INTERVIEW: H3rizon on latest single 'Soul Ties (Don't Give It Up)': "One thing that's really important for us when it comes to making music is showing versatility"

Interview: Jett Tattersall
Image: Nadia Razlan
Published: 1 July 2024

Just one listen to Australian trio H3rizon and it is easy to understand why they are being spoken about as future global superstars.

First releasing music in 2019, last year their career took a major step forward when they signed with US iconic record label Epic - a label that has signed Mariah Carey, Madison Beer and Celine Dion over the years - in partnership with RZ3 Recordings.

Comprising of Bernie, Gabby and Tiara, H3rizon are the first Australian and first Asian-Pacific female group to sign with Epic in the labels 70+ year history.

H3rizon have recently released their new single ‘Soul Ties (Don’t Give It Up)’, which was co-written by Theron Thomas, this year’s inaugural winner of the GRAMMY for Songwriter of The Year, and produced by acclaimed producer Tricky Stewart, with all vocal arrangements by H3rizon. Stewart has produced hits for artists such as Rihanna, Beyoncé and Britney Spears. The track is a glorious melding of pop, R&B , funk and soul, with an almost sensual beat that soon transforms into a funky synth beat, some glorious soaring melodies and vocals from the band and a hypnotic, almost chant like chorus which brings in whispers of 1980s synthpop. As with everything H3rizon release, the whole song is set off by their sublime vocals.

“We’re super excited to get this feel-good tune out into the world,” H3rizon say. “Whoever you’re obsessed with, ‘Soul Ties’ is the summer bop you never knew you needed! As R&B girlies, we love adding our vocal sauce on our tracks. Listen out for all the harmonies and layering... you know this ain’t your standard pop track!”

In just a few years H3rizon have proved they are a band of women that are overflowing with talent and potential as well as voices that border on stunning - take a listen to their acappella track ‘You Don’t Know Nothin’’ if any more proof is needed. With a versatility that sees them authentically embrace R&B, pop and soul they have everything you will ever want in a music group. H3rizon are only going to be get more and more exciting with every release, and we recently caught up with them to find out more.

Hi H3rizon! So good to be chatting to you today. First of all, you are living the dream in the sense of I think all of us when we were young would get together with our friends in our bedrooms and pretend we were in a band, and you're actually doing it!
Gabby: That's how it started. We've known each other for like, over 10 years. We grew up together.
Tiara: We're all Filipino, and the Filipino community in Sydney is obviously very strong, and we used to perform as front acts when Filipino artists would do their tours in Australia. That's how we met, through these mutual gigs as soloists at the time. Because we were always performing at the same gigs, we obviously built a friendship. Backstage, in rehearsals, we'd just be jamming out, doing our own thing. Bernie's house would always be the rehearsal house, we would go to Bernie's house, and there was times where we would just be singing songs, nothing to do with the show, just jamming.
Bernie: We just felt really good. We were like "‘we could make some something out of this.’ It was completely organic, we weren’t put together.

Were you all just basically soloists, hustling for gigs?
Gabby: We were only like 10 to 12 years old, so our moms would just put us in these gig. ‘Go sing!’ That's how it is in the Filipino community here, you start off young. Especially on karaoke machines!

Can I ask you, what's your go to karaoke song individually and now as a group?
Tiara: Okay, when I was younger, my mum used to force me to sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion, but my go to karaoke song now would be ‘Push the Button’ by The Sugababes.
Bernie: Oh, mine is so out of pocket. Mine is ‘Eye of the Tiger’. And Shania Twain! ‘From This Moment On’, that is going to be my wedding song, I don't care what anyone says!
Gabby: Growing up it was ‘Reflection’ from Milan, and now ‘Just Let Me Love You’ by Mario.

