INTERVIEW: Heleina Zara releases her debut EP 'Autopilot': "I’m a lot of different things, because I've had to change so much. I'm still in the process of trying to find who I am."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Australia’s Heleina Zara has only been releasing music for over a year, but she is already displaying the maturity and depth of talent you expect from an industry veteran.
Today she releases her debut EP, Autopilot which is just as much a statement of intent as it is an incredible collection of music.
“All these songs are pieces of me, written throughout a tumultuous time,” Zara says. “At times it felt like I was on autopilot just going with the flow but I tried so hard not to resist the hard times.”
Just like her childhood idol, Taylor Swift, Zara is an expert when it comes to creating music that is both joyous to listen to but also covers weighty, relatable subjects within her lyrics. She also displays a genuine versatility in her sound, with Autopilot mixing synthpop, ballads and guitar-pop.
The EP opens with her recent single ‘Emergency Exit’, a glitchy electronic pop track with vocals that switch between distorted and almost robotic to tender and expressive. It is a technique that works brilliantly with the lyrics, where Zara struggles to recover from a painful incident that occurred on “New Years”. ‘It’s gonna be a long long time till I get back to reality / I’m too busy with the sadder me to deal with all of this right now,” she sings.
‘Sad Like The Moon’ starts off with like a gentle, almost music box soundscape before bringing in a heavier beat and a chorus that juxtaposes chanty vocals with an impossibly sweet, almost ethereal vocal from Zara. It is the type of song that on first listen grabs your entire attention as its constantly changing sound has you hooked as you joyfully discover each new sonic twist and turn.
‘Wait’ is a beautiful piano ballad that tells an emotional story of a relationship breakdown: ‘He said, “Is this over?” / “Is this the end?” / Feel my heart getting colder / Said you’ll always be my friend,’ she sings. It proves Zara is just as compelling with a pared back ballad as she is with a electropop banger.
‘Boundaries’ is a highlight on the EP, with its funky, dirty. New Wave sound, uplifting chorus and impossibly addictive melodies. Lyrically, it is an absolutely empowering anthem to set your own boundaries and stand up for yourself. “When he trashed your heart like a dirty motel / It's time to talk about boundaries…You have the right to change your mind / To self-prioritise personal time…And finally, don't fuck with my boundaries.”
The EP ends with the impossibly dreamy ‘Far Away’, with a lush electronic-synth foundation and swirly beats which give the song a gorgeously cosy feel. Lyrically it talks about a loving and safe relationship, and ties in with the opening track ‘Emergency Exit’ as its polar opposite. Where ‘Emergency Exit’ is pure personal distress that sees Zara declaring “Autopilot’s making me sick…Where the fuck is the emergency exit?”, ‘Far Away’ sees her celebrating the unexpected start of a beautiful, safe relationship. “I don’t like this, not at all / It’s autopilot, got no control….You’re everything I could ever ask for.”
Autopilot is an absolutely beguiling EP and as a debut effort, it is an incredibly promising start to Zara’s career. With music this good, she has the potential to be a major breakout star and she is an artist to start paying attention to right now. We recently caught up with her to find out more about her career and the creation of Autopilot.
Hi Heleina! So, so lovely to chat to you. I just have to say, your debut EP Autopilot is so good
Thank you, thank you so much! I'm really excited that it's finally being released into the world.
I want to talk a little about your background, as a child you moved around quite a bit, and you didn't know any other life until you got to Sydney, right? Your whole life was always moving around. I imagine in that situation you almost hold a bit of yourself away from people because you're always expecting to leave again.
Yeah, I guess that's what really connected me to the entertainment industry, and music especially. My mum's Filipino, so I was really immersed in the arts at a very young age, because the family is all about music and connecting through that art form. I've always dreamed of having a best friend that lives next door and we do sleepovers and all that stuff, all these movies that I'd watch and be like, ‘Oh, I wonder what life would be like if I had that sort of lifestyle instead of moving around and saying goodbye to all of my friends’. Moving to a little suburb in Sydney, where there wasn't that many Asian people at the time, it was a really strange cultural lifestyle reset. To come from a really multicultural place to a suburb that didn't really have that many people that looked like me, and having to relearn how to go about everyday life affected my music, the way I saw myself and the way I saw the world which I think I needed. I always say to everyone that I would have been the biggest spoiled brat if I had stayed in Hong Kong, and coming to Australia really. woke me up a little bit. I am very grateful that this journey that I am on is the journey that was meant to happen.
You said how music and singing has always been a part of your life, going through that huge shift of coming to Australia and in the way you were perceived and the way you perceived yourself, did you turn to music for solace and as a form of catharsis?
Yeah, definitely, On social media, for me, in female artists I would find pieces of myself or I would be like, ‘Oh, I relate to that’ and form my identity through these different parts of art. With this whole change of lifestyle I had to relearn stuff about myself. Taylor Swift is definitely the one that got me into songwriting and wanting to be on the big screen and relate and connect to people through that form. I quite literally grew up with her and many other artists, When I was 15, 16, I was introduced to Gracie Abrams and a lot of other LA artists like Charlotte Lawrence, Olivia O'Brien, Phoebe Bridgers and I was like, ‘there's so many different parts of me that I see reflected in their projects’. The more I move around a lot, the more I find myself to be a chameleon. If someone would ask me, ‘who is Heleina Zara’ I would be at a loss of words, because I’m a lot of different things, because I've had to change so much. So I'm still in the process of trying to find who I am.
