Dealing With A Frustrating Misconception & Writing A K-pop Megahit: KLP Plays 'Two Truths & A Lie'

We’re about to get a flashback to the late ‘90s, FYI. To the golden days of lipgloss, big embroidered flared jeans, and those little strands of hair you’d leave either side of your face while the rest of your hair was pulled back with butterfly clips.

And this musical sweet spot is exactly where KLP got her start in music.

You might know her from triple j’s House Party, obviously, where she drops some of the biggest bangers on the planet to soundtrack your Saturday night. I know her from triple j too, when one evening I went into the studio ahead of my shift and asked her to teach me everything she knew. (I didn’t get very far, KLP knows alotta shit about the radio. I am a triple j infant in comparison.)

In today’s column, Kristy got personal about her career, all the strange and wonderful corners music has taken her to, and doled out some of the best source of ‘90s Aussie pop nostalgic I could’ve hoped for.

Truth

KLP: Okay, well, the first truth is… it’s weird, sometimes people know this, and when I feel like everyone knows it, the next minute someone finds out about it and is so blown away again… that I was in a pop band when I was 13! Signed to Sony Music, um… 13 years old. Oh hang on, here come the cleaners at the door.

Uppy: Okay!

K: So yeah, signed to Sony when I was 13. I went to a performing arts high school and so I would go to auditions all the time, I was just so desperate to be a performer in any capacity. I sang and I danced and I rocked up to one random audition, and it just so happened to be for a pop group! The next minute, I found myself signed to Sony, travelling around, not really going to school much, and… yeah, being a performer!

U: Wow! I didn’t know that! What was the pop group called?

K: We were called Real Blondes – look, it’s probably the worst name ever.

U: [laughs]

K: But it was a really fun thing to do, and I always look back on it and go, ‘Okay, what would I have done [instead]? Would I have chosen to go to school, like a normal school kid, or travel around and get all these amazing experiences at such a young age?’ So we did music videos, TV commercials, performed at CRAZY big performances like Carols In The Domain… and TV shows. So yeah, it was such a wild experience at such a young age.

U: Whoa. So you put out a release and everything? Can this be found online?! Is it immortalised?

K: Well, it was very luckily before the internet was widely used, so I feel like I escaped it…

U: Nooooo.

K: However, since then, one of them has been uploaded by one of the other girls’ parents. Someone HAS found the music videos and uploaded them to YouTube. You CAN find them, they are there. Me dancing and singing. But a lot of the interviews we did and TV performances aren’t available online! Sometimes I think it’s good, but sometimes it’s sad! Like I wish I could see all that stuff that I did.

U: Yeah! It’s your childhood as well! Was it like… ‘real blondez’ spelt with a z for some reason? I’m thinking it’s like…

K: No, but are you Googling it now? I can send you some links afterwards if you want!

U: YES. Please. And so, how long did you do that for?

K: I think it was maybe three years in total, maybe a little bit less. It got to a stage where… you know, we weren’t exactly making the record label much money, if any, and so it all kind of died nicely before it was anything TOO big that I guess I couldn’t revamp from. It was a MASSIVE blessing for so many reasons. First of all, the experience I had dealing with working at such a young age, the record industry and major labels, touring, travelling, media. The thing that I think was also invaluable was the idea that something failed at such a young age? I was 16, I thought I was gonna be the Spice Girls, and I wasn’t. And I suddenly had to go, ‘Oh my gosh, what the fuck am I gonna do next?’
U: Yeahh, true.

K: And I was really lucky that I had a dad who was a musician who could say, ‘Look, you’re not a failure. That thing has just ended, and now you go after the next thing.’ I guess it taught me to be really resilient and flexible and pick up the next thing.

U: 100%. Do you know what the other girls are up to now? Are they still in music?

K: I think one of them still does some music? But I’m really not in touch with them. Regardless of what you would think, seeing my social media, over the years I’ve deleted my social media MANY times.

U: OH, really?

