Sarah Mary Chadwick
I have followed the work of Sarah Mary Chadwick since seeing her play at Boogie festival in 2019 (ever chided for my melancholy and bleak humor in that particular friendship group, a friend had dragged me to the stage for her 2pm set). By 2019, Sarah had become an celebrated part of Melbourne’s music scene, known for her candid and intelligent observations about human interaction and the human heart. Much of her music, in insistent and anguished ballads, covers the loss and anger of heartbreak and the ins and outs of mental health struggle, including her own suicidality. Sarah is also a visual artist, her fragmented figures in black ink and acrylic paint adorning multiple of her album covers. The best thing about her, as a songwriter and person, is that absolutely nothing about her is boring, cliched or lazy — she is seemingly allergic to fakery and arrives at truth instinctively, without being contrived.
Sarah has just released her eighth studio album, Messages to God, a diverse album that is somewhat more upbeat than the durgy emotional purges of records prior. The record lurches in and out of personal narrative, often taking a step back to place us in an observational musing — as I suggest to Sarah later, the album contains a sort of deep optimism about, and interest in, the complexity of humanity. But this does not come at the expense of realism or honest expressions of pain.
Some tracks echo the slow catharsis of older work, such as ‘Angry and Violent’, which expels the frustrations of interpersonal misunderstandings: “am I really that cruel? I think about the way that I act all the time / And you just look smug and sit quiet at the back, refuse wine.” Some are spirited, even comfortingly silly, such as Drinking on a Tuesday with its cheap lol: “if you ever feel / like a scarecrow / outstanding in your field”. This track, replete with hooky flutes, features a long list of instructions that I plan to take literally (“you gotta have a joke prepared to help you make friends, drinking on a Tuesday”). The record also explores dysfunction and (in)stability, considering its oft overlooked benefits — “I’d rather be suicidal than boring.” Messages to God is an approachable, humane, funny and sonically interesting 44 minutes.
Shortly after its release, Sarah and I had a chat on Zoom, Sarah fitting me in between a full day of media interviews and a band rehearsal that night. As hoped, she was a warm and wonky delight on my screen for the 45 minutes we chatted. I asked her about songwriting, psychology, and why on earth songwriters feel the need to publicly impart all their goddamn pain.
Stew:
So I’ve been listening to your album yesterday and today, and I had a cry, which was nice! I’m very interested in sadness, pain and music personally — we can talk about whatever obviously — but that’s my personal interest. Anyway, how have you been feeling since the release?
SMC:
There has been a lot of media — and I don’t mean to sound complainy — it’s in a cool way — it’s the release that’s had the most press and attention around it, so that’s partly why I made a bit of a Freudian slip today with forgetting the interview [SMC was 10 minutes late]. Usually I wouldn’t do so many interviews — they are kind of hard, because you know, if you’ve listened to the record, sometimes there’s not much more you can say about the songs.
S:
Yeah how do you elaborate? You’ve said all you need to say in the song. Maybe it feels exhausting or not interesting to have to talk about your own work over and over again?
SMC:
Yeah. I mean I always appreciate the value in it and it’s always really nice to talk to people who invest in something you’ve done in any sort of way. Even you saying you listened and had a cry — that means something to me — that it’s done something.
S:
It seems very scary to me to be so publicly vulnerable and have to talk about it publicly to so many people — and you’re doing it. Amazing!
SMC:
Yeah, I mean when I was 20, it never would have crossed my mind that I wouldn’t have wanted lots of attention, and extra attention. I hadn’t really clocked how much my appetite for that kind of validation had evaporated.
S:
Maybe as you get older your need for validation isn’t as strong? Or when you’re younger you’re not really clocking the reality of it all — you just think “cool that sounds awesome!!”
SMC:
Yeah, I think it’s that one. Even Simon [Sarah’s husband] said to me — cos I was saying that this morning — even if you had this attention when you were younger you would have got sick of it in about an hour and self-sabotaged and I thought “yep, true”.
S:
In terms of being famous and recognised, do you even want that? Did you make a conscious decision to make more of a hoo ha with this album and put more PR into it than the others, or was it more just a build up of being more recognisable in your field?
SMC:
I think it’s a few things — it’s becoming more apparent that part of being relevant in terms of art or music is literally about sticking around and continuing to do it. I think there’s parts of that that’s a bit eye rolly — the word stalwart gets thrown around a lot!
S:
Like you have to earn your stripes to get a certain amount of attention and make 10 albums or whatever?
SMC:
100% — especially if you’re looking at it with a feminist slant. For a woman or a woman identifying person, it’s infinitely hard, especially if you’re not super hot!!!! That’s just the truth of it!!
