INTERVIEW: Peach PRC launches her debut EP 'Manic Dream Pixie': "I love songs that are pop songs, but they are a story that isn't just a love song or heartbreak."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Australia’s Peach PRC is everything you want in a pop star. With an instinctive feel and a true love of the genre, she creates music full of the melodies, synths, and bombastic beats we love about pop but teams it with lyrics that are poetic, raw, honest, relatable and speak her truth.
After wowing us over the past two years with her incredible singles such as ‘Josh’, ‘God Is A Freak’ and ‘Forever Drunk’, today she released her long awaited debut EP Manic Dream Pixie and it is every bit as good as anticipated. Preceded by the singles ‘Perfect For You’, a song full of longing that interpolates Paris Hilton’s 2006 hit single ‘Stars Are Blind’, and the brooding and biting ‘F U Goodbye’, the six tracks are undeniably Peach PRC but demonstrate a maturing of her sound and artistry. The euphoric synth-pop is front and centre, but there are also pared-back experimental tracks alongside buzzy, guitar-based indie-pop.
The EP opens with ‘Kinda Famous’, which has soft, warm verses that erupt into a chanting, shouty chorus paired with a shimmering dance beat and is dedicated to the fangirl that exists in us all. ‘Loved You Before’ is a highlight and has a truly beautiful love story amongst the mid-paced beats and swirling synths that become more anthemic as the song goes on. It tells of a couple that are together and in love in throughout history, in every incarnation: ‘I think I met you in a store in 1944 / I probably wrote you letters while you went off to the war…lost lovers that keep getting rediscovered.”
‘Favourite Person’ changes things up completely and moves away from the dancefloor and into earthy, indie-pop sounds reminiscent more of the early 2000s pop-rock scene. A tender look back at a past relationship and the inability to let the person go – “I tried to erase your face but you’re there anyway / … You’re my favourite person” – Peach says it is an '“apology song” to her breakout hit ‘Josh’.
The EP closes on ‘Dear Inner Child’, a pared-back electronica track with minimal instrumentation and a vocoder applied to Peach’s delicate vocals. As the title suggests, it is a letter to the child she once was, reflecting on the trauma she went through and on the strong woman she is today.
Manic Dream Pixie is a true pop delight. Six songs that sweep you away on a rush of feel good vibes while also retaining the emotional connection you need in pop music - with Peach PRC, you can drown in your heartbreak whilst also dancing the hell out of it around your bedroom. An artist who keeps getting better and better, Manic Dream Pixie is proof Peach PRC is a bona fide pop superstar who has everything it takes to take over the world. We recently caught up with her to chat more about the creation of the EP.
Hi Peach, congratulations on your debut EP Manic Dream Pixie - what a collection. It's such a beautiful collection. Before I go into it, though, Manic Dream Pixie...is that you?
Yeah., I think it describes me best. It was from a song that I wrote called 'Heavy'. The manic pixie dream girl is the trope in movies, she's just the character development for the guy and she's this whimsical, not neurotypical girl. I put that in the song but I needed to switch the words around so that it would rhyme. For some reason, it really resonated with people, and so many people were like, ‘oh, that's me, I'm a manic dream pixie’. Over the years, I've seen so, so many manic dream pixie tattoos. So I was like, wow, that's obviously something very special to people. I think it does describe me, and for new listeners who don't know anything about me, if I could sum myself up, that would be how I would do it. That's why I chose it as the EP title.
I think it's absolutely perfect. You have this ability in your music to bring people in, because you have such gorgeous observation. And it's always done with such a tender heart, even when it's so ridiculously funny and can be so scathing. It's a tricky line to walk, but you do it wonderfully. .
I appreciate that so much, thank you. Lyrics are such a big thing for me, they’re so important for me. I love lyrics and I love rhyming and I love little internal rhymes that people might not hear the first time around or hear at all, but I know that they're in there and it's fun for me. I also love when I write something that I feel really proud of and then somebody goes 'that one line really resonated with me' I'm like, Yes, that's what I wanted. I feel really proud of that
Your lyrics are the ones are so funny and they're so beautiful. ‘Someone put a plate down a little too loud / Now i flinch whenever I hear the sound’ on ‘Dear Inner Child’ that closes the EP - it is such perfection. It's also gonna resonate with a hell of a lot of people. That song, it's a very different sound but you haven't lost your style on there, which is really quite something. It's still so very much your song.
