INTERVIEW: Ricki-Lee returns with first album in 10 years 'On My Own': "This is my life's work and my life story."
Interview: Jett Tattersall
Published Friday 8 March 2024
There’s an old saying that you can travel the world, obsessively searching, pining and pushing for the one thing you know you have to have, but you won’t find what you’re looking for until you return home.
Ricki-Lee Coulter, singer, songwriter, TV and radio host, and one of Australia’s most beloved artists, found the wisdom in this when it came to creating her fifth studio album On My Own, out today. After chasing the perfect pop song for years in Los Angeles, New York and London, she found that her dream album only began to take shape when she returned home to Australia. “It was all made here on the ground [in Australia] because we have great pop producers, and we have great pop songwriters, they just need to be given the opportunity to be great,” she says.
Working with production duo DNA (Anthony Egizii and David Musumeci) and created over several years, with On My Own Ricki-Lee has made an incredible album that features a range of sonics and moods from dance-pop floor-fillers to stirring power ballads she says is wholly and unapologetically her.
‘Real Love’, is a shimmering track that combines elements of funk, soul and dance-pop with Coulter’s vocal expertly soaring into the upper reaches of her impressive range. ‘Magic’ is a euphoric and delicious electro-synth track, while ‘Dance Like Nobody’s Watching’ mixes elements of 90s house with is electronic pop foundation. And for the ultimate throwback, you can’t go past album standout ‘I Was Made For Loving You’, a stomping dance track that interpolates the classic Kiss song of the same name.
Alongside the glorious pop moments, there are also plenty moments of introspective ballads. Title track and first single ‘On My Own’ opens the album and is as anthemic as ever, with an incredibly passionate vocal from Ricki-Lee as she sings of surviving and thriving as an independent woman. “I’m not afraid to walk alone / I’ll find these fields of gold on my own,” she sings.
More melancholic moments close off the album, with single ‘Ghost’ brilliantly evoking the feel of ‘dance-cry’ Scandipop as Ricki-Lee sings of a relationship that ended with no warning: ‘You never said goodbye / Never said me why’. Final track ‘What Do You Want From Me?’ has a strong electronic beat and stirring melodies but reflects inner turmoil with Ricki-Lee walking away from a relationship she realises is now worthless. “There’s nothing left to give baby cause you’ve taken all of me.”
With On My Own, Coulter has proven she is not only a pop expert in full flow, but an evolving artist and person who both embraces the dance-pop joy of her past albums and pushes herself into new musical territory. It is an album that will bring you absolute joy and it is not a stretch to call this Ricki-Lee’s greatest album to date and worth the (extra long) wait. We recently sat down with Ricki-Lee to chat more about the creation of the album.
Hi Ricki-Lee, such a delight to chat to you today! You have pulled together one hell of an album. Talk to me about it.
It's been 10 years since I released the last album, but you know, I haven't stopped working, I haven't stopped writing music. I still released music in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020. But I have been looking for my people that I can write the whole album with. I didn't want to do it in the bitsy way that I had done albums before, which is go to LA and London and New York, and bounce around a whole lot of different rooms with different writers and producers, and then after 12 months find the best songs and throw them all together and just see if they work. I wanted to find people that I could write the entire album with and go through the whole process, but I just hadn't found those people yet - not for lack of trying! I moved to LA and was on the hunt for those people. I found a couple of people that I liked writing a lot of songs with, but we just never quite got past that next stage. And then one day I just saw this article about the guys that I'd been wanting to work with for such a long time, DNA. I'd worked with them on my second album, but I hadn't been able to work with them since because they were in an exclusive deal with Sony and they weren't allowed to work with me because I wasn't signed to Sony. Then it had been announced that they were no longer with Sony, they'd signed a new publishing deal and they were basically free to work with anyone. Straightaway I jumped in there! We got in the studio, but I didn't know if it was going to work, the last time I'd worked with them was in 2006 so it's a long time. I knew that they are incredible. I don't meet a lot of producers and songwriters that are pure pop, that love pop, that live and breathe pop. I'm not talking about cool indie, underground pop, I'm talking about dirty pop. And they love and live and breathe pop.
The quality of everything was just so good, and it was so right. It felt like everything I'd been looking for for so long. was just in that room with David, Anthony, and myself. And it was like, I don't need to travel over the other side of the world, to fight and to bounce around rooms with all of the best of the best in the world. These two people are my people and we are going to write this whole album together. We got to delve deeper and deeper into stories and experiences, relationships that fizzled out, friendships and family issues and all of these little things that you can only really talk about with people that you feel comfortable with. I had never really been able to that in a musical sense before.
You hit the nail right on the head, you're working with people that have exactly the same desire that you have and that is to make pure pop. And a lot of artists we speak to say the hardest thing, and the thing that they're always trying to do, is to create the perfect pop song. So but when people just then go 'oh, it's just pop', I'm like, ‘you have no idea!’