Let's now talk about ‘Soul Ties (Don't Give It Up)’. This is such a fun song, and you guys have such a beautiful delivery. Talk to me about this track, because it feels a little lighter that your previous tracks.
Bernie: We got to work with Grammy Award winners on this track, Theron Thomas, who won Songwriter of the Year. He's also written ‘Juice’ by Lizzo, he's done a bunch of tracks. We also worked with Tricky Stewart. He did ‘Baby’ by Justin Bieber and Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)’. We wanted this song to be that feel good, summery feeling. It's not just about your soul mates, your lover. It can be your friends, it can be your family, it can be your dog, your cat, whatever it is.
Tiara: A track that everyone can relate to and everyone can vibe to.

Beautiful. You have the most adorable lyric video as well. Talk to me about your delivery on it, because it does have this kind of breezy feel but there's still power behind it. Al three of you can really belt when you need to, was that almost something that you were a bit nervous about dialling the vocals back?
Gabby: One thing that's really important for us when it comes to releasing music and just making music is showing versatility, and how we're able to tap into so many different styles, different genres, what we can do with our voices, changing up our tone, switching up harmonies and everything. We can do all these cool belt stuff, but we also want to show like we can be laid back, we can be cute, we can be fun. And just show people all the different sides to us through our music. Because it also shows our personalities as well. We do have that fun side to us, and then we have our edgy, sensual, sides. We have all of that.
Tiara: There's a little disclaimer. ‘Soul Ties (Don’t Give It Up)’ actually wasn't the song we planned to release. It was the more belty, more edgy one that actually was meant to be this release, so we just had to switch it up due to a change of plans, some paperwork going on in the background. But don't worry, it's all good, because it's gonna be the next one.

What makes me really happy about H3rizon is that girl groups just made me happy anyway, but there was a period where we didn't have any, particularly in Australia. We just don't give them any space, and so quite often, our beautiful, talented, amazing women go away overseas and do amazing things there, and it's just such a shame. How have you found navigating the industry as a girl group? Did you come across any initial prejudice? Was there trepidation?
Tiara: No, feel like we've always been so supportive of everyone around us, groups and soloists, because we strongly believe that there's room for everybody in this industry. Everyone's got their own uniqueness and individuality and we just wanted to show what ours was. We went to Atlanta last year and we met up with another girl group from the UK, Flo. We had been supporting each other online from the get go, and we watched their show, we met them backstage, and when we met, on social media people were like, ‘Oh, my God, girl groups colliding, this is something so foreign’. Because of the whole stereotype of seeing two girl groups, they think, ‘it shouldn't be like that.’ But we're supportive of everybody.

You’re so right, there is that notion of pitting against each other., How have you navigated the space in Australia? Famously, and the way I see it, the Australian music industry is a guy with a guitar in a flannelette shirt. We have a couple of other things, but that's the main umbrella of it.
Bernie: You know, we are just so determined to bring back the era of girl groups and make it popular in Australia.
Gabby: We were actually independent for five years, we started from rock bottom. Coming as girls from Western Sydney, we worked very, very hard on our craft every single day, quitting our jobs, quitting university - which obviously didn't go well with our Filipino parents - but for us, we're not just destined for Australia, we're destined worldwide. So we committed to making sure, especially on our social media, we were connecting with our fans all across the world. People don't even know we're Australian sometimes, you know, because we're here to represent just being a girl group.

I mean in a way you don't have to because you’ve already kind of surpassed that. You're the first Australia, Asia-Pacific girl group to sign to Epic in partnership with RZ3 Recordings. You're already making it international which is incredible. Speaking of I have to say, when I watched the ‘You Don’t Know Nothin’’ video, I was like, ‘it's En Vogue!’
Gabby: That's what we envisioned!
Bernie: Acapella is our roots. Despite everything that we do, we always come back to our harmonies and R&B and soul and just all the good stuff around it.
Tiara: It made a lot of sense to release ‘You Don't Know Nothin’, our version of the For Real song. It was like an ode to them and to their time of 90s girl groups, R&B and harmonies. We really just wanted to showcase that to our era.
Gabby: We kind of saw it as like a great transition of being independent artists to now being signed artists, and the people that have supported us for our acapellas. It's like, just because we're signed artists doesn't mean we're gonna stay away from that. We still love acapella.

