'You've Got To Do What's Important To You': Sarah Blasko Talks Growth, Hope and Her UK Live Plans
Friday, 27 June 2025
Written by Jeremy Blackmore
Photo: Mauro Images
Sarah Blasko’s extraordinary, candid album ‘I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain’ found the Australian songwriter tackling goodbyes, grief, friendships and new beginnings as she let go of her younger self. Released at the end of last year, it was recently accompanied by a live recording of these remarkable songs captured at Sydney’s Factory Theatre, while she will perform the album in full at four UK dates in early July.
The songs, which showcase Blasko’s startling vocals, date back to the pandemic, a period that afforded time to reflect on her personal history. In 2020, the Sydney-based musician gave birth to her second child and experienced the rupture of a lifelong friendship, all while the world was in chaos. As the album’s promotional material notes, “the timing was oddly poetic, as two people who had been raised in a [Pentecostal] church, waiting for the apocalypse to strike, parted ways as it felt like that day was finally upon us.”
The enforced downtime that year forced Blasko to re-evaluate the past, to make peace with who she is and who she isn’t, the things that have come to be in her life and those that probably won’t. “For me, music is often a release,” she tells Stereoboard in a break before tour rehearsals in Belgium. “I’d found myself at a point in my life where I just didn't know what was next. I didn’t really know how to move forward. The answers weren’t coming.
“Also, I wrote it at a time where the world wasn’t really normal, and I reflected upon things I hadn't thought about for a very long time. Some of those things came about because of the end of the friendship, but I think they also came out because I actually had time to stop and process these things. That’s what music really offers me, that I feel very grateful for, being able to process things. It’s your take on a moment or a feeling, and that’s great, because you can just release things into the atmosphere.”
The album opens with the heartbreaking The Way, Blasko’s plaintive voice set against a sparse piano accompaniment. A gospel choir joins her while the song reaches its emotional crescendo, as she addresses both her lost friend and the church she turned her back on. “Get me to church,” she sings. “I want God on my side / It was simple when we were young.”
As one of the last songs she wrote, The Way was originally intended as the album’s closing track until someone observed that it felt like the beginning of the story, not the end. “It summed up the general feeling of wanting to just run back to a time when you thought you had all of the answers,” Blasko says. “And, in a lot of ways, it’s not somewhere you want to go back to, but I think that desire to just run back to a simpler time is very relatable…maybe it'll solve my problems. So, in the end, it actually seemed to sum up an element of the record. But it starts you in the thick of it, you know exactly where I’m at with that song.”
The brooding Bothering Me, meanwhile, reflects that we’re not necessarily who we wanted it to be when we were younger. Dreams don't always come true; things don't always work out how we expected. “I thought the title was quite funny, because it was more than bothering me,” she says with a laugh. “It was fucking gnawing at me, this idea of losing this friendship and not knowing who you are anymore. It’s a difficult point to work out where you go for the next phase of your life. When you’re young and cute, you can stumble around. When you get in your late 40s, that’s not cute anymore. But then what am I to do? I don’t know all the answers. So, what the fuck am I going to do, then? I think what’s cute in your later life is being honest and kind.”
Elsewhere, on I Can’t Wait Anymore, Blasko “reaches acceptance in her journey to part with the ideas and people that no longer serve her” and “pushes through to new beginnings and mindsets” with the chance to start again on In My Head. Backed by unrestrained, discordant horns on Emotions, she revels in all her “reckless” feelings and pays tribute to her dearly-missed friend and former tour manager Greg Weaver on Dream Weaver.
To Be Alone finds her interrogating the divorce she went through in her mid-20s, while on Divine Blasko embraces the beauty in the everyday, finding joy in being in the here and now, enjoying the little things, and soaking up the wonder all around us. I ask if she thought it important to find reasons for optimism and hope, even as she confronted a lot of heavy emotions. “Yeah, I feel at this point in my life, or in the world in general, there’s a lot of negativity,” she says. “I wouldn’t want to put something in the world that's completely negative, as much as that’s tempting.
“I wrote the more positive elements of the record as much for myself as anyone else. Even if you’re not feeling positive, or you’re not feeling great about the world, or you’re not seeing hope, I think you need to speak that [positivity] almost into existence for yourself. I’m not really a positive affirmations kind of person, but I do believe in the power of speaking something out. As much for myself as anybody else and for my children. It’s a very easy trap to fall into as you get older, to become cynical and angry and bitter. It’s very easy for me to say this because I’ve got a pretty privileged life, but I still want to say it.”
Blasko cites albums by Bill Callahan and Cat Power that “simmer” and mesmerise in the way they use chordal and tempo repetition for influencing the vibe of ‘I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain’. “I love a record like that,” she says. “They're the kinds of records I’ll want to listen to on a plane ride or something, where you can just sit in this really wonderful space.”
Recorded at Sydney’s Rancom Studios in late 2022, she says it was probably the most relaxed and free-feeling record she has made. “We’d come out of a time where everyone was really isolated from each other,” she explains. “And then we got together in this beautiful studio very close to my home. We were in our separate booths looking at each other through the glass, but we were playing it live. It just felt exhilarating because even though we were still separated by glass, we were essentially in the same room together, and we were playing live and that’s what we all love to do. It had felt like we were really deprived of that for quite a while.
“I made this record with people I’ve been playing music with for a very long time, so we know each other very well, and it was very collaborative. There was no pressure, because I don’t have a label anymore. The only pressure is just my internal pressure and wanting everybody to enjoy playing it. So, it came together very easily. It was the next part that was very difficult, which was trying to work out how I was going to put it out. That took about two years, but the record itself was very quick to make and very enjoyable.”
Playing the songs live has given her a fresh perspective on the album. “When you play them for the first time, particularly in order, it’s actually kind of like the final reveal. I don’t know why it’s a surprise to me, because I did intend this story, of sorts. You put things in order for a reason, and you are trying to tell a story by the order. You don’t just throw them together. But the narrative of it becomes very clear, and the rise and the fall.
“It’s a delight, really, to go from making this thing and then having its final hurrah on stage. That’s why I’ve always stubbornly played the full record when it comes out, because you’ve spent all of this time making this thing and it’s a collection. Why would you not want to show it as a collection and perform it as a collection? To me, that’s always been really important. You’ve got to do what’s important to you, and you’ve got to do what you enjoy. Otherwise, I think people can tell.”
Sarah Blasko’s ‘I Just Need to Conquer This Mountain’ is out now.
Sarah Blasko Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Tue July 01 2025 - EDINBURGH Caves
Wed July 02 2025 - MANCHESTER Deaf Institute
Thu July 03 2025 - BRIGHTON A L P H A B E T
Sat July 05 2025 - LONDON Moth Club
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