It has been 10 years since Vanessa Amorosi’s last album but the Australian singer-songwriter is back with a vengeance. Back to Love, her fifth studio album, is released this week, and the singer says she has three records “ready to go”.
“I don’t want to stop,” says Amorosi. “I have so much, I want to get it out there now. There’s going to be a lot of stuff going on next year and the year after.”
Another thing firmly in her sights is the Eurovision Song Contest. It was announced yesterday the singer will take part in Eurovision — Australia Decides 2020, the SBS contest to select the Australian representative at the event in Rotterdam next year. “To have the opportunity to sing one of my songs on a huge international stage representing Australia would be unforgettable,” she says.
The title of her latest release is telling: Back to Love represents Amorosi’s return to her affection for pop music. The singer started performing at weddings and in restaurants as a teenager, and her career began in 1999 when she launched her debut single, Have a Look.
But her star rose at the Sydney 2000 Olympics, where she performed Heroes Live Forever at the opening ceremony. The tune, beamed into millions of homes around the world, made her an international name. She performed Absolutely Everybody at the closing ceremony.
By 2011, though, she yearned for change. She moved to Los Angeles and pursued her interest in gospel music. “I actually landed the opportunity to work in doing gospel arrangements and counter melodies. And so I thought I’m just going to go over there and dabble in that for 12 months and see if that lights a fire for me. When I stepped into that whole world, basically 12 months was not even touching the surface.”
She began to feel “a little burned out” and found it difficult to write pop songs. An album called V was shelved after the release of two tracks.
She says working behind the scenes reignited the creative fires and she fell back in love with different styles of music.
It was during this time she met Dave Stewart, one-half of the classic duo Eurythmics with Annie Lennox. Stewart, who rates the Australian’s five-octave range voice as among the best in the world, went on to mentor Amorosi. He further encouraged her passion for gospel music and arrangements, and she became a featured artist at his gigs, including at the Beatles’ 50th anniversary concert he organised in 2014.
He also produced an online documentary featuring Amorosi for the German Durch die Nacht series. The gigs included singing one of Stewart’s iconic songs Sisters Are Doin’ it for Themselves. He wrote it with Lennox.
Amorosi met mixed-martial arts instructor Rod Busby and they married in 2017. She gave birth to a son, Killian, now 3, and the couple operates a gym in Los Angeles.
A determined Amorosi eventually was back creating pop music and she returned to Australia early this year to promote and perform her music. Back to Love is a pop album that’s slick and modern rather than raw, with what she describes as different inflections to earlier albums. She puts it down to changing digital sounds in production.
“When I first started in 1999, those sounds were just completely new and different, and now sounds are so more developed and have so much more range.”
She says contemporary pop is being influenced more by diverse styles of music. “A lot of people feel like hip-hop is an inflection with what’s happened with pop music these days. But actually, to be honest, country now is really affecting pop music.”
Two tracks, Heavy Lies the Head and Hello Me, were released as promotions and they are among the album’s best. In Heavy Lies the Head, she begins with a deeper, dark timbre before heading upward to a powerful chorus.
Hello Me is wistful and sad yet empowering. It’s about breaking free of a stale relationship, but it could be about facing up to a personal challenge.
There are other great songs. In Lessons of Love you get a taste of the Amorosi of old as she, to use her own words, “explodes” into the chorus. “Lessons of Love was going to be the first single, and then just when it came to releasing, I changed my mind,” she says.
The piano at the start of Run beats out a catchy rhythm before an overlaid electric beat kicks in, something she loves. “That track just fell out of the sky, really,” she says, adding that the melody “sprung into my head” while waiting for an Uber after a recording session. As for that electric beat: “I’m a huge fan of electro-trance stuff that has no lyrics whatsoever and it’s just sound. I love that stuff.”
In Personal, she sings soft and high. “Yeah, it’s totally different. Normally when I’m writing songs I’ll tend to sing like that. It’s just a soft approach, it’s just to sketch the melody. That song just felt so great like that, to sing it another way just didn’t feel right. It felt too forced.”
There’s also the stirring chorus in The Truth Will Set You Free, about unreciprocated love.
She says all eleven tracks can be sung acoustically with minimal backing. She says she wants to produce an album of acoustic tracks. “Definitely in the future I would love to do a record that’s just completely stripped back with just a vocal and one instrument. That would be really fabulous.”
Old acoustic performances: This is Who I am : Perfect : Amazing Grace : Tent by the Sea
In Back to Love she works with Swedish songwriter Aleena Gibson and musician, sound engineer and songwriter Trevor Muzzy and other writers “because I have such a great chemistry with them in the studio”.
With the album released, Amorosi is readying for a spate of concerts, including one on Saturday in Sydney, followed by Brisbane and Melbourne alongside John Farnham, James Reyne and close friend Jon Stevens. She also wants to take the album overseas to Europe, where she also has performed extensively.
That includes Germany, a country where Amorosi enjoys a long standing connection, having released her second album Change there in 2002. “It was really successful for me, like all through that European area. I had a really wonderful time and they treated me amazingly.
“I got to do a lot of tours and shows throughout there. A lot of people didn’t know that, for a good five to six years, all I did was travel through Europe, touring and (performing) shows and it was an incredible experience. I was very blessed. Definitely with this new record, the plan is to go back.”
The rock era remains a passion – Jimi Hendrix, Etta James, Stevie Wonder, and The Doors have been part of her journey, and of course Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin.
She has toured with Savage Garden, been on the road with Joe Cocker, Bryan Adams, Rob Thomas and OneRepublic. “As a musician, I’ve been really, really lucky to have the education like watching these big people and being able to ask them questions.”
Much has changed since Amorosi launched her debut single in 1999. There was no iPhones, iPods and social media. The Melbourne singer has taken particularly to Facebook and Instagram and sees social media as a positive for promoting artists and for income. “I think it (social media) has made it way easier, way easier and then it gives you a much better connection with your audience,” she says. “So I actually really enjoy that. I love the fact that’s actually happened. It’s like a direct connection.”
She’s happy deriving income from streaming platforms such as Apple Music and Spotify. “I love the fact that now it’s also opened up the world of all different types of music to people.”
Her ambition is modest, to keep making records and stay in the music industry. “I grew up in a musical family and I know how tough it is to survive in the music industry, especially with a family,” she says. “To be able to exist in this world for 20 years is a real blessing and to be able to continue doing this for another 20 years would be fabulous … just to reminisce with my crowd with the old tracks and then go into the new.”
Published in The Australian newspaper, November 19, 2019