Absolutely, I'm with you. I think for so long, especially in Australia, our industry has very much been indie, folk, rock. That's the pillar of our industry. That's what holds up our industry, but pop music is what gets played on the radio. Unfortunately, it’s the international pop artists that are making pop music for the world. I think there’s been a wonderful shift, but for so long Australia didn't celebrate their own pop.
No, not until they travel and get famous everywhere else and then we take them back! Is that one of the reasons you found yourself in LA, because you felt like you were just not getting enough traction in Australia?
Well, there wasn't a lot of pop producers and writers in Australia, because if you were a pop producer and songwriter, you moved to where all of the pop producers and songwriters were, which is pretty much LA. The guidance from my publisher and label at the time was you're not really taken seriously as a pop songwriter, and artist if you're not in LA. So we packed up the house, we moved and it was, we set up a whole thing over there and that was really fun. I had an album’s worth of stuff when I came back to Australia in 2017 and I went to an APRA songwriting camps, and I wrote 'Not Too Late', in Australia, with people that APRA had brought to Australia to write, like producers from all around the world. So then I'm like, ‘I've just spent all this money and years living in another country and I come and I write this fucking song in Australia, like, what?’ The that was the song that the label liked the most. And that was quite frustrating because I'd spent all this money and time making this other album. And then the next single that was put out was one that the label wanted me to put out, .that was 'Unbothered'. I was like ‘I've got this song I wrote with Mozella who wrote 'Wrecking Ball' like this song's epic, what do you mean it’s not the one?’ I'm a team player, so I went, ‘okay, if you guys want ‘Unbothered’, let's release that one.’ After that, I was like, ‘I don't really want to do this anymore’. That was when I decided to start releasing through my own label. They were, they were gracious enough to let me go, and I have my masters and all of that.
This whole process was so wonderful, because it was everything since 2015 that I have been trying to make happen. And we finally did it, but here in Australia, and I am so proud of that. That's such a testament to the talent we have in this country. We have great pop producers, and we have great pop song writers, they just need to be given the opportunity to be great.
I really want to talk to you about 'I Was Made For Loving You'. This is my favourite song, oh my goodness!
I felt like the album needed some glitter disco pop. We were just kind of humming and we were coming up with all of these melodies and then someone started singing and we realised it was a bit like 'I Was Made For Lovin’ You'. At that point you make a decision - we have to jump off this because this is someone else's song or we lean into it, get it cleared and then that's the song.
So we tried to get clearance. and that was…fun! Kiss wanted 100% of the publishing, and because we were just calling it 'Made For Loving You', it had to be called 'I Was Made For Loving You', and it was only them that we're allowed to be credited as songwriters. We weren't even allowed to be credited as songwriters on the song, even though we wrote a whole song around it! But we were just like, ‘fuck it. It's so cool. Let's do it’. The song sounded very different when we first produced it, and then I thought why not lean into the Kiss sound even more than we have. So we changed the chords slightly to make it exactly their melody for the chorus, and put all their hooks in. If they're taking our publishing, we're putting their hooks in! It was really fun to not shy away from leaning into the nostalgia of that song. We all have that nostalgic love for that song, so why not give people what they want? I'm so obsessed with it, it's been really cool to see the reaction so I'm so glad that you love that one so much.
Ricki the album is so beautiful and I'm so thankful for you sharing the story of it. Apart from all of this, what else have you got coming up?
Well, the album’s out today and then I have a show in Melbourne on the 10th. We're just doing one night, it will be like an album celebration. And then I’m doing a show Sydney at The Enmore in September. I can't wait to perform all the songs from the album, and it will be 20 years from when I was first on Idol so it's quite the celebration of a 20 year career. It's quite wild.
That's huge. Also for all your fans that have been with you for 20 years it's one of those moments when you go ‘oh shit, how old am I?’
I know. It's so freaky! This album's been two years in the making, for me it's just a celebration of that hard work coming to fruition. People hearing these songs and these stories, and then getting to perform them. It's the performing of them and bringing them to life, for me it's the next chapter which is so exciting. I can't wait to perform, these are some of my favourite songs I've ever written. 'On My Own' is the song of my whole life. That's the song I've been trying to write for my entire life, my entire songwriting career. That's the song that defines my entire life. It’s from me as a kid, that little kid that had to be responsible for herself because my mum worked several jobs, which meant that as a kid I had to be quite independent, because she had to work. I had to look after myself, I had to be responsible, I had to make sure that I could get myself out of bed and get my lunch packed and get myself in my uniform and get myself to school on the bus on time and do my homework. had to look after myself, because that's what she needed me to do.
'On My Own' just tells the story of my whole life, which I think is really cool. It's also why I wanted to call the album On My Own. It's deeper than just, 'I'm releasing this on my own and owning my past', this is my song and this is my life's work and my life story.
On My Own is out now. You can buy and stream here.
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