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Australian country music star, Bella Mackenzie Interview | Pario Magazine
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Sep 17, 2024
From her family's pub in Queensland to creating hits like Cowboy, Bella Mackenzie's journey is all about embracing her roots & blending genres. FOLLOW BELLA MACKENZIE ON SOCIAL MEDIA: - Website: https://www.bellamackenzieofficial.com/ - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bellamackenzieofficial/ - TikTok: https://bellamackenzie.lnk.to/followwe/tiktok - Facebook: https://bellamackenzie.lnk.to/followwe/facebook - YouTube: @bellamackenzieofficial - Spotify: https://bellamackenzie.lnk.to/followwe/spotify - Apple Music: https://bellamackenzie.lnk.to/followwe/applemusic PURCHASE A PRINT EDITION OF PARIO MAGAZINE HERE: https://pariomagazine.com.au/store Check out more great content from Pario Magazine on our website: https://pariomagazine.com.au/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUPPORT PARIO MAGAZINE & THE COMMENTARY BOOTH - PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/jamieappsmedia - AMAZON PRIME VIDEO AFFILIATE: https://amzn.to/3vOzqQm
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0:00
Welcome to Pario magazine where I chat with individuals who have a desire to create
0:13
Today I'm joined by a 19-year-old Australian country music star on the rise
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Welcome back to Pario magazine, Bella McKenzie. Hello, thank you for having me
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My pleasure. We're here today to chat about your journey with music, the new single Cowboy
0:29
upcoming singles as well before we dive into that though do you want to give our
0:35
audience a little introduction as to who Bella is away from music yeah so I I grew up in a
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small little town in central North Queensland called Moranbah and so we owned
0:50
the pub out there it's kind of a one pub town I pretty much grew up on the
0:55
premises of the pub we had a house there and that's kind of where I grew up and I was there till I was about 12 years old and then we moved only two hours away to
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Mackay, which is another very small town but a little bit bigger. And we still at the pub
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So yeah, pretty much my whole childhood. I grew up watching other musicians come through and perform every weekend at the pub
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It had live music every single weekend. So I think that's kind of what sparked my love and my interest in music and performing
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and all that kind of thing. And when I was 12, I started songwriting
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And yeah, that's kind of how I was. I got into it. Very nice
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Was it all different sorts of musicians that were coming through? And how did that influence you as a growing child in becoming an artist
1:41
Yeah, well, I think it was pretty much every genre you could imagine that would play live
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music would come through that pub. So I get to see from a very young age, it opened my eyes to a lot of very different styles
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and very different genres and people and ways to perform as well
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even different instruments that people would bring and things like that. And so as a young child, I loved, you know, like the Taylor Swift's and all of the girly pop kind
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of artists. And then I kind of, once I sort of found my own sound, I think that's kind of how I found
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my way into country. What was it about country in particular that was so compelling for you
2:19
Well, I grew up pretty much in a country town and we have, my grandfather, he had a cattle farm
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in Rockhampton, which is another very small town in Queensland. And so I kind of grew up going to that cattle farm all the time
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So we kind of lived that country lifestyle. And I think that as I got older and kind of resonated with the stories in country music
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and kind of understood the lyrics more and what the country musicians were kind of saying
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I was like, hey, that's kind of how I grew up. And yeah, I think it just resonated with me the most
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Okay. Yeah, because country music doesn't seem like the genre that would typically draw in
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young child and teenagers and stuff. Yeah, yeah. I noticed that change
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Yeah, I think for me, because it was something that I just grew up around
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my parents love country music, my whole family listens to country music because we all kind of live out in the country
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It was kind of a no-brainer, but yeah, I can see definitely that it's probably, like I didn't have many friends in school that listened to country music or loved country music
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So yeah I definitely kind of an outlier in that perspective yeah You mentioned Taylor Swift as an early idol Do you think her style of music has sort of changed that ethos of country music is for
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not for young, young kids and particularly young girls and now she's made it popular
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Yeah, well, I think at the time that she was writing country music, like she signed her first publishing deal when she was like 14 or something crazy like that
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So it's kind of like as a 14 year old, she was writing 100% of her music and writing for other people
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So it's kind of like she's writing about her own experiences as a teenager and kind of it's
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always going to appeal to that sort of audience. So I feel like she kind of broke down the barriers that it's all men on farms and whatever
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that can listen to country music. And she was kind of writing about young teenager experiences and stories
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And I feel like, yeah, that's kind of, that was a big turning point for country music
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I feel like. And then when you got into the genre, how did you go about sort of writing your
