INTERVIEW: Jem Cassar-Daley on her music career and headline tour: "It definitely is stepping out of my comfort zone and I've just loved every minute of it."

Australia’s Jem Cassar-Daley is an artist that is very quickly on the way up. After first releasing music in 2021, her warm, honest, vulnerable indie-pop has won her both accolades and an ever increasing fan base.

In 2022 she won NIMA New Talent of the Year and QMA Indigenous Artist of the Year, and last year she won Best Pop and Song of the Year at the Queensland Music Awards, and Song of the Year at the AIR Music Awards for her single ‘King of Disappointment’. The single has become her biggest hit to date, with close to 4 million streams on Spotify alone. Kicking off this year, Cassar-Daley was nominated for Emerging Songwriter of the Year at the APRA Music Awards.

She recently released her new single ‘Kiss Me Like You’re Leaving’, her first new music of the year and her first release since signing with Civilians record label. It takes her more firmly into a pop soundscape with a distinctive guitar through line that provides a background to Cassar-Daley’s simply magical voice, a voice that remains absolutely commanding throughout the song with its nuanced emotion.

The song focuses on a little explored aspect of relationships, the complacency we can slip into as the relationship becomes long term. “You’ve got your ways and I’ve got mine / Somehow we’re always fine / So why do I feel empty like something’s kinda missing? / I need a little more than passing in the hall.”

“‘Kiss Me Like You’re Leaving’ is all about wanting passion and urgency from your partner,” Cassar-Daley says. “Over time, it’s so easy to grow complacent with each other and forget the little things that made you fall in love in the first place. I wrote this song with Msquared (Michael Paynter and Michael DeLorenzis) and U.S based songwriter Jon Nite during a Melbourne to Nashville Songhubs in 2024. This track is high energy and fun to play live, all whilst having desperate and heartfelt lyrics about desperately wanting more from someone. It has very quickly become one of my favourite releases and a song that I am very proud to share with the world!”

To mark the release of her new music, Cassar-Daley has embarked on a tour across the east coast of Australia, which began in Sydney last week and will see her perform in Brisbane, Coutts Crossing and Melbourne. Tickets are on sale now.

With more music to come in 2025, Cassar-Daley is creating some of her best music to date with a growing confidence that makes her art truly electric. An artist you will want on your playlist right now, we recently caught up with Cassar-Daley to chat about her music and tour.

Hi Jem it is so good to talk with you today. Can I just say ‘Kiss Me Like You're Leaving’, before I even listened to the song. I was like, ‘this is the loveliest song title I've heard in a long time’. It’s so lovely, nd it's such a delicious pop song. Tell me where it came from.
I co-wrote this song, and we were discussing the other side of a relationship. It's the complacency that you get over time, and I think it happens in so many relationships. You're incredibly comfortable with each other, and you get along really well, but what is it that's not setting me on fire anymore? And it's wanting that urgency and that passion that you once had. What if I was to leave, would it be any different? Would you be saying my name for the last time, or kissing me for the last time? Is that going to be any different from how it is now? So it's fighting that complacency and bringing things back to when you first started with each other, and the initial fire of a romance.

Oh, it's so nice. It's so lovely, and what I love is it's a genuine, pure pop song.
Honestly, it's so fun. I'm really just getting into my own way of experimenting with different producers, and I adore pop, and I always have, but I feel like the music, production wise and sonically, I've always leant towards super stripped back and acoustic. But it's so fun to play around sonically and add more production and just lean into that a little bit more. And I've been loving that, because it's just what I've always loved to listen to, and I've always wanted to channel that pop princess in myself.

It’s lovely to hear you speak of the ease which you find in a place that quite often people find much harder and exposing, that very stripped back, acoustic voice and a guitar. It's never going to be the same for everyone, but for many of us, where you started would be the most uncomfortable place to be.
Absolutely, and it's almost ironic in a way that because I've grown up with playing super stripped back and acoustic that even playing solo sets for me, where it's just myself and a piano, I'm usually in my element and I feel the most myself. So it definitely is stepping out of my comfort zone to ramp up the production and step into that world. And I've just loved every minute of it, because I'm learning more about myself as an artist the more I release. Pop is the centre of my world, I've grown up loving Gwen Stefani and Fergie, I've grown up absolutely adoring these incredible artists who put themselves out there in such an expressive way. So it felt really cool to release this track.

Speaking of Gwen Stefani, I loved your ‘The Sweet Escape’ cover for Like A Version. I imagine they must be so nerve racking, like ‘I'm going to cover this very pop song by this very iconic singer. What am I going to do with it?’
Oh thank you! 100%, and the thing is, it really brought me back to when I first got an iPod when I was about five. It was Christmas, and I sat down with my dad [country singer Troy Cassar-Daley], who pretty much brought us up on just traditional country music, and my mum's a big 70s pop fan. And so I sat down and I was like, I want Gwen Stefani's entire discography. I want Fergie's The Dutchess album, which had just came out, I want that in the deluxe, uncensored version. And my parents were like, ‘okay’! So when it came to deciding a song for Triple J, it couldn't be anything other than what I danced in my room to on my CD player or my iPod.

