They say things come in threes. For Sarah Blasko, that came true in 2020. “A lot of really huge things happened to me in that year: the end of a lifelong friendship, I had a baby and the world was ending,” she says. “The poetry of it was something that I couldn’t deny.”
One of Australia’s most revered contemporary singer-songwriters, Blasko was raised in the Pentecostal church believing in – and waiting for – the apocalypse. Despite having left the church long ago, this triptych of life-rumbling events seemed like the big one.
She inverts the words of the gospel – complete with a haunting choral backing – on The Way, the first single from her upcoming seventh album, I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain: “Show me the way, the truth of my life,” she sings. The record explores the ways in which one’s history – religious upbringing, seismic shifts in personal relationships – is never far behind.
We meet at Blasko’s inner-west Sydney terrace home on an unseasonably sunny winter morning. The first thing I see when I walk in is a huge, framed poster for the Woody Allen film Annie Hall – “The only disclaimer in the house,” she laughs – and then the rest: records, books, large Lego heads filled with toy bricks.
Blasko lives here with her musician partner Dave Miller, of Sydney electronic band PVT, and their sons Jerry, nine, and Charlie, four. It’s a lovely, comforting place. She shows me her extensive tea collection and we settle on a floral blend, but despite the peace of our surroundings, Blasko admits that at 48, she’s still untangling, and might always be.
“I’m still a recovering Christian,” she says, sitting at her dining table. “I had to remodel my brain to just be in the moment, to be here and enjoy life … My whole life I was told that the divine was somewhere else, which robs you of enjoyment of life, because you’re focused on some other thing.”
I mention Maple Glider and Julia Jacklin, two other Australian singer-songwriters who have released albums in the last few years regarding the knotty, inexorable cycle of life after leaving religion. Blasko laughs: “I wondered why I have an affinity with these people.”
Blasko faces it all head-on with this record. I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain excavates her past: a divorce in her 20s (To Be Alone), that shattering friendship dissolution (Bothering Me), a eulogy for a late friend (Dream Weaver). Ghosts circle these songs, but so does something else: hope, liberation and release.
It’s a record of goodbyes and new beginnings, wrapped in an otherworldly blanket of sound with Blasko’s first instrument, the piano, at the fore. Unlike past albums, made over weeks of 12-hour studio sessions, this one was recorded in just days, and self-produced. There’s no overthinking, just confidence and truth. “It’s a very free-flowing record,” Blasko says. “Every time I write on piano, I always want to hide it. This time I was like, ‘Nah, you know what? I’m gonna leave the piano as it is, and I want it to be the centre’ … I wanted to keep the naivety of my playing.”
This year marks two decades since Blasko released her dark, melancholic debut, The Overture and the Underscore. It’s a frequent flyer in lists of great Australian albums and the foundation for her career both solo and as a member of the folk supergroup Seeker Lover Keeper with fellow singer-songwriters Holly Throsby and Sally Seltmann (their last record was released in 2019 but they chat every day, mostly exchanging photos of their lunches).
While Blasko sometimes flits into other sonic territories (her “love record”, 2015’s Eternal Return, leans into electronica in tribute to PVT), the yearning in her music, and her distinctive, ethereal voice, are constant.
She has high-profile fans, Elton John and Neil Finn among them, and plenty of musical mates from across the years. Paul Dempsey is both: an instant admirer before becoming a close friend. “I remember hearing Don’t U Eva and being struck straight away by what a complete artist she was,” the Something For Kate frontman says. “She’s so in control of her voice, but at the same time, it’s so free.”
Blasko revisited her debut recently. She is self-effacing about it (“I’m singing in a weird accent!”) but ultimately found the experience healing. “I find it really hard to listen to that record and I hadn’t listened to it for a very long time, but I really needed to,” she says. “I realised how much I’d forgotten about that time … You have to forgive yourself when you listen to something that was made such a long time ago.”
She recognises the emotional impact it has had on listeners, so tries to treat her inner critic lightly. “When people have been listening to your music through really difficult times – the birth of their child or the death of their mother … that becomes a real precious part of it,” she says. “It’s not really about you any more.”
Over the last 20 years, Blasko has witnessed a changing industry – for instance, there’s now pressure for artists to double as content creators. She prefers to steer clear (“When I see that sad look on someone’s face – when I know they want me to buy a ticket or their album – I just want to run a mile away”), but admires those who fold it seamlessly into their artistry. “I like the humour in what Charli xcx does,” she says. “She makes it look like, ‘Fuck it – I’m just gonna do whatever I want with all of this and have a good time with it’, which I can’t do.”
After all, it’s part of Blasko’s nature to do things her own way. “She’s always struck me as one of those people,” Dempsey says. “It doesn’t matter what’s around her, or what trends come or go – Sarah’s going to be Sarah.”
Another change is in the Australian live music landscape, with festivals rapidly dying out. Those opportunities are less frequently afforded to veterans anyway, Blasko says. “When you’re old, you don’t get asked to the youth festivals … that gets a bit disappointing.”
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But music always has a way of finding its people. Blasko’s fans have followed her for years, but she notices both “the nanas and the teenagers” at her shows; her music holds a timeless, cross-generational appeal.
The toughest crowd? Her own kids. “My younger son came to see me play recently, and he said he hated it and his favourite part was when I stopped … Apparently he said ‘Hi Mum’ and I didn’t say hello back.” But then, sweet justice: “When we were driving, just the two of us, and he was in his car seat, he was like” – Blasko adopts a tiny, high-pitched squeak to sing a lyric from Bothering Me – “‘Like a ghost, I see you everywhere.’ I was like, ‘What?!’ The lyrics obviously came alive to him.”
For all her accolades and artistic longevity, there’s still one demographic Blasko is yet to capture; one more mountain to conquer. She admits, laughing: “My dream is to have a song on Smooth FM.”
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I Just Need To Conquer This Mountain by Sarah Blasko is out 1 November.
Sarah Blasko’s songs to live by
Each month, we ask our headline act to share the songs that have accompanied them through love, life, lust and death.
What music do you clean the house to?
Bitch Better Have My Money by Rihanna. I’m not even joking.
What is the last song you sang in the shower?
I was practising one of my own songs, actually – it’s called I Can’t Wait Anymore. It’s very high and breathy so I was checking I can still sing it … don’t worry, I can!
What is the song you have listened to the most times this year?
Probably Nikes by Frank Ocean. It’s my flight take-off song. I’ve probably listened to Back in Black by AC/DC a lot too, because my kids love it.
If your life was a movie, what would the opening credits song be?
Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel – I think it somehow captures the beauty of youth.
What is your go-to karaoke song?
Empire State of Mind by Alicia Keys and Jay-Z. I like to hog the mic and do both parts in a kind of screaming voice – it’s therapeutic.
What’s a song you can never listen to again?
Piano Man by Billy Joel. I was born in 1976 and it was everywhere like a rash in my formative years.
What underrated song deserves classic status?
I personally think my friend Jack Colwell’s song Don’t Cry Those Tears – when I first heard it I had to keep checking if it was a cover or not.
What is the first song/album you bought?
I think it was The Music Machine, a Christian children’s album about a machine that spits out songs about God.
What song do you want played at your funeral?
I think I’d just want everyone to get drunk and do their best karaoke.