4:23
songs in introducing some of your experiences into the music? Yeah, well, I feel like for me, my, like a lot of stuff that I was writing in the early
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days was just based on my personal experiences. And I've started songwriting when I was 12
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So I didn't have a lot of, like, like in hindsight, life experience, but I feel like at
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the time, as a teenager, you're over, like making everything so much more dramatic than it is
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So I feel like I was kind of writing about, you know, like boys in school and going out to the farm and my family and things like that
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But like I was, I'm also always been such a deep thinker as well
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So I was writing about like droughts that were happening around kind of my region and things like that
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things that just would appeal to that I would relate to, but also appeal to like a country audience, I guess
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So that's kind of how I started writing. Is the approach to music these days still very similar
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Yeah, I think so. Definitely, obviously, I use it as kind of like a healing, like, and, or it's like
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therapy for me to write. So I feel like most of my stories are personal experience, but I think also
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I have such a creative mind. So I write, you know, literally dream up a story in my head and write it
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and I've not experienced it, but it might be based on something that's, like a story that one of
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my friends have told me or something like that. So I feel like as I'm older, I kind of draw on
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outside experiences a little bit more, as opposed to my personal. personal life, but I still do. It's about 50-50
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Okay. And have the influences evolved over the years as well? I can't imagine Taylor Swift
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is the only influence these days. Yeah, no, definitely. I, as I kind of got older, I love
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like blues kind of country and I love like country rock as well. So I think that as I've just
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gotten more into country music, I've done my research. There's new artists coming through literally every single day. So I love like one of my biggest influences songwriting wise is
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Chris Stapleton and he started as a writer. Now he's a very, like, successful country artists
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So I feel like he's definitely a massive one. And I think Taylor Swift, business-wise, is a huge inspiration still
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because she's built this massive empire, like huge. So business-wise, but yeah, in terms of music
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I tend to turn to, like, maybe the more, more, like, country-specific artists
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that are coming out of the States at the moment, I think. Okay. And then the new single Cowboy epitomises sort of
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the pop rock country fusion Can you tell me about the inspirations behind that single and how you went about creating it Yeah so that one came I just actually graduated high school just before we wrote that in late 2022
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And so I was like, I'm ready to go. I want to just go writing. And so I organized a riding trip in Sydney because I don't obviously live in Sydney
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but I was like there's heaps of people who work with there, heaps of creative. So I thought I'll just go there for a week, line up a session every single day
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And I was writing music that was like pretty good with like all the people I was
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collaborating with but it wasn't really really country to me like it wasn't kind of like my style of
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what I wanted to put out or anything and so I kind of said we walked into the last session and we did it
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in umなんだ street studios with Ryan Miller which was awesome and there was myself my old brother
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who's like an EDM producer never written country in his life like just was there for vibes kind of thing
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he came in and then penrose was another writer on it she's um was a pop artist at the time and she
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came in and did some writing with us so i kind of walked into the session and just said let's let's write
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the most country song we've written this whole trip and that's kind of how cowboy came about and
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i think having all those different because my older brother does edm but he also loves heavy metal and
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rock and that kind of thing so me being country having a pop writer having ryan who's just in
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as insanely talented producer you can do do anything and Penrose being like a pop artist kind of all got us working together and yeah
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that's kind of where the fusion came in I feel like okay and do you feel that trip of sort of writing
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songs every day that weren't necessarily songs that you would put out do you think that was a good
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process to expand your horizons and you might draw a couple of things from all of those songs later
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yeah yeah definitely and I think that that experience for me also taught me a lot about myself
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of my sound and what I want to put out. And now when I walk into a session, I'm a lot more clear on my sound
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I have references and I kind of can go, okay, well, we don't want to have an experience
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where we walk in and it comes out with something that no one really wants to record or put