I like that you talk about the slug getting there, because in the era that inspired you three, the late 90s, early 2000s, there was still very much this big wall between the fans and the artists. We were just given the artists, we weren't allowed to see how hard they'd been working. I feel like it's so amazing now, because we get artists such as yourself who can say, we quit university, we had no money, we've been doing this since we were 12, which I think is really important to hear.
Tiara: But even getting signed, that doesn't stop. We're still living at home. We're still trying to hustle. It's just a whole new level that we're trying to learn for ourselves now. That's why it's important that we are still showing these sides of us.
Bernie: It looks like we're thriving and everything, and we are, but there's still all those things that take hard work and dedication.
Gabby: We want other people to look at this as ‘don't let anything stop you’. We never had that growing up, we didn't have a Filipino, Australian girl group to look up to from Western Sydney. So we want to be that. We want to be that for young Filipino, especially women, who aspires to be at a place where we're at right now.

That's beautiful. If you don't see it, you struggle to be it. On that notion, I can hear your inspirations, but who was it for each of you that you pretended to be when you were younger? Who were your girl groups sheros?
Tiara: I grew up listening to the divas in music. So Mariah, Whitney, Celine, clearly my mum made me sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’. Just old school R&B like Boyz II Men. Jodeci, 702, SWV. That influenced a lot of my music style growing up, because I didn't have access to a lot of things that could help me learn music knowledge. I didn't have piano lessons, I didn't have singing lessons, I didn't have any of that. So I had to go off the music that I liked and how they sounded. I want to sound like her, let me try doing that.
Gabby: I actually grew up with classical music because I studied it in high school but I wouldn't say Mozart was my biggest influence! Growing up, a singer that I looked up to a lot is a Filipino singer Lea Salonga. She was someone that I grew up listening to because she actually did classical training, so I resonated with her a lot in my singing. But also your classic R&B. My mum loves to say every time a 90s song comes ‘that's my time! Did you know that's my time?’ I'm like, ‘I know. I get it. The 90s were really good!’
Bernie: I grew up around a lot of music. Again, the Filipino karaoke at every family gathering. Me singing Michael Jackson all the time. I did also study music in high school and in uni as well, which I dropped out of. But I took what I needed from that, I took production skills and now I apply that to this group. I've made a lot of beats for our covers, our own little versions of songs. And also I've produced for some of our originals. I also did a lot of choral singing in high school and uni so that's where I learned my harmonies. I feel like we all pretty much learned what we needed to learn growing up to just fit the jigsaw puzzle of H3rizon perfectly. Different backgrounds, different things. Gabby can provide her classical ear training, her piano skills. We got Tiara’s powerhouse of a voice. I got my little production.

I love that you're talking about harmonies. This is a crazy question, but I want to know where is the most random place you've gone ‘Hold on, this is it, this is where we sound the best.’?
Tiara: I don't know if it's where we sound the best, but one of my favourite memories is we were in a museum in Manila and we started singing the flower duet, and the security guard was like ‘sorry, you can't sing here Stop singing. Just stop singing.’ And then we posted it on Tiktok, and it went viral. And every comment said, ‘you should have kept singing!’
Gabby: Some people were commenting ‘I understand where security is coming from, your singing might shatter the glass!’

Amazing I don't want to do it, but I'm gonna have to say it - what's on the horizon for you?
Tiara: So, as we mentioned before, we have a new single coming out soon, which was meant to be this one, but it's okay. And then shortly after that we’ll ave our debut EP as signed artists, so that's something to really look forward to. So stay tuned to our socials!
Bernie: Beyond the horizon!

‘Soul Ties (Don’t Give It Up’ is out now. You can buy and stream here.
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