INTERVIEW: Georgia Mae releases her debut EP 'Gigi and the Dragonfly'

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Dom Gould Via MIK

Georgia Mae has been releasing music since 2015 and is an artist who has in that time only grown in strength and confidence, with an ability to create music across all genres from electronic dance to country-tinged pop.

Growing up in Lismore, she relocated to Brisbane and studied at the prestigious Queensland Conservatorium of Music. In 2016 she received nominations for Most Promising Female Songwriter and Best Female Pop Artist at the Queensland Music Awards. Her music then took her overseas, where she worked as a writer and recording artist in Los Angeles on a wide range of television shows including Keeping Up With The Kardashians, followed by working in sound design at the illustrious Skywalker Sound and Warner Bros. Studios

Today she releases her debut EP Gigi and the Dragonfly. Born in the Arizona desert and created in Brisbane over the past year, the EP is about acknowledging trauma, understanding it and healing from it. Across six delicious tracks, the soundscape sums up the wide variety that has made up Mae’s work to date. Opening track ‘One Night’ is a gorgeous, bouncy synthpop number while ‘Emma’ is a stunning, stripped back ballad. EP highlight ‘Bad People 2’ is the type of pop music that is a joy to immerse yourself in as it takes you on a journey through an ever changing melodic soundscape, with soaring vocals and an always intriguing background. The EP closer and latest single ‘Blue Flowers’ is a smooth, mellow R&B track which has a serious message behind the sublime music, with Mae saying “it’s a song about self-development through healing past trauma.”

Gigi and the Dragonfly is Georgia Mae at her very finest and for an debut EP it is exceptionally accomplished. One of the finest EPs of 2022 to date, Mae is an artist you need to listen to right now and we recently caught up with her to chat more about the creation of the EP.

Hi Georgia so lovely to grab some time with you today. You have a very delicious new EP for us, Gigi and the Dragonfly, it is beautiful. Talk to me about this EP as a whole and where it came from.
Thank you! This is my first ever body of work that I'm releasing that will stay up forever. Because to be honest, I actually released an EP years ago when I was young, and I took it down because it was horrible! But this isn't horrible! It's a big chapter for me, because it's a stepping stone for a lot of what I'm working on now and what I will continue to work on in the future. Gigi is a little bit of an alter ego for me, and the EP wraps up everything that's happened in the last couple of years in terms of my self discovery, and going deeper into myself. I've had some challenging times over the last two to three years and these songs and this EP represents finding yourself. The dragonfly was really important in that because it's a symbol of transformation and change and self realisation. It's a symbol of wisdom in a lot of cultures around the world and I really liked that. It's been a cool project to be able to define where I am right now personally and professionally and then moving forward from from that.

Listening to the EP, it's very introspective, and it's very personal and it's quite poignant. Did you yourself find a lot of strength and catharsis in going that deep?
Absolutely. And I've never truly done that before with music and just personally it was very cathartic and therapeutic to write a lot of those songs. It parallels my personal growth, ‘Blue Flowers’ is directly speaking to my personal growth and it's nice to hear how my sound has changed since I've grown. I feel for the first time in my life I'm being true to myself in a way that's reflecting in my music. And not just that, but just every part of my life, relationships, self - all of it. That's why it’s a big, big body of work for me, because it's very personal and reflects where I'm at right now, which is really nice.

You've been working in the US and Australia for years, on various projects and various musical activities. Was there ever a moment, where perhaps your idea of what a pop star or a singer was supposed to sing about and sound? Did you feel like you had to achieve that?
That is me 100%. Like 100%. I very much was trying to almost fully please clients in a way that you would in a business. I thought I had to be a certain thing in music as a woman and a lot of that has been challenged these last couple of years, especially recently. I totally had these weird ideas about what I should be, when in fact none of it was truthful to me. I've been releasing music for a long time, but it's only been recently that I've started to take away some of those weird narratives that I have been telling myself for a long time - that I had to write about this and sound like that and be like this and look like this. It was hard to strip back those weird narratives that were taught to me, either directly or indirectly my whole life. To take away that and see what was there underneath, and I'm still doing that. I think you're always doing it in some way, developing in some capacity. I do feel it's the next chapter personally, and how it's flowed into music has been really, really beautiful.