It's interesting with that song, because I write almost every day, almost like journal entries. It's fun for me and it gives me dopamine, it's the only like, healthy coping mechanism I have! ‘Dear Inner Child’ was one of those songs and I didn't actually realise I was writing for my younger self until Mia Khalifa of all people said ‘this is like inner child work’ and I was like ‘wow, you're right, I guess this song is for younger me’. Originally I didn't want to put it on the EP because I want to solidify myself as this pop artist, like fun and party but the song meant so much to people. People were in my comments begging for it for a year or more. I still get comments all the time and when I sing it live. You never know if something that's special to also going to resonate with others, but it I guess it did. So I was like, I don't think I'll ever put it out anywhere else, so I put it as the last song on the EP for for the core fans that really needed that song.
Let's talk about the opener. ‘Kinda Famous'. When I first said I was like, ‘Oh, this is the song you run onto the stage on’. And then I was like ‘no way, this is the encore song everyone wants to hear!’
I haven't sang that one live so I'm really excited to do that when I do the headline tour. I'm not sure how it's gonna go. It is a tribute to the Kesha song ‘Stephen’, and she just goes absolutely psychotic, I love it. I think she's such a genius with her songwriting. I love songs that are pop songs, but they are a story that isn't just a love song or heartbreak. it's something just random as hell. She's so clever at doing that. And I was so inspired by it that I was like, I want to do a song about being a crazy stalker fangirl, because I have been that! It's that teen obsession, teen girls get just hysterical when it comes to like boy bands and I think even gay girls growing up are like that. I really wanted to encapsulate that just boy band hysteria in that song: I've picked out our baby names. I'm changing all your photo frames to my face. I'm going to be in your house. You're going to love me you just don't know it yet. I'm your biggest fan.
I want to ask you as well about 'Favourite Person’. The buildup to this track almost has a Cranberries guitar intro which I love and I wasn't expecting to hear. But then, it is just a beautiful love song. This is like an actual love song as opposed to ‘you may break my heart one day’ kind of love song.
Yeah, I love that you feel that from that. It's interesting what you said about the Cranberries guitar, because the song that you hear on the record is the is a demo we did in one day. I said, ‘don't change the production’. My producer was like ‘I went back and listened to it, it's very 2005, I just think it's a bit dated’. I was like, ‘No, I think it's so perfect, please leave it!’ Then the label wanted me to go with a whole different producer and completely scrap that production to do something else. I was like, ‘I tried it, it just needs to be what it was, keep it how it is, I don't care if it's if it's rough and if it's a little bit bare, I want that like dated sound.’ It's a really beautiful guitar riff. The song is actually an apology song for 'Josh'. We were on and off 10 years, he was my high school sweetheart, and I actually got back together with him after putting out 'Josh'. And I was like, 'I'm so sorry!' I had to keep doing interviews about it, while dating him, and pretending like, ‘Yeah, fuck Josh!’ The song came after we had a fight and he broke my heart. I was so angry when I wrote it, not because he's this awful person, but because he was my favourite person and he didn't love me anymore. Like, he broke my heart, and I was devastated by that. So that's why I wrote 'Favourite Person'. I just couldn't take it, being hated by my favourite person.
Tell me, with regards to being a delicious popstar, you look like the dream, you sing like the dream, you're living the dream. Tell me what was your ‘Oh shit, I'm actually living the dream moment’?
Wow. I feel like I'm constantly having those, even right now in this interview I'm having that, the fact that this is what I'm doing today is one of those moments. Maybe the first time that I felt that was when my song 'Blondes' was out. I had talked about it on TikTok, I had posted a few videos about it and they didn't do very well. People weren't really interested. Then it started to take off a little bit, and it almost got to a million streams. I made a TikTok saying, ‘if you didn't know I sing and this is my song and it's almost at a million streams and it would mean the world to me if you guys could listen to it so that I can get to a million streams and maybe get noticed’. So many people in the comments were saying they had it on repeat so that the streams go up, people were like ‘I've been playing it all day I've told every single person I know to have it on repeat all day’. I just remember bawling because they don't know me and they just wanted me to get to a million streams because they admired me as an artist and I found that so moving and so touching. That might have been the first moment where I was like, ‘wow, there's really people that actually admire me as an artist and care enough to not just listen to the music, but try to actually help me succeed in a career. It was the most beautiful touching thing that anybody's done
That's incredible I love power to the people stories. Thank you so much for chatting to us today Peach, and congratulations on all of it. Just keep being a pop star.
I couldn't be anything else!
Manic Dream Pixie is out now via Republic Records/Island Records. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Peach PRC you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok.
