After growing up amongst peers slathered in Roxy clothes, Tanya George became aware early on of the pressures of the material world – and it’s what her newest single and clip is about.
“[Broke Ass Girl] is about the superficial world and it was written in a time where I was broke financially, my car had broken down, my parents divorced, I’d broken up with my boyfriend – so kind of this concept of being broken in every way,” she says honestly.
Tanya takes this journey through the clip, breaking things that symbolise the superficiality of life and ultimately coming to find her own place in the world amongst the rubbish of it all.
“’Broke Ass Girl’ is about all of that and waking up from it all and being individual… it all builds up to say, ‘Hey, it’s bigger and better to be different than to fit in’,” she says.
With Tanya’s focus not on the material things in life, she turned her attention to singing, pressuring her mother early on to get her private singing lessons.
“Music’s just been the thing that drives me,” she says with assurance. “It’s this weird thing that brings people together and I feel like you can never master music fully and that’s what keeps me around – there’s never ‘I know everything about music’. No one will ever know everything about music.
“I just love that there’s this never-ending world of growing and exploring and I think it’s really developed me into the person that I am. I don’t think Id be able to show my compassion, understanding, heartache and love.”
The lessons paid off, with a stint early on singing on the white sandy beach on Hamilton Island for the I Still Call Australia Home Qantas Ad.
Since then she’s performed live at the AFL broadcast on Foxtel, opened the Fashion+ Aid event, had a stint on the Voice and overall come to find herself through her music – particularly through her debut EP Sonder.
“It was a real raw time for me to explore myself as an artist and be really honest,” Tanya says. “My whole point of the EP was to be vulnerable and be honest about what I wanted to say. That’s why I almost tried to close my eyes while I was writing the lyrics so I could picture the detail I was writing and that people could hear the story.”
“I wanted all my experiences and all my words that I was writing to be completely relevant to someone else’s life because I think that’s ultimately what someone’s music does is, that they can relate of it and understand what they wrote,” she says.
With her EP just over six months old, Tanya’s music has already touched others in its own way. With each fan making their own connection to the music, just as she’d hoped.
When & Where: The Night Cat, Melbourne – December 1
Release: Sonder EP available now.
Written by Amanda Sherring
