VANESSA AMOROSI’S BIG COMEBACK
THE ‘ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY’ SINGER ON LEARNING TO JUGGLE FAME AND FAMILY
Cast your mind back 20 years ago, when infectious dance track ‘Absolutely Everybody’ was rising up the charts. The song catapulted a then 18-year-old, freshfaced Vanessa Amorosi to international stardom.
“Looking back, it just feels like another person!” the 38-year-old tells New Idea. “I wasn’t even out of school when half of this was happening. But what a journey … it was incredible.”
After its release at the end of 1999, the hit remained in the charts for six months, and soon after her Sydney Olympics performances, the song was released internationally and went on to climb the UK top 10. While many young musicians would have fallen foul of the meteoric rise (and accompanying ‘child star’ curse), for Vanessa it was a different story.
By the age of 17 she was already a stage veteran. “I started gigging when I was 11 or 12,” she explains. “That was my saviour. So when ‘Everybody’ happened,
I didn’t feel like, ‘Wow! My entire universe has changed.’ Instead, it was just the same.”
Blessed with powerhouse vocals that belied her years, Vanessa would go on to sell two million-plus records worldwide and notch up 16 ARIA and APRA nominations.
But while riding high, the songstress upped sticks to LA in 2011, effectively ending her pop career in favour of her
“THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IS A TOUGH RIDE AND OTHER MUMS WOULD SAY THE SAME THING”
other passion – gospel music.
“I thought I’d spend a year doing it,” she says. “But it just ended up taking so many more years. It was a massive learning curve for me. But now, I have so much more to offer. It was an incredible experience and I wouldn’t change it.”
While the move to the US was for professional reasons, it also proved to be the catalyst for dramatically transforming Vanessa’s personal life. It started with a chance encounter in an Los Angeles cafe with martial arts trainer Rod Busby.
“When I met my husband in a coffee shop, I started looking at life differently,” she reveals. “I thought I’d love to get married and consider a family, which is something I had never thought about.
“I had always been musicorientated. There was never any time for anything else.”
In a case of two worlds colliding, Vanessa’s rock’n’roll habits of greasy fast food and late nights met Rod’s world of disciplined training and healthy food-prepping.
“It’s definitely a case of opposites attract,” she says. “His world is completely structured and mine is a yo-yo. In saying that, I now have an appreciation for it and make the effort to train, go for runs, and to do a bit of martial arts with him.”
The pair married in 2017 share a son, Killian. Vanessa has been able to introduce the now 3-year-old to her home country.
“He’s getting a bit of the Aussie accent going on!” she says, laughing. “Nobody tells you how much it will ache to be away from your kid and I’d love to come back and raise my little boy in Australia, but it’s very difficult.
“My husband is trying to fulfil his dreams, and I’m trying to fulfil mine at the same time.”
Will Killian follow in Mum’s footsteps?
“He has perfect pitch,” she says. “But I’d like to steer him away from the industry. I’d like him to be like Daddy and to have structure and routine.
I feel like the music industry is a really tough ride and other mums in the music world would say the same thing. But knowing my luck he’s probably going to get into it!”
For now, Vanessa’s focus is the recent release of her album, Back to Love, and her upcoming spot in next month’s Eurovision – Australia Decides 2020 on SBS, where she will compete against nine other performers for the chance to represent Australia in the iconic Eurovision Song Contest.
While the logistics of hopping between two different continents need to be tweaked, it’s clear Vanessa is in a very good place. “I really am extremely blessed,” she enthuses. “I didn’t think I’d be able to juggle having a family and a career, but if I can continue to have my little place in the universe making music for another 20 years, then I’ll be really, really happy.”