K: Just sometimes you need a bit of a break from it, so I’m not actually in touch with them anymore. I’m pretty sure they’re happily married with kids… I’m the only one still crazy enough to still be doing music!

U: [laughs] You’re not crazyyyy. I was gonna ask something else – oh yeah, about your dad being a musician! Yeah, I’ve seen you speak on Twitter about how you’re in the freakin’ Lube Mobile ad from the ‘90s! Is that you?

K: Yeahh, well, that could almost be the lie! A lot of people think that it’s actually me in the TV commercial…

U: But you just did the [kid’s] voice!

K: Yeah, yeah, so my dad’s a musician so I’d come home from school and rather than be in the house, we’d just go hang in the studio and see what he was doing and we’d sing ads or… record songs. So it was a really crazy thing to happen in such a normal environment? But yeah, my dad STILL does that, he’s still a musician, and rather than just doing TV commercials, he’s actually an amazing songwriter! He’s won quite a lot of awards. When he was younger, he travelled on behalf of Australia on songwriting competitions, he won a lot of them. So yeah, he’s still kicking around, doing a lot of them, but I wish more people knew about his actual songwriting. But bloody Lube Mobile takes the spotlight all the time!

U: Oh yeah, it’s become the iconic ‘90s ad I guess! So how many of you were in Real Blondes?
K: There were three of us.

U: Three of you, like Destiny’s Child.
K: WELL. I dunno if I’d go for that comparison! [laughs]

Truth

K: I guess another truth is that I write songs for other people and a lot of people wouldn’t necessarily know about that. So one of the first big ones I had written and sung on, it didn’t feature my name, but it was the big What So Not song Jaguar. I’ve written songs for Nicole Millar, Thandi Phoenix, um… I wrote a K-Pop song once, which went on this big TV show over there! It had these K-Pop girlbands doing multiple versions of songs. So I have this whole other songwriting side of KLP that a lot of people wouldn’t know about.

U: Yeah, what do you like doing better?

K: I really like doing both, ‘cause it’s something that I just have to do with writing my own music. Like, self-therapy – I get to write about things that have happened in my life, it’s almost very final? To express how you felt about a situation and go, ‘That’s it, that’s what happened’. It’s in writing, it’s in a song. But there’s also something so amazing about being able to step out from your own head and write for someone else, help them express what they’ve gone through, OR play make believe. I mean, writing K-Pop is not exactly the DEEPEST song lyrics that you can write, but there’s something really fun about that! Just writing the craziest, fun melody and lyrical line you can think of.

U: So basically would you write the song and then send it over to them and do it that way? Or do you actually get in the studio with these people and like, collaborate fully?

K: So… that K-Pop song, at the time that I wrote it, I didn’t even know what K-Pop was! I had gone overseas on a songwriting trip with my first publishing deal with Universal Music, and they sent me overseas. I went to Sweden, I went to London and I wrote in London. I met these guys called LDN Noise, and at the time they were just starting but now they pretty much write ALL the huge K-Pop and J-Pop hits. At the time, I met with them, said, ‘Hi I’m Kristy!’ and they said, ‘Let’s write a K-Pop song!’ They played me some examples and explained what the brief is, what they like, and I wrote this song! I left and continued travelling, didn’t hear anything until… maybe a year later? The news came through that they were using it for this band! So, it was just the wild things that can happen when you write songs. You write it one day, forget about it then it pops up somewhere on the other side of the world being sung by people.

U: And K-Pop can be so wild! They have the whole costume thing, and the whole theme going, it’s just so different!

K: Yeah! The song I wrote was called Fingertips and they had, in the performance, they did this dance routine with their fingertips. It’s really cool to see it come to life like that!

U: Oh, how funny. So what’s the act called that you wrote for?

K: Oooh let me look that up. I’ll send you a link. But yeah, that kind of songwriting is getting in a room and writing for an imaginary act, not knowing who you’re writing for. But there are other ones where you’re actually in a room with the person, the artist, talking to them and you feel like their therapist at times. You say, like, ‘So what’s been going on in your life? What do you wanna write about?’ There’s just so many different ways you can do things. With the Thandi Phoenix song, a lot of that song had been written and I don’t think they had a chorus and they’d been sending it around trying to have it written. And I got sent it and something came to me straight away and I sang it into my phone, I didn’t even record it properly. I just sang this idea and emailed it back and went, ‘Yeah, there you go.’ And then the next week she recorded it and it became the whole chorus of the song! So that took me probably five minutes. Sometimes I think, ‘Man, maybe I shouldn’t record vocals properly and just do it all on my phone when I’m not thinking!’

U: It must’ve just flowed right out! What song was that one?

T: That was the one called Standing Too Close!

U: Nice! I love Thandi, she’s adorable.

T: Yeahh. I sent her that and worked on a bunch of other songs with her, one that is amazing that she’s been doing in her live shows that’ll HOPEFULLY get released! Hopefully.

U: That’s awesome! That’s so cool.

Lie

K: So, this isn’t a lie that I’VE created, it’s a misconception about me that a lot of people don’t realise and it… it’s sometimes a little bit frustrating and sometimes REALLY frustrating. A lot of people discover me through triple j and triple j is such an amazing, big, platform and they think that I’m a DJ/radio presenter that just suddenly decided to make music! And it’s a little bit like, ‘Oh, that’s cute! You’re making music now!’ But as you can hear from my tone… I’ve ACTUALLY been a singer and performer wayyy before I was ever a DJ, way before I was ever on triple j doing radio. A lot of the time I kind of have to clear that up – it even got to a stage once where I did a whole live tour and people would turn up and say, ‘Oh, I thought you were just DJing! I didn’t even know you sang!’ And I would constantly have to explain, ‘Yeah, I sing! I’m on this song and this song and I have my own music!’ So that’s probably the biggest misconception I get, it’s not necessarily a lie but it’s the biggest misconception about me and what I do.

U: Yeah, it totally would get frustrating! How do you think that happened? Like, when you first got your triple j job, was it not communicated that you weren’t just a rando off the street but like, already in the music world and already creating music and that’s why you were well equipped to be the host of House Party?

K: I think it’s just the biggest platform of anything that I am doing and was doing, and I think if that’s the biggest platform it’s the way most people hear about you and know about you, then that’s what they’re gonna know. You know, every radio show I’m not talking about an artist or my music, I’m talking about OTHER artists and other peoples’ music. In fact, I CAN’T talk about meeting an artist or my music, I can’t play my music on that show, so it’s been… really – I guess – hard to figure out how I feel about it. Because as amazing as it is, when all the other stuff takes a bit of a back seat, it’s trying to find that balance all the time of ‘no! This is what I do! This is what I wanna do!’ At the same time, looooving doing radio at triple j, so that’s probably the biggest misconception out there!

U: That sucks kind of, I’m sure it’d take a toll on you – having to continuously correct people.

K: Yeeeah, it’s definitely a first world problem! [laughs] There are definitely worse things I could be dealing with, but I guess when you asked for a misconception I wanted to clear up, I was like ‘yeah! This is it! The chicken before the egg!’

U: You were in a girl band, dammit, at 13! And how’s Carried Away going, do you think that’s helping switch the chicken-and-egg conversation?

K: Yeah I think the other thing that helps is, at the time that I started triple j I would’ve loved to be releasing a lot of music. At the time I was signed to a label, but now I’m fully independent so I can release as much music as I want! So I’m really trying to put out a regular flow of stuff.

KLP’s new song, Amnesia, is out now – check it out here.

If you’re a musician and have some stories to share and some secrets to tell – be it hilarious or heartbreaking, humiliating or honourable – send us an email at twotruthscolumn@gmail.com.

We might be telling the whole world about the time you accidentally killed your brother’s pet snake and replaced it without anyone knowing in no time.