Georgia Lines continued her incredible year so far last week with the release of stunning new EP, The Guest House.
The Guest House followed the Aotearoa singer-songwriter’s debut album The Rose of Jericho, which earned Lines six nominations at the Aotearoa Music Awards. Lines was also named as a finalist for the 2025 Taite Music Prize.
The Guest House contains five tracks: “Wonderful Life”, “Julia”, “Till the Music Stops”, “Limoncello”, and the title track.
The most exciting part of the new EP, though, is the accompanying documentary, which is premiering on Rolling Stone AU/NZ below. Shot in April of this year, Lines and eight close friends filmed for a week at a beautiful 120-year-old farm house in Manawatū.
In an exclusive essay, which you can read below, Lines takes us deeper inside her EP and documentary, revealing what inspired the record, including a meeting with a certain Coldplay frontman.
Georgia Lines’ The Guest House EP is out now.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve written and rewritten these words, trying to find the right way to describe the world this collection of songs belongs to. But maybe that’s fitting, because just like a guest house, you arrive as a stranger, but with time you learn to settle into its quiet offerings, its unspoken welcome.
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These songs invite you in. Into my kitchen, into the quiet corners of my home. It’s a space where you, my guest, are welcome to settle in among the small, everyday things that make up my world. Mugs stacked on the shelf, books scattered across the floor, post-it notes with personal mantras stuck to the fridge. A cup of tea and a square of dark chocolate await you as you ease into The Guest House.
A few months ago, I had a conversation I’ll never forget with a musical hero of mine, Chris Martin. We sat together, and before we parted, he shared a poem with me that had changed his life: The Guest House by Rumi. At the time, the words resonated deeply with where I was in my own journey, though I hadn’t yet connected them to this collection of songs I had already been quietly shaping.
If you’ve never read The Guest House, it’s a poem that uses the metaphor of a guest house to describe the human experience of emotions. It encourages us to treat each feeling, whether joyful or painful, as a visitor. Instead of resisting or shutting the door, Rumi suggests we welcome them all with curiosity, even laughter. Because every emotion, even the difficult ones, have something to teach us.
That sentiment struck a chord deep within me.
For the past few years, I’ve been moving through unfamiliar terrain – putting one foot in front of the other, trying to find a new kind of “normal.” Learning how to catch spiders and unwelcome four-legged guests. Learning how to mow the lawn, cook something that doesn’t require a hot chicken and change a tyre. Learning how to sit in my own company and be okay with the quiet. And as I reflect, I realise this season of my life has been its own guest house. A space that, at first, felt deeply foreign, its routines unfamiliar, its walls strange. But with time, I’ve settled into it, finding comfort in what once felt deeply uncomfortable.
These songs were crafted in motion, between guest rooms, across three countries, in quiet moments of reflection, and over countless cups of tea. And as I’ve moved physically from place to place, I’ve felt the tide shift internally, too. The weight of heaviness and loss that has lingered over the past few years has begun to lift, ever so slightly. The tunnel that once felt endless is finally opening up. The question that once pressed so heavily—Will things always be this way?—has slowly given way to a quiet understanding: that change is constant, always unfolding, even when we are fumbling in the dark, unable to see the shift we long for.
Finding the perfect “real-life guest house” was no small feat. I knew how much meaning the songs carried, and I wanted a farmhouse that held the essence of these songs. Something with a garden, wooden floors, and a history untouched by modern facelifts, a place that felt honest and full of stories in its walls. I wanted to live in the house, to bring my friends along for a week, and to capture the entire visual world in one swoop. Asking eight friends to press pause on their own lives to help me do this was no small feat either. What you see in the video accompanying The Guest House is the reveal behind the curtain of that week: the many meals, late nights, early mornings, silliness, quiet tears, laughter and terrible sleeps with bad dreams. The real-life embodiment of The Guest House.
Much like the poem, these songs have been my way of making sense of it all. They’ve helped me give voice to the nuance of change, of transition, of learning to co-exist with the unexpected guests that come and go. I know my stay in this guest house, with these particular unannounced visitors, won’t be forever. One day, I will wake up and realise they have slipped away in the night. But for now, I am doing my best to “meet them at the door laughing,” to “invite them in,” allowing each emotion, each guest, to take a seat at my table and embrace whatever they have brought with them.
So, as you step into The Guest House, and you sit at the table with a cup of tea and a cheese toastie, my hope is that these songs encourage you to welcome the unexpected visitors in your own life. That you greet them with laughter, even through the tears. That you let them teach you something.
Because just like a guest house, life is a space we pass through. And every visitor, every fleeting moment, no matter how strange or sudden, has something to offer,
If we are brave enough to let it in.
All my love,
Georgia