I love that so much. It's funny how there's the music that raises you from whatever your parents are singing or playing in the house and playing in the car, and then there’s the music that you lean into yourself, and eventually it comes full circle. The music you put out or lean into becomes an amalgamation of the two.
Absolutely! And where Merle Haggard and Fergie connect I don't know, that'd be a pretty tricky six degrees of separation there! But it's definitely in my tapestry of musical influence.

Maybe that's you. Maybe you're the axis!
That must be me! I'm the centre of the Venn diagram there Jett!

That's gonna be your new elevator pitch! I want to ask you about pop music and, particularly in Australia, the room is very narrow, and particularly because women are the ones producing and putting out a lot of it. I feel like your work consistently is proving the space for nuance. I'm very curious to know what excites you most about where pop music in Australia is heading, particularly with young female artists.
It really excites me. Young female artists are really just having a moment, and always have, if you look back, even like Britney Spears absolutely slaying the game for so long. I think that women are really at the forefront of experimenting with new sounds, and it's exciting. Especially with how people are releasing music these days, an album can kind of be the the last thought after a few singles. You can just release what you like and what is inspiring you. Genres are having less of a hold on artists these days, and they're less restricting. And I think it's the same with your taste, you like what you like, and that's just it. You can just lean into whatever you're feeling. And that's exciting, it's exciting to not have as many limits with you are this sort of artist, or you're that sort of artist. You can be everything you want to be, and that's an exciting time.

As you just mentioned, you grew up surrounded by music, but as a songwriter and an artist in your own right, how have you gone about carving your own identity in an industry where I imagine a lot of expectation is on your legacy?
It took me some time, especially when it came to first releasing my music back in 2021, because I had just come off a few years of being on the road with my dad. That was really awesome to get that experience, we did about 75 shows in the year, so instead of going to uni, my parents were like, ‘Why don't you just go on the road and see if you like performing?’ So I did, and I absolutely adored it from there on. I opened all of dad’s shows solo, and had that experience to work on my stage performance skills and learn how to get comfortable around touring. It was an awesome experience, but it really made me nervous when it came to what am I going to release, and who am I as an artist? Because for so long I've been inspired by my dad, and I've seen his career my entire life, and that's been my yardstick. It was so exciting to start releasing my own music and then learning as I went, taking those bits that I'd learnt from my dad, but also making my own connections and forging my own path in the industry, and that's led me to where I am now. I've so much admiration for what my dad does and the legacy that he's created, but I think it's awesome that I've learned more about myself as an artist and who I am. Indie pop and the stuff that I've listened to has really influenced the music that I make today.

At first it was really nerve wracking, I won't lie, I was having a little bit of an identity crisis there for a while, which I'm sure is pretty normal in that regard. It took me a while to get comfortable with the idea of this is who I am and just be unapologetic for for it.

Oh, I love that. And my heart goes out to people in the industry where there's a familial tie. It actually makes it so much harder
Absolutely, but it's so awesome because I don't think I would be doing the music that I'm making today without the support from my family being like ‘just do it’. I'm just so, so glad that I've had the the support of my parents, just being like, go on the road, play some music, see if you like it. You can go to uni later if you're not into performing, but just give it a go. I'm so grateful for that.

You are embarking on a beautiful headline tour this month which is very exciting. Apart from your dad, you have shared the stage with some of Women In Pop's favourite ladies like Thelma Plum, Tina Arena, Jess Mauboy, and I'm very curious, have any of those experiences shaped the way you approach your own shows now?
100%, I think that's the beauty of going on the road with people you've looked up to for the longest time, is actually seeing how it all works out behind the scenes, and then just watching the performance from the side of the stage and being like, ‘oh my god, this is absolutely blowing my mind’. I've grown up with Thelma’s music, when I was a teenager I would just absolutely have her on repeat 24/7, so that was really surreal. And that was a time where I had only just started releasing my own music, so she really, really gave me an awesome opportunity there to just go and show myself. It was incredible. I still think about her set and her stage presence and it's inspired me to this day.

Tina Arena, that blew my mind. Once again, it's someone who has really been one of the most influential women in Australia, and even the world when it comes to it, her singing is just absolutely insane. You always take something away from going on the road, especially women who support other young women. I think that's something that I will always strive to do when it comes to performing and just the industry in general. Because there are so many challenges that we face with representation and I think just having a little bit more of that platform and that opportunity, I was so grateful

100% and I couldn't agree more. You have had a exceptional run of accolades and all kinds of exciting stuff the last few years, but you have said it's just the beginning, and now we have this slick pop sound coming in. I'm very curious, before I leave you, what's exciting for you about what's coming next? What's on the horizon?
Lots of new music on the horizon, lots of exciting shows, and definitely a new era for myself and one that I'm absolutely stoked to be stepping into. Honestly, playing shows, it's just so much fun. I get so much enjoyment out of it. Playing with the band on stage, working on our shows, that brings me a ridiculous amount of joy. I'm still writing a lot, which is something I do every single day, there's lots of new, exciting music to come, so I’m very, very excited.

‘Kiss Me Like You’re Leaving’ is out now via Civilians. You can download and stream here.
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KISS ME LIKE YOU’RE LEAVING TOUR
June 21 – The Brightside – Brisbane
June 22 – Coronation Hall – Coutts Crossing
June 28 – Northcote Social Club – Melbourne