Thanks to Bleachy dude (see the coulter lounge)
GUY ON HIS WAY TO A WORLD OF HIGH NOTES!
He’s back, he’s humble and still hungry for more, writes STEPHEN DOWNIE.
Guy Sebastian bears the cross of being a winner of Australian Idol. But a year on from the singer’s victory on the TV talent search show and on the eve of the release of his second album, Beautiful Life, it’s a burden he’ learned to shoulder.
Two weeks ago more than 3500 Sebastian fans – most of whom have followed the ‘Fro since Idol –swarmed Westfield Mt Druitt’s centre stage.
He wasn’t even singing, They’d turned up to have their copies of Sebastian’s first single from Beautiful life, Out With My Baby, signed.
Critics say what they like about him, and frequently do. For Sebastian, this is what it is all about.
“I make music for people who are going to love it and the people who hate it can listen to something else,” Sebastian says.
Recorded during five months Beautiful Life, the follow-up to his debut offering Just As I Am, is a thumper of an R&B album, well ahead of its predeccesor.
And so it should be, Sebastian has enlisted the help of pop heavyweights such as Robyn Thicke (When I Get You Alone, He’s also the son of Growing Pains star Alan Thicke), Bloodshy and Avante (who’ve worked with Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Janet Jackson), Damon Elliot (Beyonce Knowles and Pink) and diminutive diva, Mya.
But that’s not to diminish the singer’s own writing skills. Of the 14 songs on the album, Sebastian wrote or co-wrote all but four.
Does he think it will make critics eat servings of humble pie? “I think it might silence quite a few of them,” he says.
“I’m very proud of the album. Detaching myself, for what it is, for the genre, I believe it’s a good quality album. Song-wise it’s great, production wise it’s fresh.
“But I know there are people who won’t even listen to my album but will still bag it.”
Popularity is one thing. Credibility is something else entirely.
When Sebastian and his former Idol cohorts were, for the most part, overlooked by the industry for this year’s ARIA awards, the Idol judge Ian “Dicko” Dickson was so incensed he decided to boycott the awards.
Mind you, there was no way that Dicko was going to make it anyway, with the show on the same night as the awards.
Sebastian is smart enough not to distance himself from the show, which made him a household name.
“People voted for me and supported me and for me to say that I’m embarrassed about it is going to be a big kick in the face for them” he says.
“I’m proud to have been voted as Australia’s Idol. I don’t care about the title. I just care that I’m able to make good music.”
Then there was the pubic to-ing and fro-ing between Sebastian and singer and Triple J Unearthed winner Missy Higgins, with Sebastian forced to defend his place in the music industry.
For now, he’s keen to bury the hatchet. “I’d like to meet her, I think she’s very talented,” Sebastian says. “She doesn’t have to like Idol, If she didn’t enter Triple J [Unearthed] maybe people wouldn’t have had the opportunity to realise what an awesome talent she is.”
The debate over whether Idol is good for the industry seems to centre on whether you believe in creating a mould and filling it with a star as opposed to say, nurturing a talent over a number of years.
Rather than ruining the industry, Sebastian believes Idol just might be saving it.
“I’ve heard people say how bad idol is for the music Industry. I just don’t get it.
This industry is plagued by piracy. It’s a shrinking business and is being taken over by the Internet. But kids have come back into stores and are buying CD’s again and we’re saying it’s bad for the industry. The opposite could not be more true,” he says.
Sebastian is Gold, not just for the music industry or TV, but for the media, in general.
In what must seem like a publicist’s dream, barely a day has gone by in the last month or so when Sebastian’s name hasn’t appeared in gossip column and women’s magazines.
As pictures of Sebastian from an advertising shoot were splashed over newspapers with the singer’s famous curly locks straightened, the word was out the singer had abandoned the ‘Fro for good.
The curly-top hair-do has been a part of Sebastian for the past six years and fans can rest assured, that’s not going to change.
“I quite like the ‘Fro. I think I’ll keep it,” he laughs.
“People are coming out to my concerts later this year and will sit in the ‘fro-Zone. I think it will be a bit weird if I rock up with a shaved head.”<
Sebastian admits to being “blown away” at the level of creative control BMG gave him in the making of Beautiful Life.
Part of that had to deal with a deal BMG gave the star after he’d made Just As I Am.
“They promised me late last year: ‘Get this [The debut album] out, Let people have something in their stocking for Christmas and we promise you, you’ll be able to get out, and make your own album and do something that is your own creation’.”<br>
One of the first things you notice especially on songs like the juicy “Sweetest Berry” and “Fiend For You,” is somewhat racy material on offer.
But after such a big deal was made about Sebastian’s devoutly Christian Life, surely there’s a conflict here.
Apparently not.
“I think there is a big difference between sexual and sensual. I think for so long now people thought Christians weren’t allowed to be sensual. We all feel the same physical tendencies as everyone else. I thought there was no reason the ‘Fro can’t be sensual.” Amen Brother.
Beautiful Life is out Monday, Guy Sebastian, State Theatre December 4. Tickets on sale October 25.
Typed by bleachy_dude.
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The beautiful State Theatre ended up as two sell out concerts (they had to add an additional one). WHich never was put on a DVD
Why not? WHen he's a sublime artist on stage? And LIve?
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