Hi, I'm Montaigne and I'm going Back to School with Student Edge.
What were you like as a teenager?
That's a loaded question, my friend.
It is a very loaded question.
I changed, you know, as a 13-year-old.
I think I was, like, a very excited, excitable young girl who's like really into the Jonas
Brothers and, like, Disney, and I wanted to be a singer.
That's what I wanted to be.
Of course, everyone's like, "That's nice, Jess."
And then when I got to like 15, 16, I became, like, pretty diligent.
I was a really studious student.
Well, actually, that was like 14, 15.
And then when I hit 15, 16 I was the worst.
I was just the worst.
I don't know.
I was like really sarcastic in a probably not good way, and wasn't diligent at all
with my school work.
Just sort of mucked around a little bit.
Not to the extent that the teachers all hated me, but to the extent that I just did not
perform as well-- as opposed to being like an 'A' student, I was a 'B' student.
And just didn't work super hard.
And then Year 11 and 12, I had like this weird, almost like aesthetic period, where I was
just like, "I'm just going to be in the library; I'm just going to study.
I'm going to smash my HSC."
I went vegan.
I was doing a bit of sport.
I was just mostly studying.
I wasn't actually enjoying my life.
Well, let's break it down, because there's a lot to unpack there.
Let's go back to 13, quickly.
So you said, the music you were listening to was kind of the Jonas Brothers.
When you sort of had that passion, like, "Oh, I want to get into music,"
did you see yourself as becoming like a Jonas Sister?
Like a pop singer.
I think I grew up listening to pop music and especially Christina Aguilera, Delta Goodrem,
Britney Spears; like, really strong female vocalists, you know?
But I was always writing my own songs.
And that's what I was into when I was 13, 14.
Mostly pop music.
But also, I grew up, my dad always used to play a lot of '70s to '90s hip hop, R&B, soul,
pop music and rock as well.
He loved Queen and Bowie and Savage Garden and like Depeche Mode and LL Cool J and, just
like a motley crew of artists.
Motley Crue?
Motley Crue!
Not Motley Crue.
My dad's not into any metal or heavy music.
I just grew up with all those influences as well as what I was hearing on the radio.
So that was me at 13.
I think, like, yeah the songs I was writing were just like, almost, sassy Lily Allen pop
songs, kind of thing.
Well look, with all this exploring going on and your kind of interest in music, did that
feed into you losing a bit of interest in school at 16?
Is there a connection here between your passion for music increasing and your interest in
school maybe dropping off a bit?
I don't think so.
I think my interest in school dropping off when I was 15 or 16 was just like, I was emotionally
embroiled in this relationship with this girl.
She was my best friend, but I like developed a crush on her.
So I just like got lost in that.
I did not pay attention and wanted to impress her and hang out with her all the time, kind
of thing.
That sort of led me to- Oh and also Tumblr.
That was the year that the Deathly Hallows Part 2, like the final Harry Potter movie
came out.
So everything was coming to a head.
My Harry Potter fever was like back and raring.
I was super into that and Harry Potter, and Tumblr's such a cesspool for all these things.
Like, everything's there.
You can get stuck in that site forever.
And I still use it.
There's still Harry Potter fan fiction out there that I've written; there's still Kingdom
Hearts music videos that I cut together when I was 13, which are terrible-
Under your name?
Or is it sort of roaming the internet?
Under pseudonyms.
It's out there.
You gotta find it. But it's there.
That's why my 15, 16 period was a bit- I just dropped everything because I was like addicted
to Tumblr and addicted to this person.
And I was just focusing on that.
I was still writing songs around that time.
But I think more so in the aftermath.
It was funny.
It was really, that, we had this close friendship group which just shattered because I was being
an idiot.
I was just really jealous- But that group sort of like, final day was the last
day of that year of school.
We didn't talk to each other after that.
Just like, almost immediately, like a monastic change for me.
I'm gonna switch everything up.
It was like a big new year's resolution, but like I actually stuck to it.
And did that stuff kind of feed into the music as well?
Oh, hell yeah.
I wrote "I'm a Fantastic Wreck" during that time.
Like all these songs, just like super emo and introspective.
I think I just like matured, slightly, as a person and learnt from that.
So even though you were kind of on that path, you still didn't think it was a viable career.
Yeah, well my parents were still like, "You're still gonna go to university.
You're still gonna get an education."
Which I found really important.
Like, that's the thing as well.
All my academic diligence is born out of internal motivation.
Like, I'm just one) a competitive person, two) chronic over-achiever, three) have a
borderline pathological desire or impulse to impress people.
So that just made me do well at school and like really push myself, and want to go to
university.
To do what?
What was the plan?
Well, I did go to university for a semester and a half, and I did a Bachelor of Arts and
Languages at Sydney University.
And I studied French and Linguistics, and I had studied German and Philosophy as well but dropped
down to part-time because it was too hard balancing that and working and doing music.
And then eventually just dropped out because I was like, "Music's...
I like doing the music thing only and just like working and whatever."
I think I'll go back one day, when I'm less busy doing this.
Sure.
I think I just kind of knew I had something special and good.
So I just trusted that instinct and just left uni and just devoted myself to doing music.
How do you tell your parents that?
Oh God, no.
Because this is pre-Aria, pre-album.
How do you make that case to your folks?
Oh, my parents hated me.
There was a period where we just didn't like talk for a year.
Because they thought I was throwing my life away.
Like, "Oh, you can't just do music.
Like, you need to blah blah blah, do other stuff."
Yeah, they didn't take it well.
Are they more comfortable with it now?
Oh, hell yeah.
They're so happy.
So, vindicated.
I think my mum and dad would still say like, "We'd like for you to be at uni."
Every now and again my mum will be like, "Oh, you know, you can do long-distance education," but I'm
just like, that's not where my head's at right now.
Like, I want to one day, but just not right now.