I want to talk to you about Autopilot, sonically it's so eclectic, you really push the boat out with your soundscapes. Talk to me a little bit about the creation of the EP and your running through line, the idea of Autopilot.
I wasn't really aware that the theme of the EP was ‘being on autopilot’, going down to my roots of being an expat kid, it sort of just came out of the different sessions I was doing in and out of LA and Australia. There are songs that I wrote in this EP when I was 18 and then didn't finish until I was 20. When I went to LA for my writing trip, I wanted to try to be more easygoing, and just see what happened in the studio. I always like to be prepared: ‘I have an idea, and this is what I want it to sound like’. I felt there was more magic in not knowing what could happen in the studio. When I was introduced to these different songwriters and producers, we found some common ground and like I did growing up, I found different parts of myself in different people. So the EP is reflective of my upbringing and who I am right now. Finding different pieces and things that intrigued me with different people and the sounds that they would offer. I'm really proud of it. Not everything's the same, but not everything is completely detached from everything around it.
Let's talk a little bit about latest single 'Emergency Exit', this is such a fantastic track.
Whenever I introduce this on stage, I like to make it very simple. So I don't over complicate things, because I seem to talk a lot and not make a lot of sense when I try to explain what I want to say! Which is ironic, because that's what I do for a living, I write songs. It's a track of being overwhelmed with different emotions, and just wishing the chaos in my head could just stop and trying to find a way out of this tumultuous time that I'm in. I wrote this track with Jonny Shorr, who's the producer and co- songwriter, and Riley Biederer and you could say I sort of word babbled to them everything that was going on during that time that we wrote it. They helped me form this song to the way it is now, so it was very much a collaborative experience. Lyrically, we want to just have a little fun with it, because I was in a very heavy place. And we were like, ‘Why don't we try something different and write something a little light hearted that can still feel cathartic?’
I also love the track ‘Boundaries’. It's again an eclectic track that's just so joyous, which really juxtaposes the subject matter. Can you talk to me a little bit about the creation of that, because I think this track is amazing.
Thank you! Going into the session, I was like, ‘I don't even know what to write because there's so much going on in my head and I can't focus on one thing’. And again, it started off with a conversation, like something that would happen in therapy almost. We started writing lyrics and tried not being too literal, but it was everything that was happening in my life, touching on little points that I was really frustrated and angry about. I was like, ‘why do I let people walk all over me and I've just had enough’. My co-writer was like, 'why don't we also make it fun and have fun with it?' Because it's very empowering and I love ending all of my live sets with 'Boundaries' because it's uplifting, and it's groovy. It's a nice song to end with and that's why it's the end of the EP because I wanted to feel uplifted with all of this chaos that happens in the EP. I think there's a resolution through the tracklist of okay, this has happened, then I think I know why it's because I've moved around a lot, I haven't really been able to stand up for myself. So creating that song, I think we knew that it finished the whole EP for us.
You mentioned not wanting to put too much of yourself in the song, but at the same time get the message across. Does it concern you, or do you see among your peers, this self preservation that you need to have in order to keep yourself a bit separate? The machine which is the music industry may just devalue and sort of strip you of what you are and who you are?
I am very much an oversharer, that's what got me into songwriting. I was like, ‘well, I may as well make art out of it and try to make it sound pretty’. As time goes by and I learn more about the industry, I want to try to keep things to myself, but also it's really hard to keep things to myself, if that makes sense. I want to share everything if possible, but as a young adult, I'm starting to learn boundaries for myself and boundaries for other people as well that I want to respect. I want to be more intentional in the way I want to tell my story. I'm finding moments here and there where I want to share, but again, it's all a learning process for me, you can kind of see the growth through the EP and the tracklist. Again, ending on 'Boundaries', where I feel a little more solid as a person.
In many ways, you don't have to share your stories with anyone because everyone's gonna put their own meaning onto the song anyway. A lot of the time you find out your favourite song is actually about and you're like, ‘No, that's not what it's about’, because you love it so much.
That's also what made me decide to make the EP the way I did. I didn't want to force a story in people's faces. I I just wanted to connect with people, but also let the listeners have their own freedom and connect the way that they want to connect with my music.
You have recently toured with Peach PRC, which must have been incredible. I want to know how to go from playing music in your bedroom to ‘I'm playing with Peach PRC?’
That's a great question. I don't even know how we got to where we are. It's really truly that saying ‘just fake it till you make it’. And that's pretty much 99% of what happened on the Peach PRC tour! The more I played those shows, the more I made friends on tour, the fans, and they've been with me ever since. It's all just gaining that confidence and having those connections with fans in the crowd. I've always practised performing live in my bedroom as a kid, dreaming of what it would be like on stage and every time I'm on stage, I do sort of black out a little bit and be like, ‘Okay, I'm back in my bedroom’. And that really does help. So fake it till you make it! We're doing just that.
Autopilot is out now via Island Records. You can buy and stream here.
Follow Heleina Zara on Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok.
