INTERVIEW: Icon Tina Arena returns with first album in eight years 'Love Saves': "I made this record for me. I've got nothing to hide. I've got nothing to be ashamed of and I'll just speak my mind."

Words and interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Kidd Sauve

Tina Arena, the national treasure with the syrupy voice, has never shied away from turning her talent to touching a nerve through song. In doing so, Arena defied the role of the Australian pop starlet and, by sticking to her vision, carved herself a lifelong career of using her artful vocals and slick lyricism to encapsulate the flesh and bones of humanity.

Now, thirty-two years after her debut solo album Strong as Steel, Arena returns with her Love Saves album, a resolute collection that is cited as a new chapter in Arena's career. One which, following an eight-year hiatus from music, details the ‘re-birth’ she experienced in getting back to the therapy of songwriting. "Running a gauntlet of human emotion", Arena faced her demons making the album. The final result is a piece of work whose iron-armoured veins thread the hairline cracks in its intricate frame.

The warmth of the title track, ‘Love Saves' is delicate in its declaration while equally assured, and strengthened by its vulnerability. In toying with composition and vocal delivery, ‘I Dared To Love You First’ brings us, cinematically, to France, Arena's second home, with its romantic music-box core. But then Arena picks up a broadsword; ‘Dancing On Thin Ice’ or ‘Danser Sur La Glace’, the French version which closes the album, begins like a winter lullaby before roaring into the chorus as Arena sings of a relationship not all too dissimilar to the toxic tale of her iconic 1994 hit ‘Chains’. Darkening further still, ‘Cry Me A Miracle’ rumbles with an approaching storm as Arena paints a picture, both with her words, and the timbre of her voice “Rusty chains round a memory / Take the wheel / I got half a mind to drive you all insane”.

With over 40 years in the industry - and voted Australia's greatest female singer of all time - Arena has never pulled a punch. She's never feared fragility either, "Remember, be brave, be vulnerable and love saves!” she says of the album. Love Saves is a symphonic declaration of love, not to the subjects detailed within each song, but to that particular type of therapy Arena unearths when creating her art. 

We recently caught up with Arena to chat more about the creation of this album.

Hi Tina, thank you so much for chatting to us today. You have a very beautiful album, Love Saves out today which I've been devouring, it's so beautiful. Talk to me about this gem, it has been noted that it's your most personal album to date, and I've always found your albums very personal and I was wondering how this one goes even further?
They’ve always been personal and you're absolutely right, but in the past there’s subject matters that you just can't go to for whatever reason. But this record was a little bit like I really don't give a fuck, it is what it is. I'm 55 years old, I've got nothing to hide. I've got nothing to be ashamed of and I'll just speak my mind. It’s just something that came out, I didn't even think about it. I made the record for me first and foremost for the first time in my life. I was like, I need to consider me actually, what I want, not what will be expected of me.

That’s incredible and I find that very interesting, because you always come across so fun and so assured and so strong in what you do, and I've always put that down to ‘Well she's been in it forever’, but I guess the flip side of that is you've lived a life of expectation.
Absolutely. It's brutal living a life of expectation actually, when I think back now. So I think for the first time in my life I went ‘you know what Teen? Don't have any expectations therefore you won't be disappointed.’

Gosh, it's so easy to say but it must be so hard to apply.
That doesn't mean that it's easy for me to apply that because it's tough. My expectations are high of myself, first and foremost. The last four years or five years has been pretty brutal. You keep it under wraps, because you got to keep going, and because there are other humans involved, so you've got to be very careful where you tread. But it was also equally important to go ‘this is what I feel, actually. And no, I'm not going to watch my p's and q's. I will tell it as it is.’

Absolutely, and it comes through to your music with such integrity and strength
My truths have always been spoken through my work, if you dissect my catalogue. To which I'm finally starting to have some respect for, my body of work. That too took me an awful long time.

Why do you think that was?
Because I constantly question everything. Because I'm strong and equally vulnerable. Because I think it's important to question that, I don't have the answers to everything, I'll just do what I do. It's my therapy. It's how I've survived. There's a lot of stuff that people don't know, because I'm not able to talk about it because it upsets people, because people don't really want to hear the truth. They want the fantasy to continue. I love my job, I love it. It's wonderful. But I don't necessarily like all the stuff that comes with it.