S:
You are super hot!!!! The album cover with the sexy jeans shorts [Me & Ennui are Friends, Baby] — that’s a hot girl album cover. A sexy vibe.
SMC:
[laughs, blushes] Thank you! I have some friends who are on OnlyFans and are on the hotter end of the spectrum and even they get shit about their looks so I’m kind of like...
S:
I give up?
SMC:
Haha almost. It’s nice that you think that photo was hot! I feel like the vast majority would not!
S:
No, I remember seeing it and feeling intimidated by it, and thinking I’d never have the confidence to be like “hey bitch look” [gesturing to my groin]. Actually I was wondering about that album cover specifically — was there a feminist slant to it?
SMC:
That was a photo that Simon took when we were first dating and I didn’t actually realize that that was going on the record. It’s one of those ones that I look at and think ‘that’s funny that I did that’. Sometimes I look at it and I don’t care, sometimes I look at it and think ‘wow that’s kind of a statement’. I didn’t think it through a lot. I back it because aesthetically and for the record it works. And it’s a bit lolz. Anyway, as we were saying, in terms of trying to put more effort into now, by virtue of carrying on, yes part of it is sticking around — but also I did want to kind of like level up — it’s super hard to have a sustainable arts career in Australia and New Zealand. I just really, really, really, really didn’t want to have you know... I’ve worked every garbage day job in the world!
S:
So part of it is saying “I’m an artist and I need to earn my money from this. It’s not a part time hobby”. That’s where you’re at?
SMC:
Well exactly. You know when you watch people who you might perceive as being less accomplished or less talented or less anything than you — or, more so when you look at other people who are talented and you realize you do have something to offer. And you realize you’re undermining yourself in some way?
S:
Yes I get that a lot. If they’re doing it, why can’t I? But it’s hard to get to the psychological point where you’re like fuck it, I deserve to be there, and I want to be seen too.
S:
Yes, 100%.
SMC:
I saw something on America’s Top Model or some sort of crappy show, where someone asked “how do you know you really wanna do this?” and she responded “because when I see someone else do it, it hurts because I want to be doing it so badly”. I guess I always feel like that. It’s sort of like... not an ego thing, it’s an inarguable root feeling.
S:
Oh my god yes!! I feel that too. I work in a music venue and I get so mad and jealous seeing people on stage cos I want to be there!! I wanted to ask you about being seen, and sharing pain and heartbreak. Why do performers want to be seen so badly, why do we do it and what are we getting out of it? I watched this Sinead O’Connor documentary quite recently where she talked about her childhood trauma, and how often those who had traumatic childhood need to be seen as adults. Is this a part of your psyche too, do you think?
SMC:
Yeah. There’s a pretty famous book called The Drama of the Gifted Child, a psychotherapy book from the 70s, by Alice Walker that picks up on this. First of all, I think it’s different for different people — I understand the thing that Sinead O’Connor was saying, but I think for different people that can exist in quite a different framework. I think in terms of myself that I am partly probably predisposed to it.
S:
What do you mean predisposed — like a gene? Or like a personality type?
SMC:
Yeah, I mean partly that; who I am as a person. There might be some people who have the same neuroses as me who don’t do what I do — so there is an element of ego involved. I think for me... I had quite a traumatic upbringing in that my mum was super narcissistic and very crazy, and my dad, who has passed away now, was an alcoholic and very absent, and they had a terrible relationship so that’s what the book is about — it’s about children who are raised by narcissists. I heard someone else talking about it who said that if you are raised by a negligent narcissist, your parent is insisting that their account of events is true, and as a child, your only option is to either believe it for survival, or your soul is just destroyed. For me, a quite reasonable response to that is to elevate yourself to the point where you’re just the loudest person in the room with a microphone. Also what I have recently been talking about in my therapy, is that I think — I guess this is extrapolating on what Sinead O’Connor said — for me at least, I feel the weight of being a burden to people. So I think part of my way of mitigating these feelings is to be over-candid. So then I feel like I am fulfilling what I, incorrectly, I think, perceive to be my side of the transaction.
S:
[projecting wildly]: Why do you mean you’re a burden? Cos you have all these emotional things you need to impart, performing monkey type stuff or something?
SMC:
No, I think in a more significant way. I think that if you’re raised by a narcissist they don’t believe that you exist, so your very existence is like a burden. I guess also to not characterize myself wrongly, I think something worked with me in that I am able to do something that is kind of functional for myself in the midst of all of that. Some people don’t have that. So something went right. What did Sigmund Freud say? Surgeons are sublimated sadists cos you have to want to cut? Sometimes your symptom works. And I think that is what is happening with me.