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out or anything. It's a good song. Like it's not bad music. It's great writing and whatever, but it's just no one's particular sound
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So, yeah, it definitely taught me a lot about my sound and what I want to be putting out
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in the future. And, yeah, like going into sessions with a purpose
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just not just see what comes out of this. Exactly, yeah. And then the film clip for the single filmed on the family farm in Rockhampton
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How was that experience? It was so amazing. And as soon as they said, let's do a video for Cowboy, I knew I wanted to do it there
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It's like we grew up with a way larger family property, but it just got too much
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So we ended up selling it and getting a smaller one, which is where Cowboy was recorded
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So it wasn't like where I grew up, but we'd had it for a couple of years
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It's still very special. We had 40 cows on the property and they were all ours
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And we were like, let's just do it there. We can have free reign of the property. And we had such an amazing team, like on the production side of that
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And being in a rural town, my whole, like, dad's side of the family lives there
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So we got all of the locals help. Everyone was on board. And, yeah, everyone was just super excited about it because it's kind of one of those things that doesn't happen often, like, filming a music video out there
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So they were all, yeah, super excited and supportive. Did that film clip capture a little bit of what life was like growing up on the farm Yeah definitely Like we had some scenes where I was sitting around the cattle yards and we got a really cool like truck to kind of pick up truck that we
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used in the film as well, which was cool. And I got to like kind of drive it around the property
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And it kind of, I think it's so nice to have just like for personal reasons and for my family
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as well to have like a beautiful kind of representation and capture the like farm. And like
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because one day we might not have it, but we'll have this video that just captures our life on the farm
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And yeah, so I think it's really special that we did it there. Are you one of those people that's happy to get down and dirty and do some hard work at the farm if needed
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Yeah, I think that's how I was brought up. I definitely am a very get-in and help kind of person
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I think growing up at a pub sort of teaches you that as well. So, yeah, definitely
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And then looking to the future, what is the ultimate dream with country music
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Well, my dream for myself personally is just to be able to reach as many people as I can with my music and to be able to entertain
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I love entertaining people and I love the feeling that I get when you watch someone and you just feel like inspired
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You can do anything literally the next day you could wake up and your life could change like that, especially with like TikTok and everything that the world has to offer these days
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Like I just want to be able to inspire as many people as I can, like make as many people happy or sad or healed from loss or just
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like make them feel something and I think to be able to reach those people I'd love to be playing
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stadiums and touring the world one day so yeah that's my ultimate dream okay so that's the big
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long-term goals in the short term new single coming out what else exciting is on the horizon
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yeah so we've definitely like been working on so much new music I feel like this new phase of
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my career is so different to anything I put out before it's way more
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mature and it's way more me, way more country, which I love
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So, yeah, we were in the studio for a month working on songs to just go bang, bang, bang
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his new music. So, yeah, definitely excited the new singles coming out, August, or late later this month now
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with a US artist called Lacade. So that's my first collab as well
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So I'm super excited to see how that goes and see how his audience picks it up in the
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States as well. So yeah, I'm super excited about that. But then, yeah, after that, we've just got
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so much new music ready to go. So yeah. And that single is titled Wasted. So we'll have everyone
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keep an eye out for that one. Yeah. And then finally, so where is the best place for people to support
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you, track your creative journey and keep up to date with when all this new music hits? Yeah, so all of
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my social handles are the same Bella McKenzie official, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, all of that kind
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of thing. And I am very, very regular posting on there. So I love to keep everyone updated. So
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that's probably the best place. Perfect. And then we'll hopefully see you touring around shortly
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after the EP and everything. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you so much for the time and good luck
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with everything coming up. Awesome. Thank you
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