I must say on this album, not only lyrically but I love hearing this fire melodically. I can't get past ‘Cry me A Miracle’ because that intro is like you're dragging an axe!
I have dragged an axe Jett, that’s exactly right! That's exactly the visual and you've got it right. And it makes me really happy to speak to somebody that actually gets it. That record is visual. You close your eyes and it's like a fucking film from the first beat and note. It’s image based - ‘snakeskin boots and a leather face’. Listen to those lyrics and let those images transport you, because that is such the beautiful thing about the art and that's my saviour. That saved me, nothing else. That's what saved me.

Do you feel like with this album in that sense that it is so visual and, this is like the highest compliment, dramatic, that being able to characterise those different experiences you're writing about on a heightened level and make them theatrical, that was where you pushed yourself even further on this one?
Yeah, absolutely. It instinctively happened. You don't premeditate anything when you go into a writing situation, you just go in there with absolutely nothing, and you come out with something. I remember years ago, when you signed to a record label they would said, ‘what's the direction of this album? What's the theme?’ And I remember getting really, really stressed when they would say that to me. You cannot put art in a box that you need to tick. When you are creating art, something out of nothing is everything. That is what it is, you manipulate it. You don't fucking know what you're going to deal with when you walk into a session. You've got no idea. So I could never answer those questions, and I was stressed for years going, ‘oh my god, I'm an idiot, I don't know what I'm doing’. And now I go ‘How on earth did I allow myself to go there?’ You can't quantify it, you can't intellectualise something that you haven't even created. For me, you just get into a room. Hopefully you're in a room with beautiful energy, and the between the both of you or the three of you, you're able to come out with something beautiful. I went into this writing session, it was like going to therapy. That's what it was, it was my therapy. It was a survival mechanism for me. And out of that, comes this record.

That's so good to hear, and it's unfortunate that it takes so long for us to go ‘Hold on a second, I can do this, I'll just do it my way’. You've got a beautiful Love Saves world tour coming up as well. Your live performances are just off the charts, your voice has just strengthened and I really can't wait to hear this this album on tour.
You're playing at some beautiful venues, is there anything else you're looking forward to for this tour or any hints you can give us for what's going on?
That's where I excel, live. For me, it's always wonderful to play on your home turf, but I'm also really needing to get out and have other experiences. I have a really beautiful, prestigious live life, I'm really lucky, I work with exquisite musicians. My team is small, but they're really great people, everybody was hand picked. Everybody's like minded, and everybody goes into work with such beautiful positivity. There's a lot of laughter in my entourage. So it's a real joy to do that. But I'm looking forward to servicing my public internationally, because I've had an international career for a long time and I've never had the right fit to be able to go and do that. Going overseas and sort of starting again to build it, while it may seem an arduous task, I think that there's something really beautiful in stripping things back. Just the act of being able to go to London, to go to Montreal, to go to Los Angeles and New York and just say, ‘I'm so sorry, it's taken me so long to get here. I just want to say thank you for watching me through this journey and for listening to what I've had to say’. It's just an appreciation thing for me, I really need to do that now, to get out there and say thank you. To show them the gratitude that is profoundly ingrained in me because I realise how fortunate I am to be able to do something like that and to make people experience joy. It's such a privilege to be able to do that. And that's really what I want to do now. moving forward. And other things too. I have my fingers in a couple of other projects as well. For me, it really is about evolving and thinking outside the box and doing outside the box.

That's probably the most beautiful sentiment I've ever heard for a concert! I was looking at your social media, and your fans are dedicated but there's just this very warm feel to their love. They're there ride or die.
Yeah, they are extraordinary. I've been fortunate so far, to speak to some really, really lovely people who've taken the time to listen to the new album, the actual work,, which is the most important, first and foremost. And the reaction that I'm receiving is really heartwarming. I didn't really know what to expect, I still don't know what to expect. It's always an element of surprise.

Love Saves is out now. You can buy and stream here.
To keep up with all things Tina Arena you can follow her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Read our 2017 8 page interview with Tina Arena in issue 2 of Women In Pop magazine.

Tina Arena will be touring globally across October and November. Tickets on sale now.
Presented by Zaccaria & Positive Dream
7 October: Night At The Barracks, Sydney
8 October: Perth Concert Hall, Perth
13 October: HOTA, Gold Coast
19 & 20 October: Melbourne Town Hall, Melbourne
21 October: Adelaide Festival Centre, Adelaide
5 November: El Rey Theatre, Los Angeles
7 November: City Winery, New York
8 November: Miracle Theatre, Washington DC
11 November: Le Studio TD, Montreal
16 November: Salle Pleyel, Paris