Fitzy & Wippa were joined by The Voice coach, Guy Sebastian, who’s single ‘Believer’ is rout now.
Guy revealed that he is currently writing a “musical movie” after reading the book Big Magic (by the author of Eat, Pray Love’) “She talks about ideas, ideas visit to you, they visit you and trust you and it’s up to you whether you want to give it the time that it needs and if you don’t it will move on to someone else”.
Guy says the book helped him overcome self-doubt and negative thoughts “‘who do you think you are writing a movie, what do you think you are Spielberg or something? Crawl back into your hole” and motivated him to pursue his dreams and write the move, joking “hopefully when you interview me in a little while it will be because I’ve just won a whole bunch of Oscars!”.
Proving that even stars get star-struck The Voice coach revealed he cried when he met Lupe Fiasco in the studio to record the global hit ‘Battle Scars’. Guy says he wrote three singles in three days for the new album ‘Truth’ saying “I’ve gotten better at going identifying the crap and you sort of know which ones to pursue and which ones are not going to work”.
Guy Sebastian “The first day that I started writing for this album I wrote ‘before I go’, the first single. The second day I wrote ‘believer’ which is what I’m about to release and the third I wrote ‘love on display’ which is another single and so to write three songs that make the album and end up a singles in three days is a pretty good strike rate. I think I’m narrowing them down now because I’ve gotten better at going identifying the crap and you sort of know which ones to pursue and which ones are not going to work”
Fitzy “Well you were saying with ‘Choir’ that you got to a certain point of this song when you said ‘I need something, I need a melody here’ and it took you ages. Didn’t that come out of the blue?
Guy Sebastian “Yeah it started as a ballad and I think that’s where I was going wrong, I wrote it for a mate of mine who passed away and he was a very knockabout fun guy and. I think for me the block was I was writing what I thought I should write for him which was this really beautiful ballad but it didn’t connect me to him because it wasn’t fun. The minute I made it fun this song pretty much just write it self because it made me think of him as I was writing it”
Guy Sebastian “I read this book it’s called Big Magic, it’s by Elizabeth Gilbert, she wrote ‘eat pray love’. She talks about ideas, ideas visit to you, then almost visit you and trust you and it’s up to you whether you want to give it the time that it needs and if you don’t it will move on to someone else. It’s honestly I’m absolutely a fan and a believer in that because like ‘Battlescars’ and songs like that, I wasn’t even thinking about that and it just pops in and it’s like it’s up to me to be a good steward of it”
Guy Sebastian “As a creative person we’ve been talking a lot about it during the pandemic because my industry has been savaged and it’s not just about keeping them alive and able to pay rent and stuff, all of your purpose and drive and self-worth is actually trapped up in being creative, like you get off on those things, that’s what makes you wake up in the morning, the challenge of actually contributing to the world and providing something beautiful for people to digest.
“Check out that book, you mentioned Hugh Jackman, I started writing a movie during this lockdown and it’s a musical movie, who knows what will come from but I swear to god if I didn’t read that book I would’ve succumbed to my normal thoughts which is like ‘who do you think you are writing a movie, what do you think you are Spielberg or something? Crawl back into your hole’. You know those negative thoughts like ‘it will never be the greatest showman’ and then you would give up on the idea but I read that book at the right time and hopefully when you interview me in a little while it will be because I’ve just won a whole bunch of Oscars!”
