The Artists That Changed The Game In 2017: Camp Cope

It’s been a strong year for Australian music, not only release-wise and in terms of international touring success stories, but also for artists choosing to speak out and use their influence to help inspire positive social change. Over the next few days, we'll be sharing the acts and people that changed the game in 2017, starting today with Melbourne's own Camp Cope.

Not content with just releasing amazing music that tackles important issues such as gender disparity, relative newcomers Camp Cope - they only formed in 2015 - are 2017 game changers for many reasons. Last year, the band's vocalist/guitarist Georgia Maq called out some bros - who were jumping around aggressively and pushing women out of the way to get closer to the front - from the stage. This prompted a conversation about the need to speak up against violent behaviour and sexual harassment at gigs and the #ItTakesOne campaign was born. As Callum Preston (Everfresh Studio) says in the first It Takes One video, "Girls to the front... dickheads back out the front door".   

The band's work in this area has been tireless ever since and saw Camp Cope officially teaming up with Laneway festival at the beginning of 2017 to help promote safer spaces for live music fans. A new It Takes One video featuring Ella Thompson and Julia Jacklin was launched alongside a dedicated 1800 LANEWAY hotline for revellers to call if they felt unsafe at any time during the festival. Camp Cope also implemented another safe-space hotline ahead of their tour with Against Me! back in May, posting on their Insta page: "We will have tiny pieces of paper with the number which will be at the merch desk. If you feel unsafe at all at these shows, please call the number and we will assist you because we believe everyone has the right to feel safe at shows."  

Camp Cope write songs about real, meaningful stuff and Maq admitted during a previous interview with The Music, "I have trouble describing my feelings. Music is literally the only way I can process them. You know when you're having deep, intense conversations with people about big issues? I can never channel my feelings during them. There's kind of like a blockage there."

Their latest single The Opener, from the band's forthcoming album, features lyrics that take on gender disparity over a swaggering bassline, insistent drums and urgent guitars: "You worked so hard, but we were just lucky/To ride those coattails into infinity/And all my success has got nothing to do with me/Yeah, tell me again how there just aren't that many girls in the music scene." 

Taking some time out from recording last month, bass player Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich wrote a guest editorial piece for our first monthly edition of The Music and discussed Camp Cope's "overall experience being non-male in the music industry". "In this music world we have all been made to feel less important, less listened to and deserving of space because of our gender," Hellmrich writes. "This continues together as a band where we are constantly facing discrimination and sexism and then criticism when we are outspoken about it. There have been people asking us if we knew how to use our equipment or if we write our own songs, we've had people checking our passes backstage but not our male counterparts beside us, we've been placed lower on line-ups and paid less than all-male bands."