Stella Donnelly on the path to greatness
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Stella Donnelly on the path to greatness

Perth darling Stella Donnelly was one of the clear stand-outs of BIGSOUND earlier this year. And rightly so, she was amazing. Her showcase appearance was fueled with inspiring lyrics, real talk, gorgeous vocals and incredible wit. She was that good she was even named the inaugural winner of the Levi’s Music Prize, awarding her $25,000.

“Oh my god, that was insane,” Donnelly reveals with a smile. “For me, it was already a win just been in Brisbane and playing. That was just a huge cherry on top that has made life so much easier.

“I got into South by Southwest(SXSW) for next year which is in Texas and you have to pay your own way to get there, so those things have become a little bit easier for me,” she says. “I work in a café at home, so now I can focus on my music as well as working, it just takes that pressure off which is just so nice. I feel so blessed and so lucky to be given that.”

At the beginning of 2017 Donnelly released her debut EP Thrush Metal and received critical acclaim and radio support from community radio and triple j. The five-track release (including the brilliant ‘Mechanical Bull’ was written over the space of two years; a musical undertaking resulting in a bold and unapologetic repertoire of songs which has propelled Donnelly to the forefront of the new guard of Australian songwriters.

The EP clearly communicated Donnelly’s ability to dissect raw subject matter with wit and breathtaking incisiveness, especially with her track ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ which was written in late 2016 as an attempt at making sense of society’s tendency to blame the victims of sexual assault and rape and make excuses for the perpetrators.

“It was difficult to write, and it was difficult to be engulfed in and I do understand the heaviness of it,” Donnelly explains of the wrenching track, “and that’s why I give it a content warming before I play, just so that people who may be victims of something like this, or that this may have happened to, they can make the choice to sit and listen, or make the choice to step out and have a break during this song.

“For people who have been through something like this, I feel like it’s unfair to just throw this in their face, but it’s also a conversation that needs to happen. Toeing that line is that balance between not wanting to constantly throw it in victims faces, but also talk about it so that there will be less victim blaming.”

With an issue so prevalent in today’s society, Donnelly admits that she never expected the song to gain the coverage that it did.

“That’s the crazy thing about it, I put the EP out on a cassette tape expecting to sell like 40 or 50 tapes to my mum and her friends, that’s it. To me, that was where I was going with it, and I was working Boat Show [the band] and I was going to start studying this year. I was like ‘I’ll just put this EP out because I need to get these songs off my chest’ and then it got the coverage that it did. It just became the monster that it is, which is a good monster,” she says. “Now I’m just going with it and trying to do the right thing and every day is a new challenge.”

Now, Donnelly is taking the song around the nation as part of her Boys Will Be Boys headline tour, having already performed in Brisbane and at Mullum Music Festival, and will be stopping by Queenscliff Music Festival this weekend before heading to Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide (for the boutique festival Porchland), Wollongong to support San Cisco, and Fairgrounds Festival to round out 2017.

“I think it just felt like the right time to do it,” she says of the headline tour. “We were booking relatively smaller venues so it’s not an overwhelming daunting process, and because I got booked for Queenscliff and a few other festivals around, it just felt like I could dot my little shows around those dates. It works out well. Being from Perth, you’re already over here, you should just kind of play – the flights were really expensive coming back,” she laughs.

“I’m excited because I’m actually doing a bit of a drive,” Donnelly continues, taking to the road for her trip around the nation. “I love driving, and actually seeing the country side! Queenscliff, I get to drive down there and see Lorne and I’ve never been to that part of the world before so I’m so excited. I’ve heard that it’s just beautiful. It’s nice that I get to make it a bit of a holiday really, I’m very lucky.”

Having just won five of the six Western Australian Music Awards she was nominated for, leading the winners’ pack by taking out Best EP, Best Folk Act, Best Single, Best Female Vocalist and Most Popular New Act, you’d be crazy to miss seeing this Perth darling’s live performance.

Catch her this weekend at Queenscliff Music Festival, or if you missed out on tickets she will be performing at The Toff, Melbourne on November 30. Tickets via moshtix.

Written by Talia Rinaldo