‘I Had Really Bad Experiences’: Why Kate Miller-Heidke Was Hesitant To Co-write

Kate Miller-Heidke

Aussie singer-songwriter Kate Miller-Heidke’s new record, Child In Reverse (The Music’s Album Of The Week), sees the local talent produce some of her most inspired and adventurous work to date, which can largely be attributed to her approach to its creation and enlisting local artist Evan Klar and American talent Hailey Collier as co-writers.

Speaking with The Music, Miller-Heidke revealed that, up until Child In Reverse, co-writing was something that had “scared” her, partly “because of concerns around authenticity”.

“I didn’t want other people to put a lyric into my mouth – especially people I hadn’t even met,” she said. 

“There was a snobbishness around that whole setup, I guess. I also did have a couple of really bad experiences with co-writing early on in my career, which put me off it.

“I actually think that all of those opinions and dismissive about it, they came from just a sense of fear really, because it’s very exposing and vulnerable when you’re in a room with people and you’ve got to come up with ideas on the spot. 

“Some of your ideas are gonna be shit or maybe you won’t come up with anything. That was really scary to me; I’ve always been scared to be exposed as a fraud and that just seemed like a setting where that was really likely to happen. But it didn’t and I was just totally shocked.”

With Klar and Collier as collaborators, both of whom she met at a songwriting camp last year, Miller-Heidke said that writing and recording studio album number five was “the easiest process that I’ve ever gone through and I think you can hear that in the songs too”.

“They’re not heavy or dark or profoundly serious – there are serious moments, but those are threaded through with playful, almost child-like [elements],” she said.

“I wanted it to retain that spontaneity that we felt, the three of us in the room, and we didn’t have time to edit ourselves too much. It happened really quickly and easily and it felt free.”

Read the full interview as well as our review of Child In Reverse here.