I always felt a little different growing up.
I was always like a super spiritual kid and I never
quite felt like I was like everybody else, I always
went off doing my own thing.
I'd never kind of follow everybody with whatever
they were doing.
I didn't really get involved in the regular
girly chats that the girls would be interested in.
I wouldn't care about all that stuff.
I was into music and I would talk to God all the time.
I just was a bit weird.
And so music helped me to kind of let my feelings
out when other people my own age wouldn't be able
to quite understand what I was tryin' to talk about
at that age.
With any types of problems that I had growing up
music always helped me to talk that out and so it
made me feel better for sure.
Um my mom was my first manager and she really
believed in my right from the beginning and so did my dad.
So they were really behind me so my mom would take me
around to record companies.
I'd go there with my little keyboard.
It was just really funny.
People always had an excuse as to why they
couldn't stick their neck out for me and try to give
me a break.
They would sometimes say to me "You need to
straighten your hair" "You need to lose weight"
"You need to sing more pop" "You need to sing less
urban or less soulfully" Or, then on the other side
of spectrum I'd go in and they'd say "You're too
pretty, you need to go on TV first and then you can
get a break" It just was really strange growing up
experiencing those things because, I guess cause I
was a bit different.
Which, most people are a bit different,
most artists are a bit different, that's why we
end up as artists.
And people just, because you're different,
they feel uncomfortable and they don't know how
to...what to do with you.
That took its toll on me from a young age and by
the time I was about eighteen I felt like
"I don't think I can do it so I'm just gonna be a
songwriter and stay behind the scenes"
I was in my bedroom figuring out how I was gonna put my
life back together.
I had the keyboard in front of me and I started
to just play some chords and I had, I had just
poured out my heart on the keys and I started writing
"Call On Me" So as I was writing that, it was me
talking to God, asking God "why you would put
something in my heart and soul.
For me to want to do something so bad that
wasn't meant for me" And what I realized at that
time was the fact that I knew that I was the only
one that could get myself out of it.
It wasn't God that was gonna just pluck me out
and be like "Okay well here's you're, like
blessing" It doesn't really work that way.
It's more that you have to pull yourself up out
of a situation.
After I wrote it I felt like "Man I don't know if
anyone can sing this the way that I sing it"
So I sent it out to a bunch of people and this one guy,
P Money, sent me a production back and I
played it in my car and I started crying and I knew
that it was a bit special.
And I ended up seeing an indie label in Australia
and getting myself a little deal and I thought
"Okay well I'm gonna give this one last shot and see
what happens" and then basically they believed in me.
It started to pick up slowly and some stuff was
happening online and Perez Hilton was tweeting about
it and a bunch of people were talking about it
but it it wasn't until the label got Ryan to do the
remix that everything just went from here to like this...
♪ Just call on me love ♪
♪ On me-e-e ♪
♪ Call on me ♪
♪ Just call on me ♪
♪ Call on me ♪
♪ Just call on me ♪
♪ ♪
So there were three music videos for "Call On Me"
in the original some guy guys in the end and it was just
too much and I just felt like "No this is so
depressing and this is not what this song's about and
it doesn't represent me at all" So I went and shot a
music video with my friends.
So I got my own money and I paid for it and we
basically went through this place called Kiama
and we just did a whole bunch of shots.
I grew up fishing with my dad there so I was...it
kind of like made sense for me to go back to where
I began and shoot a video there and I was super
stoked about that.
But then when Ryan's version blew up we needed
some type of backdrop for that version.
So we did a new video in LA and we got a bunch of
dancers in there and we did this levitating scene
which was really cool, which I've now used as
part of my show sometimes.
But yeah I guess three music videos for one song,
the fun never stops and it just keeps going on so
yeah it's been good so far.