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Guy Sebastian.
Wearing full denim clothing, a corduroy hat as if to disguise
his 'fro from passer-bys, and a well worn pair of thongs, inaugural
'Australian Idol' victor Guy Sebastian is just about to tuck
into a pancake breakfast when I arrived for our interview. After
some opening small talk, I perch my tape recorder upon his glass
of water to catch more of his soft-spoken words over the busy
hustle and bustle of early inner-city Monday morning.
"I guess at first it wasn't real," he tells of the maelstrom that came with instant Idol celebrity, "but I realised early that it wasn't always going to be so full on and that you're not going to reach that mass audience all the time, like I was on TV every day!
" I guess it is a glorified karaoke competition," he concurs, "but it definitely isn't easy. I'd like to see a lot of those critics get up there when they haven't been in front of cameras or a live audience. Like, I did a lot of live stuff before I did Idol which really helped me, but most of us had never been in front of the camera and then suddenly we'd have a whole bunch of kids in front of our houses with banners.
"Don't get me wrong," he quickly states. "I'm not having a crack at 'Idol because I'm so grateful for the opportunity it gave me. But as far as reality TV shows that do music go, it's a good one because it really does concentrate on voice and music and not just on the way that you look. It's TV and people think it's more credible or something to enter Triple J's Unearthed, but where do you draw the line when defining what's selling out? Selling out is such a small minded term."
Selling out or not, the simple fact that Sebastian's debut album 'Just As I Am' has sold close to half a million copies (preceded by the competition winner's token single Angels Brought Me Here, and capped off by the Sebastian-penned platinum selling All I Need Is You), with his second release 'Beautiful Life' also providing the Adelaide-raised vocalist with some very profitable spoils.
"It's a commercial vehicle," he concedes of the initial rush for the record company to cash in on his popularity, "and when they released that album of the first series it was so hot we were on every single magazine and that was such a massive buzz. I whacked the album out in five days; I did two tracks a day, and that's with doing my own backing vocals as well. But we got it out right after the show in time for Christmas, so if I didn't do that then I probably would've sold about half of what I did. I understood why they did it, but for me it was like, 'Dang, give me more time cause I want to be creative'. But that's what I signed up for and that's what I got the first time around.
"The dude sat me down and he was like, 'Man, you have to understand that we have to bash this album out really quickly, we're so sorry'. But with the second album they promised me more time and basically gave me a budget and asked who I wanted to work with, and they made it happen. So I then picked what songs I wanted and wrote ten out of the 14 tracks, and that was just great."
Now writing for his third release, Sebastian is road testing some of those songs on his current tour, on which he's sharing the bill with another former 'Idol finalist, Paulini Curuenavuli, "I made a big cull of everybody," he explains, making the distinction from his last big arena jaunt. "Like, I only did a few shows with that whole thing. The reason I got dancers was because of the young audience that I have and they just like seeing stuff like that, otherwise they'd be bored with someone who just sings well. Though I did a tour recently where I didn't have any dancers; just a keyboardist, drummer, bass player, a guitarist and a few backing vocalists with no percussion or anything like the massive outfit I had on that first tour. So it's now a much rawer show and stripped back and really honest, and it's being so well received."
Steve Jones
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Guy Sebastian plays Her Majesty's Theatre on Fri 27 May and Sat 28 May.
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