INTERVIEW: Australia’s merci, mercy on her debut album 'Don’t Take It to Heart': “I’d rather love hard than not love at all”

Words: Emma Driver
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Minori Ueda
Published: 29 August 2025

Dualities and contradictions are an essential part of the music of Australian singer merci, mercy (Mercedes Thorne). Merci is young but wise. She struggles with self-worth but produces music that is stunningly good. She wrestles with difficult feelings but her sense of humour can’t be repressed. On her debut album Don’t Take It to Heart, she embraces contradictions and makes them whole.

It’s been seven years since merci first made herself known via Triple J’s Unearthed, uploading a song called ‘Be’, and her rise has been unstoppable ever since. With three EPs, and acclaimed singles like ‘Fucked Myself Up’ and ‘Into You’ attracting millions of streams each, she’s now ready for her first full collection – a rich selection of fresh and varied indie pop, anchored by merci’s personal way of speaking straight into the hearts of her audience, no filter required.

Don’t Take It to Heart starts strong: ‘Inside Out’, the album’s most recent single, throws down the humour right away as merci has a dig at herself. “I got hobbies / Like being super lonely”, she tells us, while other fun pastimes include “laughing at myself”. She sings like she’s starting up a conversation, with the barest hint of a backing track, her voice the main drawcard. The space fills in as the track gets moving, guitar mirroring backing vocals, a hint of distortion in the electro-drum palette giving a sense of the inner churning of “turning inside out”.

Demons cut loose in ‘Cigarettes in the Dark’, a track that races like a fast-beating heart. Two minutes is all it takes to make its point, its chorus like a chant, driving towards the edge of collapse: “So I take, take, take / Till it all falls apart.” Messy thoughts continue in ‘Unrecognisable’, and the feel goes closer to a disco – string backing, airier drums, everything in motion (“You can’t make a mind like mine still”). Later, ‘Angel’ gives a darker, heavier twist to the theme, though with a swinging beat that lifts the song above the darkness: “I’m a sad bad bitch / Take out the sad / Take out the bad”, merci sings. Her “screws are loose”, which feels like “bad news”, but it’s not crushing – you get the feeling that self-knowledge will save her, however sad and bad she might feel.

‘Hold on You’ sidesteps closer to 90s dance, with a piano riff that could be sped up and sampled by a club DJ. The bass and lyrical repetition bring the hypnotic enchantment to life: “He’s got a hold on you” is the repeated line. It’s another brief track, written when merci was just a teenager. “I wrote ‘Hold on You’ when I was sixteen years old in the back of my mum’s car,” merci said on its single release. “It was about a boy who I had feelings for but so did every other girl … Liking him was like looking into the sun.” If you’ve ever been blinded by a hopeless fascination with someone you can’t have, this will ring true.

Complications run through the album, and merci doesn’t shy away from them as she turns over people, places and feelings, like an archaeologist looking for evidence of past lives. Even when love comes knocking, she is honest about how tricky it can be. “Cave in and love me again”, she pleads in ‘The Word Love’, admitting to the “lipstick stains, wasted nights” and “the mess inside of my head”. Building into the chorus, the song still resists adding too much drama to the potential love story, instead keeping a sense of bright hopefulness, with a simple tune sung mostly on one note that carries the chorus. ‘Shrine’ then looks at the uncomfortable feelings that go hand in hand with love, but merci delivers them with an eye-roll at herself, and a shake of her head: “Like a fungus in my brain / You make me wanna go insane”, she sings. Perky acoustic guitar tones punctuate the track, so we know this won’t be a descent into angst.

Then ‘One of a Kind’ flips the love story: it’s possibly the best example on the album of merci’s ability to marry a distressing experience with humour to keep it all in perspective. But make no mistake, there’s anger too: “I must be one of a kind / Because you chose me to take a light from / Lucky me,” she sings, sarcasm intact. Then, in case we thought this might crush her spirit, here comes the sweetly delivered kick: “I hope you see me on TV / And it gives you a heart attack and you die.” It’s a dream of well-earned revenge you can dance to, and lyrics you can shout at the top of your lungs. Along with ‘One of a Kind’, ‘I Bet She’s Really Nice’ and ‘Jealousy’ form a satisfying trio of songs with attitude that say good riddance to bad love.

Then ‘Port Royal (A Love Story)’ closes the album, with a simple arrangement – delicately plucked guitar, lightly accented piano, analogue crackles – and a multifaceted view of a happier love.

Don’t Take It to Heart is a showcase of the many sides of merci, mercy. It’s an album about making sense of seemingly simple things, of how you can struggle and still prevail over bad situations, and how not even the simplest things are ever really simple. She’s right: grabbing onto complexity – whether in music, or in our own psychological states – is one way to find a deeper truth. And if you do take these songs to heart, your heart will thank you for it.

Just before Don’t Take It to Heart was unleashed on the world, merci sat down with Jett Tattersall to unpack her long-awaited album debut.

Don’t Take It to Heart is a beast. How are you feeling to have it all together and almost in the ears of people?

I’ve actually been going through it mentally, because that’s what I do when something big happens. I go all crazy in my head, because it’s nerve-racking to put out an album and hear what people think about it. The thing that I struggle with the most is feedback on songs. After you’ve put all this effort into writing a song that’s sometimes really personal, people can be like, “Oh, it’s missing something”, or “It’s not quite right.” And I’m like, “Mmm, it’s pretty perfect, but OK …” [laughs]

Yeah, that’s just so rude! You’ve said that, with this album, you’re feeling like a “true artist” now. Was there a particular moment in this process when you realised that?

