Sewell says he is happy to spend time by the sea and practise meditation. When he takes the call for this interview, after a Domain Reviewshoot at Melbourne’s home of music, The Esplanade in St Kilda, he’s on a whirlwind trip back home. He thanks his supportive parents for encouraging him to pursue his dream and a younger sister Grace (who will head on tour with him) for standing by him in times of need.
Then there’s the title track – in its Joe Cocker throttle – which is about not over-thinking it. There’s a positive message even in the darkness I was going through,” he says. “The message behind that song is people change, but if you stick by them it can make them stronger. Songs such as Healing Hands reference the impact of human compassion and his own battles with drugs and alcohol. Sewell signed to Sony Music Australia last year and the rest is ballad history in the making. “That’s when I thought I am doing what I should be doing, but seriously moments before that I was ready to get on a plane and go back home.” “It’s just what I needed to hear,” Sewell says. When Jay Brown and Jay Z, founders of Roc Nation (responsible for signing Kanye West), told Sewell they had never heard a voice like his, he felt destined to sing.Ī post shared by Conrad Sewell on at 3:39pm PDT “It was hard staying mentally above water,” he adds, even after co-writing the single Taste the Feeling with the late Avicii in 2016.īut every time Sewell thought the doors were closing, another would open. You have to have a certain amount of confidence in your ability and I was losing that feeling. “I was in LA trying to write, had no money and wondered what the hell was I actually doing. I was finally seeing a shift but it was a constant roller coaster. “Then around five years ago I wrote Start Again, my first big single. We had some success but it wasn’t quite up there. “My guitarist and I went to Sweden to write pop songs and signed to Universal, but it was a constant battle.
“I took out a credit card out to fund the band’s demo,” he says.
He left Australia for Europe straight after high school, signed to Universal and dreamed of becoming the next Kings of Leon. Long before launching a solo career, Sewell tried his luck with a rock band The Frets, later changing their name to Sons of Midnight. It’s finally here, my debut album LIFE is out now ? link in my bio to listen xĪ post shared by Conrad Sewell on at 10:15pm PDT “The thing with me was that I could always get away with it, because my voice was resilient and I was used to drinking all weekend and then singing at the pub for three hours, even if I’d just vomited around the corner an hour before,” he says.31 years in the making. While the move to LA brought him the kind of recognition he had been craving - the 2014 hit Firestone and 2015’s Start Again saw him touring worldwide with a profile to match - but, again, the drinking was catching up with him. And then I moved to LA and that brought a whole load of other things into it and … you know.” “And then I did that for so long, that it started to affect me. “We thought we were the Rolling Stones - rock’n’roll, drinking, partying - so we would be like, ‘Let’s smash every beer on the rider and then go out there and play.' “I was travelling the world with my four best mates,” he says. He then started a band, Sons of Midnight, but after some moderate success in Europeand tales of epic hijacking-limos-in-Paris levels of partying, they disappeared after one album. He moved to the UK after a failed audition for season two of Australian Idol and spent time in Stockholm and Berlin working with songwriters. So he has, after a fashion - he calls himself a work in progress - and it’s now, almost four years since that ARIA award, that he finally has a full-length studio album to his name and questions to answer. A particularly bad bender ended with his mum on the phone in tears begging Sewell to pull himself together. There was heavy drinking and drug use, and he is now on his third record label. He’s played Madison Square Garden, Coachella and Glastonbury, toured with Ed Sheeran and Maroon 5, too, but despite these outward markers of success, things haven’t quite gone to plan. Sewell is sitting in the offices of Sony Music in East Sydney serving out his penance in an effort to right a music career that has tipped off balance.Īt 31, the Brisbane singer has a string of successful singles to his name, including the 2015 ARIA song of the year Start Again and Firestone, the “tropical house” (a strand of house music, not a fern) chart-stomping collaboration with Kygo. “But it gave me a good set of rules to live by,” he says, laughing.