To see what's underneath and realise “I'm still an artist, it's fine”.
Yes that was the scary thing. I really had to question everything, is music the thing that I want to do? I've had some points in my life where I've really had to look at myself and go, ‘what am I doing?’ But it always has been music that has brought me back to my purpose, which I'm very thankful for that. I do always feel I've had that purpose there, I've never really lost that which is nice.

Image: Dom Gould Via MIK

The EP's closer ‘Blue Flowers’ has got this R&B smooth sound to it. There's a lyric on there, ‘you can't taste without your tongue’ and I just love it. Can you please talk me through this track?
Oh, I'm glad you like that lyric. I wanted to write something that felt good to listen to and I think maybe that's why it kind of turned into this late night, R&B, silky smooth production. It's a challenging song, but it's a song full of hope for me. It's also the most honest I've ever been. ‘Emma’ is also an extremely honest song, but ‘Blue Flowers’ is honest in another way, it’s being honest with myself. And for whatever reason, every creative decision that went into the final product just felt like it was supported. It was a very supportive atmosphere of me being able to know that it's okay to be my authentic self and that's okay. For so many years, I didn't think just being my authentic self was enough or was okay. I know that I'm not alone in this, there's so much ingrained in our upbringing. As women we're taught to think less of ourselves and to be something else. That song is really about that on a holistic level.

‘One Night’ is a beautiful song about a past relationship, ‘Blue Flowers’, of course, this relationship with yourself. ‘Gentle’ is a relationship with the Earth, and ‘Emma’ we just spoke about is one of the most quietly confronting songs I think I've ever heard. Can you talk me through a little bit about ‘Emma’?
When I went into writing that song, if I knew what the final product was gonna be, I probably would have gone ‘don't write that, that's terrible’. I wrote it about a relationship I was in at the time, I'm not with him anymore, and I knew that things weren't right and there were issues. I was trying to convince my friend Emma that it was right but really I was just trying to convince myself but I knew what was wrong, and she knew what was wrong. My brain kind of gets away from me sometimes when I'm writing music, it's very in the moment and I don't think ahead as to what this is actually going to look like for people that listen to it. It caused so much drama, more than I will ever speak about, which I didn't intend. I was just trying to write a song about my honest feelings, but I hurt people when I wrote that song, I hurt people, and I was never going to release it, forget I ever wrote it. But then I was also like, ‘it's a good song’. The type of music that people want to hear is genuine, honest feelings, even if they're difficult, even if it's yucky to even talk about. It was cathartic for me to write it, and it definitely played a major role in breaking up with that person, that song, which at the end of the day was a good thing. But you know, sometimes I think, ‘oh my gosh, maybe there is such a thing as being too honest!’

I'm sure you're getting a lot of people going, ‘Oh, my god, yeah’
The good thing was that people listen to it and they're like, ‘I've been in that situation’, or ‘I've been that friend’. People get it. And maybe we just don't talk about it as much as it actually happens.

You said that this is now you, this is your launch pad. Can you tell me a little bit about what that proverbial bounce onwards now looks like?
I've gone deeper into myself and figuring out what I actually want. I am just forever married to the idea that storytelling is my thing and it always will be and I’ve let myself dive deeper into that. I'm really just creating worlds and creating characters and not just creating, not just focusing on the music, but really letting myself go wild with what that music is saying. It’s really fun and exciting and it took me a while to be able to feel like I was even allowed to do this. It's just crazy how much you can change, I’ve really let go of a lot and it's really invited a lot of freedom and space to create and to really explore what I want to explore. So lots of new music and shows is the next big thing. I played my first show in a couple of years the other weekend and it was like yay! I'm excited to bring this stuff to the stage as well.

Gigi and the Dragonfly is out now via Lemon Tree Records/Sony Music Australia. You can download and stream here.

To keep up with all things Georgia Mae you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.