewhat detached from reality that I initiated the campaign! As I recovered from the sickness, all of the fear and resistance emerged again but the campaign was receiving so much support that I suppose I was humbled - I let the project become the focus, less about me. Once you get out of the way and let your work speak, it seems to draw its own crowd.
Speaking of that debut album, can you tell us a little about what we can expect to hear when it is released?
The songs dig into the stuff I was ruminating on or wrestling with during a transient period of my life. There are lots of questions, existential consideration, there’s grief, there’s reconciliation- all the subjects that arise when you’re writing under the spell of your own longing. It sounds like…. me and my guitar, a glorious orchestra and a few extra bells and whistles.
What role did music play in your life when you were a child?
Music was the most reliable and unbroken thread in my life. Our mother raised my four siblings and I, and she was just so openly affected by music in our presence, it was beautiful to absorb that. I think it sustained me in navigating my emotions, it provides the whole spectrum to lean into! It was also the realm I felt most expressive and free in, I was a really shy kid and knew how to keep my distance but I felt poised and engaged when I was performing.
Who are the artists who have inspired you, both on the path that lead you where you are now, and when you are creating music today?
As a child and into my teens, I was enamoured with Roy Orbison, Hank Williams, Leonard Cohen - artists from the 50s and 60s who could tell stories and drag the most beautiful melodies out of lamenting songs. My mum introduced me to these artists through her record collection and I guess they were my song-writing mentors.
These days I am still inspired by artists who reach in and offer something from their own interior. Artists that aren’t striving for sonic perfection but are interested in pursuing vulnerability - the mood, the vocal cracks and tempo discrepancies, the moments that are proof of tensions unravelling throughout the process. I think they are the same underlying elements that have inspired me since I was little.
There has been a lot of debate in the last few years on gender equality in the wake of #metoo. What are your thoughts on sexism and gender equality in the music industry?
I have definitely encountered sexism and gender inequality within the music industry - I think every female musician I know has. On all fronts, it is so hard-wired in our collective conditioning - societal, educational, cultural, political - and so prevalently accepted as “fairly typical” behaviour, that it has only been examined, and to some measure, exterminated, in the wake of #metoo. The imbalance of male to female representation within most professional and technical roles across the field, results in a patriarchal atmosphere and I have found it much more convoluted to navigate than necessary.
I think as females we learn to pre-empt and appease misguided male conduct, which often lands us in a situation where we have to explain ourselves, prove ourselves, validate our worth beyond the extent of our appeal to men. One of the songs on my album, ‘Flightless Crow’ delves into the multiple battles of confusion I’ve fought my way through to try and eradicate delusion from a man’s perception of me, and from women in general.
I think it is coming to the light but I think it will take us women to recognise the aspects of ourselves that have been undermined and exploited, and for the bar to be raised, by us. Yes, our supreme gift is inherent and yes we are the indispensable channel of life, AND we are also the highly functional, intelligent, competent, creative and very resilient other half of the machine.
What else is on the agenda for Stephanie Cherote in 2020?
If the world keeps spinning…! Touring, more writing and hopefully more gardening.
‘Summer Love’ is out now. You can download on iTunes and stream on Apple Music, Spotify and Soundcloud.
To keep up with all things Stephanie Cherote you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
