Counting Sheep

At a glance, the harmony-driven pop-rock group Sheppard looked to be one of our biggest overnight success stories, with their single Let Me Down Easy earning platinum status in Australia. However, as most musicians would know, a lot of hard work came before the success.

“It's really tough to break into the Australian music scene,” relays frontman George Sheppard. “Triple j does a great job of breaking new artists, but for a pop band I think it's particularly difficult because you can't get onto commercial radio without having a hit, and you can't have a hit without being on commercial radio.”

When they didn't receive the recognition they were hoping for in the early stages, Sheppard explains, “We went on a trip around the world and played to a bunch of different cultures, and we found there was some resonance along the way, particularly in Portland. They were the first city to put us on commercial radio – that was a huge deal. Then we came back and shared our story with Australia, and everything fell into place after that.”

The group's initial leap of faith has since been rewarded tenfold, which Sheppard still finds amazing. “Recently we got to perform at Suncorp Stadium, and it felt like a dream! We were in the middle of a field and you couldn't make out anyone's face so it didn't feel like you were performing to anyone, but there were 30,000 people watching and it was being televised – it was unreal.”

The group's success aligns with the current resurgence of positive and uplifting messages and genres within the music scene, which Sheppard believes is because, “Everyone likes a happy song. A lot of music in the last decade has been sort of melancholy, and it's all got it's place, but I like being happy, and I'm sure other people do too, so yeah, happy music is making a comeback,” he laughs.

Looking forward, the group are set to keep their momentum going. They've had the honour of being invited to play this year's SXSW Festival in Austin, Texas, as well as MUSEXPO in Los Angeles, and to top it off, their debut album is set for release later this year, which Sheppard couldn't be more thrilled about. “We recorded a lot of the songs at the same time as Let Me Down Easy,” Sheppard explains, “so they're very much in that same sort of world, but a few of them we've been able to write in the last couple of months so it's going to be interesting to see the contrast, and to see if people can tell the difference between the older ones, and the ones we wrote after we did a bit of touring and maturing. I'm really keen to show it to people.”