Home Music Music Features

‘I Was Very Undercooked’: Guy Sebastian Reflects on the Path From ‘Australian Idol’ to Bottling Inspiration   

Five years is a lifetime in pop music, and Guy Sebastian is fully aware. RS spoke with the pop idol on the release of his new album

Guy Sebastian

Supplied

The best laid plans, as we know, are at the mercy of the unknown.

The set-up for 100 Times Around The Sun (via Sony Music), Guy Sebastian’s tenth studio album and first in almost five years, was enriched by personal growth, travel and collaboration, counterbalanced with the distraction of a court case, one that has rumbled on since before his last album, the 2020 ARIA Chart leader T.R.U.T.H.

Five years is a lifetime in pop music. And Sebastian, who is now self-managed, is fully aware.

“I know it’s been a long time, but I also want to say things,” he tells Rolling Stone AU/NZ over a Zoom. “I don’t feel like I can go through enough life in a year or a year-and-a-half to make a whole body of work.” 100 Times Around The Sun “is very, very lyrical. It’s very much about the poetry side of it and it’s very personal. So that can only happen authentically if I’ve lived some life and over four or five years, I’ve definitely lived some more life and have things to say.”

For Sebastian, the only constant has been change. Parenthood will do that, as will cutting ties with business associates and establishing a new label and management business. Going out alone.

T.R.U.T.H. was predominantly about pulling myself out of the mud. It was like pulling myself out of the situation and things that caused me to maybe believe a whole lot of lies and things that were a bit unhealthy,” he recounts, “and not let people put a ceiling over my life or make me feel like I was a failure.”

In the intervening years, he recounts, a realisation that “there’s always going to be periods of just tough, thick stuff to get through. I don’t need to survive through it. I can still thrive through that period, if I’ve got the right circle. As you get older, you realise you can’t please everyone. And in the pursuit of doing so, you actually become nothing to everyone. I don’t have to spend more energy defending untruths or defending things that don’t matter. I can just rest in this circle. And if I had a thousand lifetimes, a thousand times, one hundred times around the sun, I would want this same circle. And that’s pretty much what the album’s about.”

Love Music?

Get your daily dose of everything happening in Australian/New Zealand music and globally.

Sebastian is a generous character, despite an unusual introduction into the mainstream way back in 2003 as the first Australian Idol, a young lad with striking hair and an even more impressive voice.

A former session musician with a record collection that goes deep into Motown and grunge, Sebastian “felt like I was kind of ready” for the celebrity runway. “I guess skill-wise, I felt like I had some chops, but I don’t think I was really personally. I was very undercooked as a person, very naive, and sheltered.”

Now aged 43, Sebastian is all grown up.

100 Times Around The Sun has been a labour of love, shaped by travel (“for the last four years from Sydney to LA to Bali to Nashville, I have poured everything of myself into this album,” he remarks in a statement). Influenced by soul.

It’s led by the singles “I Chose Good”, “Antidote” featuring Sam Fischer, “No Reason To Stay”, “Maybe” and “Get It Done”, with producer Lucian Nagy at the desk and Jamie Hartman lending co-songwriting credits.

The Idol experience is a flash-in-the pan for most artists. Sebastian is an outlier, with seven ARIA Awards and 1.3 billion worldwide streams. He’s the only Australian male artist to have landed six #1 ARIA singles.

The singer and songwriter embarks on a national tour in support of the new collection from next April, produced by TEG Live. Before that, outdoors dates including Friday night, August 8th at Darwin Festival, where he christens an outdoor venue in the city’s Waterfront Precinct, followed by a slot at Come Together Festival in north England, one of several shows penciled in for the UK and Europe.

“I’m very grateful that I’ve got that (work) ethic,” he tells RS. “There’s been times where maybe it was a little unhealthy and I didn’t have a very good balance. It’s healthy when it’s fuelled by just pure passion, but sometimes it can also be fuelled by a bit of fear. That you’re going to lose your spot and that you’re gonna not be a good steward of the opportunity you’ve been given.”

The “last eight to ten years, I really got a much healthier balance,” he explains. “In music-making mode, it’s about actually capitalising on the moments of inspiration, when you’re really feeling it.”

In This Article: Guy Sebastian