Vanessa Amorosi

Back in 2000, at the age of 18, Vanessa Amorosi became the first Australian female to reach the number 1 spot on the National ARIA chart with a debut album. Back then, absolutely everybody was listening to The Power.

With such an amazing start to her recording career you’d think that we would have seen several follow up albums over the past few years but it wasn’t until May of this year that Vanessa, now 27, released her second album, Somewhere in the Real World.

It certainly hasn’t disappointed. The music showcases her incredible talents and has given us such great songs as Perfect and The Simple Things.

On her website she wrote about the delay between albums.

Through the quiet time – when people must have thought I’d run away and joined the circus – I was doing a lot of production. I love walking into studios. I’ve always been fascinated by the sound and the feel that comes from different technologies. I was fixated on creating the feel records used to have, creating an energy in recording with modern technology, as well as being a singer and songwriter. I was so into it I actually went around every studio in Melbourne and said “Can I just sit here and watch you do your job?”

I spent a good four years doing that and then I started writing for other people. I’m constantly writing songs. I have a catalogue of thousands of songs sitting on my hard-drive. People were asking if I would like to write for other artists, so I started doing writing sessions.

I got to a point, after all that, after doing all that work and doing a lot of studio stuff, where I realised I really missed singing on a stage.

I was singing for hours in the studio, but that’s nothing compared to singing live in front of people. That thirst, that hunger for wanting a crowd and winning them over started to come back. I decided I wasn’t ready yet to put the microphone down.

I started seeking out people who could inspire me, people who could push me to a level that I hadn’t previously been pushed, to give me something to fight for. That’s when I met my manager Ralph Carr, who’s just as feisty and passionate about it as I am. I don’t want a manager who agrees with me. I want someone who challenges me and has different opinions. I said to him,I want to write this new album and I want to be frightened about doing it.

We’ve got great songwriters in Australia and great studios and people I love working with but I’d been working in those studios for the last four years so we decided to work on the new album in America.

I wanted to work with people who didn’t know me, who had no previous expectations, who wouldn’t look at me twice. I was more interested in them, to work with them, to make them want me, and I would do the rest.

I spoke to Vanessa during my morning radio programme on 98.5 Sonshine FM today. You can hear what she had to say by clicking the play button on the audio player at the bottom of this post.

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