How Robbie Williams Wanting Chocolate Stopped The Jezabels Signing To A Major Label
The whole PR team were too busy finding a particular kind of chocolate to talk.
For the last few months, Hayley Mary of The Jezabels has been crafting one of the singular solo careers in the history of Australian pop.
Her debut EP as a solo artist, The Piss, The Perfume is glorious, filled with wet-eyed romanticism and nostalgic pop bangers. What more could you possible want?
For that reason, it was a joy to be joined in the Music Junkee studio by Hayley Mary herself for an episode of The Artist Alphabet, the series that challenges musicians to share their most intimate and surprising stories. And Mary didn’t disappoint.
Opening up conversation with the time Mary and the Jezabels had a meeting held up while a PR team tried to locate a bar of Robbie Williams’ favourite chocolate in an attempt to sign him, Mary moved onto a discussion of writer’s block.
“I had almost given up on songwriting,” Mary said. “I spent five years wandering the Earth, wondering if I was still a musician and whether I should continue, and I had quite a negative experience in a songwriting session. And I came home and said to my boyfriend, ‘I think I’m going to stop making music.’
“And he’d had a few drinks and written like three songs, because he’s an overachiever, and he was like, ‘That’s pathetic.’ And he started cornering me and playing this chords and was going, ‘Write a song to this.'”
After Mary and her partner spent some time running around the house, him playing guitar chords at her aggressively, she eventually folded, and they wrote a song together about her being a brat.
“It was the first song that made me inspired to make my first solo EP,” Mary said.
See? Sometimes all you need is that little push. Watch the rest of the interview with Hayley Mary here: