Images: Michelle Pitiris
Published: 8 April 2026

Mornington Peninsula-based singer-songwriter Tig releases her new single ‘Morning Pages’ this Thursday, but today the song premieres exclusively on Women In Pop.

Tig’s first music since 2024, it comes after she was awarded the prestigious Vanda & Young Top 10 Global Emerging Songwriter Prize for an unreleased track earlier this year. Produced by Holy Holy's Oscar Dawson the song is an achingly beautiful piano ballad that builds with intensity throughout before coming to a gentle close.

Tig’s vocal is brimming with doubt, frustration and resignation, with a gorgeous husky undertone, as she sings of her struggle against perfectionism and making the creation of music fun again: ‘I came with the best of intentions / Let the tools become the weapons / The last word always contentious.’

On the inspiration behind the song, Tig says: “There were a multitude of things that inspired this song, but in particular, I’ve been lucky enough to work with Ainslie Wills in a mentoring capacity over the past few years, and in one of our sessions we got chatting about writer's block. I was working to an external deadline on some new material, which was a brand new experience for me, and I was finding it so hard to create with the added pressure of the deadline.”

“I mentioned the practice of ‘morning pages’ which was coined in the immensely popular creative self-help book called The Artists Way. It’s something I see pop up everywhere, and so many artists I know swear by this morning pages practice being the thing that unlocks them and leads to endless inspiration.”

“I have never had a great affinity with it if I’m honest, and find it brings out the meanest parts of me first thing in the morning when I’m sleepy and hungry. But I felt like I would be kicked out the metaphorical artists club if I couldn’t figure it out and I’ve honestly never heard a bad word spoken about them.”

“So I admitted to Ainslie, I wasn’t doing the ‘pages’ and I knew that I should be.”

“Ainslie being the wise and wonderful mentor that she is, gently reminded me that music is supposed to be FUN, and you get to choose what’s right for you - so if you’re saying 'I should…' then in fact probably you 'should not' and instead find something else that brings joy back into your practice.”

“So I took the liberty of deleting ‘morning pages’ from my life and wrote this song shortly afterwards. It honestly still feels so taboo that I almost called the track something else so no one would ever know, but after its first debut live on stage, a dear friend in the audience said I simply must call it ‘Morning Pages’. Hopefully it somehow brings me closer to some other closet morning pages-haters.”

On the recording process, Tig adds:

“I am an overthinking perfectionist, sometimes to my detriment, which is in part what this song is exploring thematically. In an ironic twist of fate however, the vocals for this song were recorded in one take at the end of a huge day in the studio. I was feeling energised and in the zone after finishing the vocals on some other songs, and decided to tackle ‘Morning Pages’ before finishing the day.”

“Initially intended to be a guide take, after I sang the final line, Oscar and I both looked at each other and just said ‘well I think we got that’. As much as my inner perfectionist would have loved to critique and add extra takes just to be safe, it feels kind of magic and like the perfect medicine that we just let this on be exactly as it is. If you listen carefully, you’ll also hear some organic, secret sounds from my home studio buried within the track - they’re little artifacts that survived from the demo phase through to the finished recording in another act of realness/anti-perfectionism.”

“There is a lyric in the song about who gets ‘the last word’, referring to my creative intuition vs my inner critic; and finishing the song in this way feels like at least for this round my intuition came out on top.”

Tig’s music is lush, mesmerising and captivating. Not conforming to any genre, it is best described as intimate, a gentle mix of pop and indie with a strong foundation of piano. It also has an almost indescribable pull on your heart, with Tig able to hit just the right emotional note through her melodies, vocal and lyrics, quickly and expertly drawing you right into the heart of her songs. ‘Morning Pages’ is no different and is arguably a creative high in her developing career. Undoubtedly one of Australia’s greatest up and coming songwriters, Tig is an artist you will soon have on repeat.

On general release from Thursday 9 April , listen to ‘Morning Pages’ right now below.

‘Morning Pages will be released on 9 April via AWAL. You can download and stream here.
Follow Tig on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube.