Nobody Puts Sash In The Corner

At 22, Sascha Kelly is only just coming to terms with the difficulties of breaking into the elusive music industry. Her strong support network of family, friends and music team have her back, but it hasn't always been this way.

"My whole family growing up told me that music wasn't a realistic career and that I shouldn't follow it, so I kinda went against my passion for it," she explains. Growing up in the country, she moved to Sydney for a university course in nursing, but dropped out after two and a half years when she realised "that it was just so not what I wanted to be or what I wanted to do at all". "My family was extremely concerned and disappointed in me," she laments. "It was kinda like they put that pressure on me to go to university and do a degree because that's what everyone's supposed to do... it just wasn't for me."

"I feel like as soon as a guy sees a young girl in the music industry with a decent amount of talent [they think] that they can make a little money out of them and it's easy to do that and manipulate them."

"Now I've worked really hard and shown them that I can do this without their help at all, I think Mum, who's a huge part of my life, really supports me now and is so, so proud of me. It took a bit of work, I really had to prove to her that this is what I really want." Breaking away from the security of family support wasn't immediately met with reward, with Kelly facing the harsh reality of the music industry alone. "One of the songs on the record is called I Don't Want Something and it's kinda about standing up as a female in the industry and not taking crap from male producers, and it's also kinda like standing up for yourself and who you wanna be," she impassions.

"I think starting out in the industry, I was very freshly 21 and I didn't know the first thing about how anything worked, so I was taken advantage of very easily. People, and particularly men, saw that I was a young girl who had a decent amount of talent... Because I didn't know the rules of how stuff worked I was screwed over a couple of times. It can happen so easily, for a young girl particularly - I'm sure for guys as well - but I feel like as soon as a guy sees a young girl in the music industry with a decent amount of talent [they think] that they can make a little money out of them and it's easy to do that and manipulate them," she muses.

"I was actually really terrified to put that on the EP, because this is me standing up and going 'I don't want anything from you', which is tough as a girl to do that - I don't want to piss people off, but I also want to succeed and stick to my morals and show other girls that are younger than me that want to do this too that they have nothing to be afraid of and they can stand up and be who they want to be without being screwed over or manipulated."