The Simple Life

30 July 2013 | 5:00 am | Natasha Lee

"Coming to happiness and talking about happiness seemed like the most frightening thing I could do as an artist."

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Clare Bowditch is the best girlfriend you've never had. Seriously. The flame-haired songstress is a beacon of self-loving sanity amongst a sea of obsessive, body-hating headline grabbers. Think Kim Ka… actually, let's not even waste the print space.

“I was ten or eleven when I lost a heap of weight,” explains Bowditch. “And everyone kept commenting on how good I looked. It was such a confusing experience. Internally, I remember feeling that there was something wrong with all this, but it was still very, very attractive, you know; everyone wants to be liked. But the thing I talk about is, it's good to be liked and it's good to be loved for the way you think.” Refreshing, huh?

This kind of spiritual journey towards self-betterment is what helped Bowditch craft her latest album, The Winter I Chose Happiness. Exploring happiness was, as Bowditch stresses, “the most dangerous thing” she had ever done as an artist. “A lot of my albums explore things like addiction, grief and lust,” begins Bowditch, who's on the line from her Melbourne home – and slightly breathless as the clatter of pots and pans can be heard in the background.

“Coming to happiness and talking about happiness seemed like the most frightening thing I could do as an artist. The minute an artist starts talking about happiness, they're pushed to the side and they're judged as being less of an artist. So for me, that seemed like the most dangerous and exciting thing I could do.”

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Bowditch's sojourn from stress began while on tour in Berlin. On the brink of breaking overseas, the singer says she found herself at a crossroads. “I started to realise what it would take to pursue that career and what it would mean for me to continue in this way. It would've meant being away from my family, a lot of disruption and some great adventure. But it suddenly occurred to me that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted something simpler.”

Her quest for the simple life lead the mother-of-two to her GP, who, after abating the overly stressed Bowditch's fears that she “was dying from some rare cancer”, told her to quit her job. “I told her, 'I can't quit jobs, I'm an artist!'” she laughs heartily. “Then my doctor goes, 'Look at your life – you're a young mother and like so many young mothers, you're fucking exhausted and you were born to be happy'. I remember thinking, 'Lady, you're living on some magical cloud where nobody has to deal with everyday life,' but then, after I left, I really thought about what made me happy and what it would take to make me happy.”

The quest saw Bowditch devour a swag of self-help books – “There is some good stuff in there” – before enrolling in a six-week course to become a life coach. Yes. A life coach. Even Bowditch admits she found the whole thing hilarious. “I wanted to challenge myself and do the most unlikely thing,” she explains before sardonically adding (as if she can't even believe she's saying it), “I became a life coach. I did a six-week online life coaching course. It was slow and steady and, while I don't think I look particularly different on the outside, I feel a lot different on the inside.”

Apart from Bowditch's internal blossoming, what also emerged from her meditations was an album bursting with hopefulness, exploring themes of not only happiness, but love, adoration, patience and self-discovery, with the singer revealing that her one-year empirical study into happiness (which she laughs, has now spilled over onto its second year) forced her to revisit her past, resulting it the hauntingly relatable track, Amazing Life.

“Ahh, yes,” she sighs, before taking a gulp of her tea. “Everyone asks me about that song. This is how it started – I was 19 and I didn't know what the fuck I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to do everything and I didn't know how I was gonna do everything. So, I started writing that song and it sat with me for 15, 16 years. And just as I was writing The Winter I Chose Happiness, the chorus just came to me.”

The song is classically Bowditch, who calls herself a “multi-passionate”, telling the tale of the indecisiveness of youth, with an impassioned need to do everything. Everything. In it she coos: “You want this amazing life/ But you can't decide/ You don't have to be just one thing/ But you have to start at something.”

Bowditch is still trying to do it all, but now she's being a whole lot smarter about it. Post that now-infamous life affirming tour of Berlin in '08, Bowditch not only endeavoured to shed her sadness, but also reinvent herself as an inspirational speaker, social commentator (she's fronted the lion pit that is the ABC's Q&A program more than once) and business woman, starting up her own company, Big Hearted Business, which aims to teach left-brain logical thinkers how to utilise their right-brain creativity and vice-versa. It wasn't a totally foreign land to Bowditch, however, with the singer having mentored creative-types over a decade ago as the leader of a Musician's Self Management and Promotion course at her local community house.

The altruistic streak doesn't stop there. Bowditch is now gearing up for her Winter Secrets Tour, which sees her team up with alt.electro artist Spender, as they tour across the country in a kind of quasi-talent quest. Each night, Bowditch will give one musician the opportunity to perform a cover of her new single, One Little River, on stage. Oh, they also go into the running to win $1000. Nice.

“It's always magical these tours,” gushes Bowditch. “Whoever comes, I hope they're up for a good night because there's always a lot of laughs and someone taking a really big risk on stage. Just a really good time.”