If I Get In, Where Would I Go? is out now!
Image: Saskia Hilton.
Australian artist, Great Stanley has released her third studio album, If I Get In, Where Would I Go?. To celebrate the release, the singer is taking us through the collection of songs track-by-track.
IF I GET IN, WHERE WOULD I GO?
This was the last song to come together for the album, Adib and I actually wrote this in the studio from scratch - I wanted a song that felt hopeful, and I wanted to write to capture how I was really feeling overall. I’d just been through the worst floods in 100 years in FNQ, diagnosed with an autoimmune condition that was causing me chronic pain, lost most of my items and my rental and was forced to leave where I lived (cairns) and move back with my parents. Music was feeling harder than ever to navigate with so much else going on - and the floods were really a test of my patience and perseverance, I wanted this song to be a reminder that I have to face the unknown, get out of my comfort zone, and into something new and see what happens, give it my best and hope it works out.
EVERY TIME I THINK I’M HAPPY
I wrote this song actually before I had an answer to this really crippling pain I’d been dealing with - the pain had limited my ability to work, socialise, play music, even walk my dogs or cook myself a meal, it turned my regular anxiety and low points into extremes and I felt really scared of myself. It felt really hard just to do basic shit like motivate myself to have a shower or eat a meal. The line ‘every time I think I’m happy, you come back up and grab me’ is about how when I feel a moment or period of joy, my depression (and/or pain) was coming and taking it away from me. The outro of this song ‘I’m gonna make it happen, I’m gonna be so happy’ was trying to overcome this pain and not let it take me down - that yes there is an element of things I can’t control, but I’m not going to let the dark stuff win. I’m going to try my best to get better, and try my hardest to keep hope and a positive outlook.
CRY CRY CRY
Ever planned to go to an awesome NYE party with your boyfriend and then gone into a full panic attack on the drive to it and not capable of stepping out of the car once you arrive - then feeling really guilty you’ve ruined your partners fun? Cos that’s what this song was born from. I guess panic attacks for me are a lot less frequent these days, but I do still have some pretty hectic social anxiety which is wild considering I can play on a stage to lots of people but find it hard to have a conversation with 1 haha. In this moment all I wanted to do was be home with my dogs, I couldn’t communicate what was going on and I couldn’t calm down for the duration of it - I felt like I’d missed out, and I felt like I’d made someone else miss out too and that felt worse.
LIFE OF THE PARTY
This ironically ties in with cry cry cry but was a different period of time, I actually make it to parties sometimes! It’s about being a little bit jealous of your friends who are so seamlessly confident and fun and outgoing, (anxiety? They don’t know her haha) and wishing you could spend a night in their shoes to know what that feels like to not be so in your head all the time! I love my fun friends
GREATEST HIT
I was listening to a lot of Petey and Medium Build at the time this song came about. I loved the energy in their songs and their shouted emotional vocals, they also have this emo pop punk kind of element to some of their songs that I loved and felt nostalgic. I wanted a song with energy, that felt really fun and felt good to sing, it’s about believing you should love yourself and imagine all the potential you could unlock if you could just be kinder to yourself and talk to yourself like a friend!
WHEN YOU CALL
When you call was a song I always wanted to be moody and sultry, drawing influence from k.flay, Willow, Lana Del Rey. It’s about love that shows up when you weren’t looking, and when you had kind of felt burnt by previous experiences and hesitant to try again - but ultimately not being able to deny the feeling and realising there’s great to be felt if ya just let it in.
PHOEBE
This song is a little nod to Phoebe Bridgers, the line in the song ‘can’t keep listening to Phoebe, it’s brought to much to the surface’ is about me relating too much to a lot of her songs and realising I wasn’t feeling good bringing all this stuff back up (dw still love her just had to give it a small rest haha) Cody produced this song, and he was excited cos he’s a huge Phoebe fan! I wanted the message to be that we are all learning as we grow older, and we all have unique experiences but collectively - a lot of the things we do as we grow up are still firsts - so don’t be so hard on yourself when you don’t nail it right away it’s also about coming back to your breath, thanks yogi’s for that lesson
ITS COOL TO BE IN LOVE
love is scary, and sometimes it brings up a lot of stuff you didn’t know you had going on inside you (fear, anxiety, insecurity, attachment issues LOL) it’s about being vulnerable and wearing your heart on your sleeve, not trying to play it cool or send mixed messages because you’re too old for that shit - letting go of your ego and realising hey, it’s cool to be in love! And I love you big time!
BAD ENERGY
I wanted the album to have a meditative moment to bring the balance with the heavier stuff, the pop stuff and the more emotional songs. I think bad energy is one of my favourites on the album, I just love the feeling it brings - I wrote this after seeing my friend who practices reiki and who is also a psychic and a makeup artist, (what can’t she do?) and it was the first time I had tried a more spiritual practice for my mental health, it was a really confronting and cathartic experience and even if you never knew what Amber did as a profession, she has this strong calming and reassuring presence about her where you just feel safe and heard. She talked to me a lot about my fear holding me back, and about silencing the constant chatter in my mind.
SASKIA
I wrote this song inspired by one of my besties and I talking about how we were both going to therapy and how scary that felt - and working on our shit, and wanting to be better for our future. It’s about doing the hard work, and being so lucky to have friends that help you through it. I wanted it to capture what our lives might look like in the future if we do the work now knowing we have each other when things get difficult.
If I Get In, Where Would I Go? is out now!
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