INTERVIEW: Chelsea Warner releases her debut EP 'Drama': "There's this idea that young women are hysterical and not in control of their emotions...I wanted to flip those connotations."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Kezia Suryaputra
Ever since she launched her career in 2020, Sydney’s Chelsea Warner has consistently proven she is one of the most talented young artists in Australia’s music scene today. Primarily creating smooth soul and R&B music, Warner is in many ways the future of R&B in this country, particularly given the genre has not created many homegrown superstars to fly the flag.
Today she releases her remarkable debut EP Drama. Featuring six tracks, her previous three singles ‘Drama’, ‘Not In The Mood’ and ‘It Be Like That’, plus three new tracks ‘Blush’, ‘Opinions’ and ‘Nike Sweater’, there is a relatability and warmth to Warner’s music as she sings of the emotional upheavals and life changes in the transition from girlhood to adulthood.
Warner is something of a musical prodigy. She studies at the prestigious Sydney Conservatorium of Music and solo produced and wrote her debut single ‘How Come You Don’t Pick Up Your Phone’. On Drama Warner again wrote and produced all tracks, with support from fellow singer-songwriter and producer Maribelle (Vetta Borne) and also Matt ‘Xiro’ Fioravanti.
An artist who is destined for bigger things in the coming years, Chelsea Warner is someone to keep a firm watch on. To celebrate the release of Drama, we caught up with her to find out more about the creation of the EP and her musical journey.
Hi Chelsea! How much of a talent nugget are you? Seriously, you make such beautiful sounds. Your debut EP Drama is out now, congratulations, how are things in your glorious world?
Feeling good. This EP has been a long time coming. I wrote the first track when I was 16, so it's been a lot of anticipation for me, it's had a lot of iterations. I'm just honestly excited that it's out there, that I don't have to think about it anymore. And that it's the world’s now.
The title track is also track number one. I love the song, but was it always yeah, this is the one, this is what we're going to name it after?
I had a lot of different title ideas in my notebook, but nothing really connected with it. I wanted to sum up that feeling of adolescence and girlhood and coming of age where everything just feels so high stakes.I just felt that Drama encapsulated it pretty well. So no, it wasn't always the case. Because it's my debut record, I just sifted through my life's work and everything I've ever written and needed to put a tracklist together. There was no concept beforehand, but Drama I think brought all the songs together conceptually.
I think what's lovely in that title for the collection is when you talk about coming of age, particularly when it's aimed at young females, people do always go 'oh, drama'. And there's a real bad connotation to it, but you've almost turned the word on its head. And it's actually something really beautiful. Like yeah, I'm feeling these things for the first time and it's fucking wonderful, in all its horror.
Yeah, exactly. It's intense, but that's what makes a lot of coming of age and girlhood so memorable. There's definitely this idea that young women are hysterical and not in control of their emotions, that idea of the dramatic, gossipy, catty, unhinged teenage girl, but when you're a young person, nobody knows what they're doing and nobody knows what they're feeling. Nobody knows how to make sense of any of it. It's just this weird stigma put on women that personally made me feel like I was just this hypersensitive over emotional mess where in actuality, yes, I'm a sensitive and empathetic person, but that was just a part of growing up, and it doesn't have to be vilified. So, yes 100% I wanted to flip those connotations. Every meaning the word could possibly have is what it means on the record.
Gorgeous. Speaking of that theme, you’ve just recently unleashed a gorgeous video for your single, ‘It Be Like That’ and it's just girlhood bedroom dreams divine. I love it. Can you talk me through both that track and then also your desires around creating the video?
Thank you. That track was written in last year’s lockdown and it was about me being a bit of a recovering control freak, trying to come to terms with my uncertain future. I think a lot of young people can probably relate to that feeling of just going ‘hold up, I thought my life was going one way and now I have to completely recalibrate and I've only just made up my mind in the first place’. I'm definitely trying to rein in my tendency to want to control everything on the track and trying to convince myself that it's okay to be pushed and pulled in a lot of different directions. I wanted to make a video to reflect something that was going to feel like a bit of a time capsule to me of this time in my life, of my youth and coming of age. If it wasn't going to be in my bedroom, it was going to be around my hometown. I wanted to use a lot of imagery that's related to fortune telling and spirituality to almost poke fun at myself for wanting to always predict everything. If you've seen the video you'll know, but at the end of the day, none of the fortune telling devices that I'm using end up working. I wanted something that would feel nostalgic, and potentially a little bit humorous as well.
Gorgeous, because that's where we all lean to, like, let's ask the magic eight ball! You talked about letting go of that control freak nature, and you're an amazing songwriter, you're a producer, you're a performer, you are the whole shebang. Was the progression from songwriting to performer to production just very natural to you, or did it just come from ‘ I know what I want this to sound like, and I don't trust anyone else to get me there’?
It was a really natural progression, I don't really even know why. I think I just got to the point in my mid teenage years, where I'd been writing for a couple years and I wanted some demos. I was like, ‘let me just pull up GarageBand and try something’ and then that turned into Ableton, and then that turned into ‘ I'll just give it to somebody who actually knows what they're doing’, and then that person ended up being me once I got a few more years of experience under my belt. It's not necessarily being able to not trust anybody to realise the vision or anything, I think it's just I didn't really know what the vision was. I needed the time, I needed to allow myself to explore, to take some time with everything, to figure out what my sound was and what I wanted to express. Now I feel really ready to start collaborating again and working with people again, now that I'm a bit more sure of myself musically. I definitely needed to have that hermit time in my studio and just spend hours in front of the computer and refine my skills and refine my sounds to figure out what that was, and to be able to collaborate again, with more intention.