I think it was just because I experimented more and I wasn’t so hard on myself. Whenever I’m writing lyrics, I’ll always make myself feel bad if something’s too simple or plain or boring. I always want it to be unique and fun and interesting. So I feel like this time I was like, “Merci, it’s good. It’s awesome. When things are simple, people like them.”

I’m also terrible at talking. That’s why I write songs. [laughs]

There’s some cleaner pop sounds from you on this album, and of course quite introspective moments as well. Was that duality something you were targeting when putting the album together?

To be honest, I just go into the studio and write. I never want to put myself in a box, because once I do, then I start thinking too much, and then nothing comes out. So I’m just trying to go in there and be like, “Today I’m writing about how I didn’t want to get out of bed today, and that’s what I’m doing. No one’s gonna stop me. That’s just what’s happening.”

Have you felt like you’ve been put into a box in your career so far? Or have you possibly put yourself into a box?

I think at the start of my career, I really didn’t want to be a “pop girly”, because at the time, it was very much taboo to be pop. Indie girls were the new thing, so I really hated that people would put me in the box of being “pop”, even though that’s not what I wanted to do. But then I ended up falling back in love with pop and realised that it’s actually the best. So I’m gonna do it. [laughs]

Yeah, we all go through that stage, and then you go, “Hold on – I’ve gotten over myself.” There’s a lot of questions about self-worth through the album, and that idea of wanting people to read you properly. Do you feel that that’s its emotional core?

Oh, definitely, because I struggle with self-worth so much. I feel like every day I wake up and there’s a new thing I hate about myself – and over the stupidest things. Like, “I didn’t make a good dish last night, which I cooked for my roommate – it tasted terrible. So now I’m just a terrible human being.” [laughs] But then obviously there’s the title Don’t Take It to Heart. So it’s like, “Merci, OK, you’re a good cook. It was just one time. Don’t take it to heart.”

You tackle this notion with a lot of humour as well. Has that always been a sort of self-preservation tool to deal with your anxiety?

Oh, yeah, a hundred per cent. I’m always cracking jokes about myself, 24/7, but I like that about myself, because I get to make my sister laugh, and she’s my best friend. So I’m glad that my mental health issues made me funny so I could make her laugh, you know?

I imagine in the reactions to your music, you must get a lot of people going, “Oh shit, me too …”

Definitely. But it’s really sad, because I’ll sometimes get messages from people who really aren’t doing well, and I don’t know what to say, and I don’t want to say the wrong thing, because I could impact that in a bad way. I’m like, “My songs couldn’t help – that sucks. But I hope if you keep on listening to them, they might make you feel better.”

You once said also that you can be equally a “bad bitch” and deeply emotional. Which songs do you feel on this record best capture that duality?

I’d have to say ‘Shrine’. I feel like that song really captures who I am as a person, because I love so hard, even if it’s not right for me. But I’d rather love hard than not love at all.

I want to go back a little bit. I know that you’ve been making songs forever, but how do you feel that you’ve evolved from your initial releases to this gorgeous collection? Where how do you feel you’ve grown, as an artist and a person?

I don’t think I’ve grown as a person that much. Other people might beg to differ, but I just can’t see that I’ve grown much! But if I had to say something, I’d probably say that just the ability to be able to say no in a writing session. If I don’t like how my voice sounds, instead of just dreading when the song comes out, I’ll just be like, “No, I really don’t like the way my voice sounds in that section.” And then [the studio team will say], “OK, well let’s just re-sing it. It’s fine.” I thought the world was gonna end because I said something. So I think I’ve evolved in that way.

I guess the dream of being a solo artist comes with a barrage of people telling you what your sound and your songs should be like. How have you navigated the industry, particularly as someone who has struggles with self-worth and anxiety?

I don’t know. I feel like it’s actually been quite a lonely experience. I don’t really have many friends who are in the same position that I’m in – except I’ve got the most incredible family known to mankind, so I feel like they’ve really helped me not get an ego, that’s for sure. They always check on me to make sure I’m OK. They’re definitely always saying stuff that annoys me [laughs]. But, you know, they’re not in the industry.

Can you hear a different confidence these days in the way you put together a song and know how you want it to sound?

Yeah. I had a week writing with [producer and co-writer] Chris Collins, who’s my most favourite. I love him so much. I used to be so scared to say a lyric – “Oh, it’s basic”, or “It’s shit” – but now I just will say all lyrics that have popped in my head, and I just write them down, and then I’ll say them to Chris, and he’s like, “That’s fucking great. Why didn’t you tell me about that before?”

So do you have a favourite lyric on the album? You can say, “All of them” – I don’t mind.

There’s a line in the song ‘One of a Kind’ which I really like: “Your heart’s on ‘Don’t Disturb’”. And that’s why people are just feeling shit in the world, because no one wants to interact with each other.

You’ve always been known for your unfiltered, comedic, heartbreaking honesty. Do you think that pop music or indie pop has the responsibility to show these human experiences – the joy and the sadness? Or is it just where your compass is pointing on the day that you’re writing?

I would say that pop music does have the responsibility to talk about hard things, because it makes somebody who wouldn’t talk about [something] before actually want to talk about it, because they’re exposed to it.

Great answer. And lastly, if there is one song on the album that will be a shock to hear an audience singing back at you, what is it?

‘One of a Kind’. One hundred per cent.

merci, mercy’s debut album Don’t Take It to Heart is out now via Mushroom Music. You can buy, download and stream here.
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