That was the scary part,” singer-songwriter Beccy Cole admits of the first of the two things that have consumed some 18 months of her life, off and on: her memoir, Poster Girl.

“I was asked a couple of times to write a book and I thought they were joking. I didn’t really imagine that people would actually want to read a book about me. But after the third publishing company came to me I thought, well, maybe I do have a story to tell, and now I just think everybody’s got a story to tell.” 

Inevitably, recounting her story led to Cole embarking on the second thing, her new album, Sweet Rebecca. “Without a doubt. I’ve never been so inspired to write. I remember writing the last paragraph of the book and then I just wanted to sink my teeth into some songs. Normally it’s more like pulling teeth, so for me it was just such a natural process and I was tingling with all this inspiration, I suppose. I think pretty much all of the songs come from a chapter out of the book. It was very cathartic in that way.

“The first song to come out was called Broken Soldiers, funnily enough. All the album was written within two weeks at the end of last year, and Broken Soldiers I started writing on November 11th. I remember because I was doing my minute’s silence and I was just filled with this sadness. I’d just finished writing about my experience writing [her 2006 hit] Poster Girl and had also been reading about a soldier who had taken his own life after coming back and suffering from PTSD.

“So I was very much wanting to write this song about broken soldiers. That was where it started for me, and then the process began. Sweet Rebecca was the second song I wrote and that was when I was collecting pictures for the book and saw a picture of myself at about seven years old and I just wanted to jump in the picture and warn her,” she chuckles, “of the life that was ahead, that I’d just sort of reviewed in my book. So the album is very much connected with the book.”

The then Rebecca Sturzel began her musical career aged 14, joining her mother’s, SA country music star Carole Sturzel’s band Wild Oats. Then, aged 19, she was invited to join another family band, Dead Ringer Band, where she met another aspiring young country singer, Kasey Chambers. A year later, in 1992, as Beccy Cole, she released her first solo single, Foolin’ Around, winning a Star Maker award at Tamworth the following year. Since then she’s chalked up nine Golden Guitars, three gold albums, 14 country #1s, and picked up seven songwriting and two Entertainer of the Year awards. So whatever lows she’s experienced have been balanced by some pretty amazing highs for Cole.