Meg Mac Episode III: A New ‘Hope’
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Meg Mac Episode III: A New ‘Hope’

The deeply talented powerhouse songstress, Meg Mac, has been making her way across the country on her sold-out ‘Give Me My Name Back Tour’ and if you were lucky enough to get a glimpse of her on stage, you will know she has a new mini-album coming out. Not an EP, not an album- no, a mini-album.

“When I started the process of making this album there was no pressure of an album or anything hovering over the process. It was made with a guy called Miles Wheaton who was in Melbourne and I was going over to his house because he lived just down the road and we started putting some songs together in his bedroom,” says Mac. “I didn’t know if it was going to be an EP or if it would be an album. It kind of came together and then we realised ‘there’s seven tracks here’, and it just got to the point where it felt complete. It wasn’t a deliberate ‘I’m going to record seven tracks’, it just fell into place.”

She continues, “It was made without a plan. It was made treating each song as a song and seeing where we could take it even stylistically, taking my songs where I haven’t been before. I’ve realised now as I look back at each song and how it was written that I have a different story for how I made up that song and a different process. It’s not always at the piano and it’s not always a lyric, and you might write something in the shower and you never know! So I’m kind of looking forward to the next album and I’m wondering how I will put that one together.”

Titled ‘Hope’ after the songwriters favourite album track, the mini-album explores the two sides of notion; the positive impact of maintaining a hopeful mindset, and the all-consuming turmoil of holding onto hope as a survival mechanism.

“I got really fascinated with the whole idea that we all need hope and it’s what kind of keeps us alive in some way and keeps us going, but it is also a curse and it can drive you crazy and feel like you’re killing yourself sometimes living this life of hope. There’s this really dark side of hope that I wanted to look at,” Mac says.

The forthcoming album includes current single ‘I’m Not Coming Back’, the self-belief, emotionally driven, and first co-written track, ‘Something Tells Me’, and opens with the anthemic, ‘Give Me My Name Back’, a track that deals with regaining identity.

“I wrote [Give Me My Name Back] around the time of the ‘Me Too’ movement when all of these women were standing up and I was seeing people with so much strength and courage to just get up and stand up for what’s right. I pushed that message when I put the song out and I received so many private messages from people telling me their story and how the song related to them and there were so many stories from the LGBTQI community with people coming out to their family.”

“I never could have imagined that ‘Give Me My Name Back’ could mean so many different things to so many different people.”

While the tracks cover deep content, the Meg Mac sound we’ve known and loved over the last five years is still prominent.

“I’m so happy with how this album turned out because I feel like it’s really made a step forward in sound but it also still sounds so much like me and my songs.”

‘Hope’ is out 7 June 2019.

Written by Tammy Walters