And what a beautiful start for your collection with your debut EP. It's a single handed monster, it's just incredible. You said that you wrote ‘Drama’, for instance, when you were 16 and you've you've had some of these songs for years. When it went to collating this first collection, how did you go about piecing it together?
Good question! It was tricky. As I said, it had a lot of different versions. I had an EP that I wanted to release when I left high school, which was almost three years ago. And I'm so glad that I didn't because I really refined my sound and my storytelling since then. Honestly, when the second Sydney lockdown hit this year, I just forced myself to make some decisions, because I thought, ‘When am I ever going to have this much time to inject into this project again?’ That's it done, not thinking about it anymore, that's the tracklist. I wasn't going to let myself go back and forth on it anymore. When I first wrote ‘Drama’ I was inclined to include it because I felt it summed up what I wanted to say, it also lended itself to visuals quite well. And then something like ‘Opinions’, which is the oldest song I wrote that when I was in Year 11, I felt like it was a bit of a time capsule. So there are some older stuff on there that I feel sums up the time that I'm writing about. And then there's some newer stuff that has that retrospect. There wasn't any particular method in terms of the tracklist I just forced myself to make a decision and not think about it.
And what about the absolutely delicious interlude ‘Nike Sweater’. It just purrs the listener in halfway through it is so beautiful and we don’t often get interludes on EPs. Was that just a track you ‘thought oh this needs to make the cut, I'm going to make it work’?
Yeah, 100%! A couple people have said, ‘why didn’t you just make that a full song?’ And I don't know. I think interludes are cute. I'm such a body of work gal, I love listening to albums and EPs and listening to them in their entirety. I wanted an interlude, so I was like, ‘I'm getting myself an interlude,’ you know, whatever cost whatever it takes. I'm having an interlude on this record!
You're so right, not every song needs the whole big bang parade that comes with it, sometimes it just needs an interlude moment. You recently talked us through at Women In Pop some of your favourite female producers and you said that you were expecting to find so many more female producers behind your favourite songs or popular songs, but you were sort of sadly disappointed that they just weren't there. How have you found the industry, not only as a soul singer-songwriter, but also as a producer?
I've definitely been lucky to have found people pretty early in my career that believe in me and believe in me as a multifaceted artist. Being a producer, I try my hand at mix engineering, writing, co writing and I definitely have been lucky as not everybody has that experience. A lot of women are never really told to back themselves in behind the scenes roles, especially. We love looking at women and we love consuming women in a voyeuristic way, that's just classic pop star thing, regardless of of sex, I guess. But women aren't rewarded as much for behind the scenes roles where they can't be as seen. The first time I started producing in a way where I was calling myself a producer was at KLPs Ricochet songwriting camp, which is all female, non binary artists, producers and writers. I was invited there as a producer, not a writer so I thought, ‘oh I guess I am a producer now’ and just started backing myself when I had a bit of that external support. But for a lot of people, that support doesn't come. The tides are turning, and it's developing in a good way, but you know, we shouldn't even really be talking about female producers, it should just be producers. It’s kind of weird that we have to point it out. But unfortunately that's the reality. It’s been all right for me, but I hope it becomes less abnormal.
And I think that's incredible what you said about backing yourself. And I think we all do that, ‘Oh, am I a producer? Is that what I do?’ despite the fact you've been doing it, sometimes you need someone else to go ‘no, that's what you do’.
Yeah and I feel like young boys will open up FL Studio for five minutes and then be like, ‘Yeah, I'm a producer’. Not to throw shade because I've worked with so many great people regardless of how they identify, it just feels like a bit more of a challenge to back yourself sometimes.
Absolutely. You've been doing this forever, but who were the sheros you were listening to growing up? Who were you singing along to and trying to hit notes with in your bedroom as a kid?
Without a doubt Ariana Grande. I loved her when I was really young. When her first single came out, my family and I were driving to Queensland for a holiday and I listened to that song the whole drive. I don't understand how I did that, but I did! I must have been 12 or something. She really just unconsciously influenced how I arrange vocals, how I write how I do harmonies, my vocal inflections. I've never really tried to emulate her because we don't really have similar voices, I can't sing like she can. That was me trying and failing to hit the notes in my bedroom. Other people like Amy Winehouse and Erykah Badu I fell in love with later in my teenage years in terms of how they tell stories. And more recently, Victoria Monét has been a huge influence. I love how many hats she wears, being a huge top liner for huge artists but also having a great artist project with a lot of integrity as well.
That's a good collection of women to get you through things. Lastly, before I leave you what's coming up for you Chelsea?
I've got the EP launch gig on the 12th November at the Lord Gladstone in Sydney, that's part of the Bloom series. Ruby Jackson is going to be supporting, we sold out the early show, which I can't believe, that's insane. We've got tickets left for the late show. After that, I just want to let this EP sit out in the world for a while, it's my offering here I am hello, my debut! Just see how it's received, connect with people over the music really. That's the plan.
Drama is out now. You can buy and stream here.
Chelsea Warner will be headlining her first show on November 12 as part of the BLOOM series at The Lord Gladstone, Sydney. Tickets are available here now.
To keep up with all things Chelsea Warner you can follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