S:
Yes! Interesting. On that kind of note. You sing a lot about pain and sadness and “dysfunction”. But to me your music is like an anti-shame exercise — like here’s all this fucked stuff — but isn’t it interesting and rich and aren’t humans whack? I think your representation of all this sadness and stuff stands next to a real love for life. And I think that’s really beautiful. I think the sad-girl shtick often gets spoken about as a pathetic thing, and is kind of used against women and framed as “dysfunction”. I find this irritating. How do you navigate that and do that sort of proudly? Is there a cliche you’re aware of that you’re trying to depart from?
SMC:
Hmm yeah that makes sense. I think that I am someone that is neurotically interested in other people. And always trying to figure everything out. And that’s probably part of my childhood. I think because of that, it’s a lot for me to tolerate in people if they are complacent or even honestly if they are not interesting or not engaging to talk to. Or if people are a bit aloof. That doesn’t appeal to me. So I think maybe what helps me not fall into any kind of you know, tempting available position is that I kind of have a low tolerance for things that don’t appeal to me.
S:
So if someone's going to be like that sounds sad and dysfunctional, you’re going to be like you’re boring so I don’t give a shit?
SMC:
Well I’m probably a bit kinder these days. I’d be like “you’ll get there” or “do you go to therapy”? Are you on Instagram and do you see all the accounts that pop up, like the sad-girl ones? Obviously I need to know how to clear my cache on an iPhone! My whole discover is just Lana Del Ray from when I was too much of a fan. Anyway, because of that, I get all the sad-girl Instagram accounts that are like “I’m delusional, but it doesn’t matter cos I’m hot”. Lately it’s started to grate on me a little bit. Cos it’s like — just do something.
S:
Is it the self-flagellation involved? Like they think I’m so delusional and messy... but they’re actually fine and functional probably?
SMC:
Look ask me this shit any day of the week and I’ll give you a different answer. But sometimes I’m like... I just want people to be as straight as they can in terms of how they express themselves. I think that people can tell in themselves if they are indulging in something, or if they’re doing work. If you can’t tell, then you don’t want to know, and that’s irritating but that’s fine. Basically, I’ve been pretty invested in not going in too hard on thinking about people’s perceptions of me.
S:
I guess there’s no point, obviously, you can’t control that. [fishing] That badassness, is that something that’s come with time?
SMC:
Ummm. I have literally put so much work into being an actual still-alive person that it’s ridiculous. Unfortunately and funnily enough, and this will resonate with more people than you expect, but I feel like once you realise you’re the scariest thing in your own life then you don’t really give a fuck anymore about what other people think.
S:
Wow. Fuck. There’s this one Joni Mitchell song where she sings “I’m frightened by the devil, but I’m drawn to those who ain’t afraid”. There’s something really beautiful about that sort of outcome of something so horrible. Not that you were trying to put a positive spin on it!
SMC:
Yes, more than anything, I just treat it like information these days. I don’t think that that was my intention. It was kind of almost like... you were asking about performance and the motivation or impetus behind sitting on stage. I think it probably... a significant part of it was just wanting to be seen. And I think that that’s fine. I don’t blame myself for that. But it’s something that I needed to do some work around, and continue to do so.
S:
Yep. Wow. Back to your work — the album is amazing! It’s super interesting, super diverse, and very different from the past which is cool, to be evolving.
SMC:
You sound very much like you’re into the more dramatic tracks. I was worried with this record that it would be too light.
S:
Yeah I liked the one with the refrain at the end that was like “just tell me we’re fine” — and maybe I did like the ones that were more like the past ones, but not for any real reason, just my mood. I also really liked the track with the kind of flutes and it almost felt like a school musical. It had a real story vibe. It was cool to see something interesting and not samey.
SMC:
Yeah, I did want to do something different!
S:
Was there a concept other than that? Or was it just a collection of songs that you put together and then reverse engineered a concept?
SMC:
It’s always that, reverse engineering. I usually just write the songs, then get an idea about what I want it to be like. Then work backwards and cull songs. I didn’t have a strong idea about what I wanted the record to sound like. But you know what, I’d never worked closely with a producer, so I thought if this doesn’t work, this is my eighth solo record so at worst, maybe this will just be the shit one. But I’m really happy with how it turned out obviously!
S:
Ok final question! Do you feel like you are your authentic self, right now? Well not right this second, but at the moment generally?
SMC:
Yes! Yes. Because I’m very not a good actor (laughs). And because I have done enough therapy that I feel like I’m very close.