8/5/2023 0 Comments Motown macdown 2012![]() ![]() My mum said I always wanted to be a singer. “I wanted to sing all day at the piano, and I would just sit there for hours and hours,” says Mac. Unfortunately for her university career, this knowledge came just as she was about to embark on her degree in digital media. “I probably would have been writing songs.” “Why didn’t someone tell me that when I was 10?” she sighs. (“I never wanted to be an actor,” she clarifies, “acting was just fun.”) The most important musical lesson she ever learned came not from her piano teacher – she hated lessons – but from one of her sisters, who at 17 sat Mac down at the piano and showed her some chords, and how altering the position of one finger could change its mood. It was about the rain.”Īs a teen Mac attended the performing arts school McDonald College, where she studied acting. ![]() Obviously it had no music to it, but I put dashes to where the melody would go – like, this is a long note. “When I was little I made up songs, and I remember writing the words. Her first attempt at songwriting was at the age of eight. One of her earliest memories of singing was at the international Japanese primary school she attended in Terrey Hills, when she and her classmates were tasked with learning Julian Lennon’s “Saltwater”. (For the record, Sam Cooke, who Mac heard as a 21-year-old, “is probably my favourite voice in the whole world”.) “I remember when my dad played Ray Charles, it made me feel something,” she adds. Her father’s record collection was peppered with “lots of Motown, Otis Redding, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison”. “My mum was always singing, she’d always sing Irish songs, she plays accordion,” recalls Mac. Growing up in Sydney’s Hills District and, later, Melrose Park, the McInerney home was filled with music. “I’ve been playing that piano since I was a kid,” she smiles. While writing Low Blows, Mac would often return from her adopted home of Melbourne to her parents’ Sydney house and the piano she grew up playing. “My brother said they listen to my album every night before they go to bed,” she blushes. Both are big supporters of her career, to the point where her father bought her a digital recorder so she could record each of her shows for him, as he misses so many due to work. ![]() Mac’s parents were originally from Ireland before settling in London, and emigrated to Australia in the Eighties after getting married. She first abbreviated her name at the age of 12 when choosing her Hotmail account, and has stuck with it partly because people kept mispronouncing her name – it’s ‘Megg-an’ not ‘Meee-gan’. French music was important to me, it changed the way I thought about music.”īorn Megan McInerney in Sydney in 1990 to airline pilot father Gary and mother Gladys, who works in the clothing industry, Mac is the middle child of five (three sisters and one brother). “And I was like, ‘Oooh, I didn’t know you could do that.’ That was a big moment. ![]() “It was the first time I heard someone sing but it wasn’t pretty or perfect,” she reflects. That same teacher introduced Mac to the 2005 album Le Fil by French chanteuse Camille. And she said she wants people to cry even when they don’t understand what she’s saying. “I got obsessed with Edith Piaf, and how she would just wear a black dress. Her colour palette owes a small debt of gratitude to one of her inspirations, Edith Piaf, to whom the 27-year-old was exposed through her French teacher in high school. “But when I started writing songs it became my life.”Ī day after her show at Leadbelly, Mac is sitting at a table in the upstairs area of trendy Newtown eatery Queen Chow, dressed head to toe in black, her pale complexion interrupted only by a shade of deep red lipstick. “Mum said I always wanted to be a singer,” recalls Mac. Clearly things have gotten a little bigger than her lounge room. Since then, Mac’s songs have been streamed more than 23 million times on Spotify alone. And I was imagining 17 people in my lounge room.” Seventeen people had listened to the song, and I was like, oh my god. “And then it would tell you how many people had listened to it, and I remember the number 17. “A Triple J presenter and I was like, ‘Oh my God, they’ve listened to the song!’” she chuckles. The buzz began in late 2012, when she uploaded the first song she’d ever recorded professionally, “Known Better”, to the Unearthed website. It was a nerve-racking affair, on account of the fact that the audience was populated by representatives from various record labels, each keen to snare Mac’s signature. Striding onstage at inner-Sydney venue Leadbelly for an industry showcase/launch party for Low Blows, it was in this very room four years ago (then called the Vanguard) that Mac played her first headlining show in Sydney. Fast forward to a Monday evening in mid-May, and Mac is once again in the presence of ghosts, this time from her past. ![]()
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