Interview:
Sarah Blasko
Image Credit: Mclean Stephenson
Interview:
Sarah Blasko
Australian singer-songwriter Sarah Blasko is set to embark on a UK tour in July, bringing her new album, “I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain,” to European audiences. Known for her introspective sound, Sarah’s latest work delves into deeply personal territory. We caught up with her to discuss the album’s themes, her live shows, and her unique creative process.
For the uninitiated, how would you describe your music in less than five words?
Sarah Blasko: “um melancholic. I would suggest … um … I have this … I don’t … I’m not very good at being succinct … long-winded … I’m a long-winded person, but my songs are actually quite short, um yeah my melancholic is the first thing that springs to mind. I mean, depressing (laughs), so like real party music!“
Your new album, “I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain,” feels very personal and reflective. Is that a fair description?
Sarah Blasko: “It’s absolutely true. I do feel when I was writing it that my defences were well and truly down and I felt very much at a loss as to how to kind of move forward with my life. There’s a real honesty and a real rawness due to that.” She noted writing mostly during the pandemic, which “added to this sort of feeling of being nostalgic or reflective.”
On the album’s themes, you spoke about the past and confronting certain things.
Sarah Blasko: “At this point in my life there was a feeling of the past being this huge. I was showing a friend images for the album cover, photos where someone gets their photo taken on a blank wall. Just this idea of the past being becoming a bit larger than life. And till the past sort of to me had become almost like this huge monster. And then you suddenly realise wait a minute, it’s not, and I have to deal with these things and kind of forgive yourself for certain things. I probably hadn’t stopped and really contemplated quite a number of things in my life for a while. A friend passing away, a friendship ending, and a very tumultuous time in my 20s that I hadn’t really forgiven myself for.”
Was the process of creating this album therapeutic for you?
Sarah Blasko: “Music is always that way of processing things. And I do think that there is a power in kind of speaking these things. And for me, it allows as soon as I sort of speak them out I guess It sort of in a way allows them to dissolve for me to let go. It does feel like it’s lightening the load essentially.”
How collaborative was the process of bringing these songs to life in the studio?
Sarah Blasko: “With this album, I played with people that I’ve played music with for a long time and that I really trust. And so for me, I was very happy to completely collaborate on how we were going to make these songs sound. I gave them references of the kinds of albums that I felt that this record kind of sat alongside. I actually like a lot of records that keep you in a very similar feeling and it kind of simmers in this way that I think can be just as effective or moving or important as records that take you in lots of different directions.”
There’s a real feeling of cohesion across it. It feels like more of a conjoined narrative throughout it rather than independent tracks. Was that intentional or did it just roll out that way as it came to life?
Sarah Blasko: “No, I don’t think it was intentional. It kind of rolled out that way. At a certain point once I’d finished the songs, I kind of panicked because I was like, ‘Oh, they don’t sound different enough from each other,’ but that’s where I kind of sought comfort in the fact that no, I actually like albums like that. I think that eventually when you work on the track list, there’s a narrative sort of thread.”
Image Credit: Mauro Images
You touched on your internal battle with religion. Can you tell us more about that?
Sarah Blasko: “I got out of the main fanatical church relatively early when I was in my late teens, but basically until after my mom died. After that, church just made absolutely no sense. The reason that religion comes up is that the start of the record happened when a really long friendship of mine just sort of imploded. The roots of that relationship were in the fanatical church when we met when we were 12. That was very shocking. All of the guilt, it all stemmed from kind of these sorts of religious guilts. I do touch on a lot of religious imagery within this record because all of those memories I suppose are associated with the hymns of the church and the guilt of the church.
I suppose in a way I kind of ultimately maybe in a sense I felt that the church was to blame for the end of our friendship because these ideas and this or maybe I think I just felt a bit ripped off that it made me feel like in the end our connection was more fragile than I thought it was because without maybe our friendship sort of couldn’t survive outside that. There’s something about just how it started in that. I guess there’s an anger. We came from this place together. And then of course this friendship didn’t work out because it started there in that messed-up place that kind of ultimately we’ve spent the last 20 years trying to recover from.”
The Australian music scene, despite its talent, seems quite insular. What’s your view on that?
Sarah Blasko: “I don’t feel like I have [broken out internationally]. It’s felt very difficult for me. I don’t feel like I really have a career outside Australia really and it’s very tough because we are so isolated.
I feel incredibly proud of Australian music scene particularly the Melbourne music scene but yeah, it’s difficult. Doing this tour now is really just me saying f*** it. I love playing music and I’ve really enjoyed playing shows in the UK and Europe in the past and so for me it feels important to kind of keep trying.”
What can you tell us about the upcoming UK and European tour? Is the full band joining you?
Sarah Blasko: “I’ve got a version of my band. I’m here with a drummer, the bass player, and a piano player. He also plays guitar. We’re playing my new record, and then we’re playing a bunch of songs from quite a few of my older albums. But I’m playing my record because it feels important to me to do that for some reason. I really enjoyed doing that in Australia and so I wanted to try and do that over here. The last time I came over as well, I played solo and I felt that it was important to play this with the band and play the record and show what I’m doing now. Some of the shows there’ll be like a visual accompaniment, projections involved.”
How do you decompress from a tour?
Sarah Blasko: “It has to happen very quickly because I’ve got children. No time to unwind. At the end of these shows, they’re actually meeting me over here and then we’re going on a five-week holiday in Europe. If you’re going to come this far, you got to stay here for two months.”
If you woke up tomorrow tone-deaf and couldn’t make music, what would you do for a living?
Sarah Blasko: “I would probably go into like nursing or something. I used to have a job as a personal carer and I worked at a nursing home. It’s a very difficult job, but I think it’s greatly needed.”
AI is asking for help to choose music for it’s algorithm. You need to pick one of your tracks that represents you, one track by another artist you want to save forever, and one track you want to delete from existence.
Sarah Blasko: “I think probably my song ‘All I Want’ represents me. It kind of sums up the lifelong pursuit to kind of get to know yourself and to learn to be alone. There’s a lot of loner sort of songs, a lot of melancholy as I mentioned earlier.”
“I lost a really good friend of mine last year and he was just such a beautiful musician. I want people to know about his music. I’d say ‘Don’t Cry These Tears’ by Jack Cowwell because I think that that song should have been a classic. It’s hard to believe that it’s not a cover. Go and listen to it.”
“To delete? Basically anything by Meatloaf. I would do ‘Anything for Love.’ That song just makes me feel physically ill. Basically anything by Meatloaf makes me feel sick.”
You can listen to Sarah’s new album here –
https://ffm.to/ijustneedtoconquerthismountain
July 1st 2025 – Edinburgh
July 2nd 2025 – Manchester
July 3rd 2025 – Brighton
July 5th 2025 – London
