IPSWICH is fast becoming one of Queensland’s live music and entertainment destinations, with a growing procession of nationally and globally recognised artists choosing to perform in the city’s own backyard.
After having performed live and local twice in the past year, Killing Heidi’s Ella Hooper is preparing to release the latest chapter in a remarkable career spanning almost three decades, with her album Overnight Success out tomorrow.
After all, there has been very little “overnight” about a career that began with busking as a child, turned professional in her teens and exploded nationally before she was old enough to legally order a drink at the pub.
“I personally don’t think overnight successes exist, which is the joke,” Hooper said.
“Even though the Killing Heidi stuff happened rather quickly, it wasn’t overnight. We’d been busking since we were 11. We had instruments in our hands when we were three.
“It takes a crazy kind of teen to choose that life by age 13 that you’re doing it professionally by 15.”
For Hooper, now 43, the title carries another little wink as she prepares to push her solo music further into the US.
“This is one of the first albums that I’m releasing with quite a push in the States,” she said.
“I thought it was a cool way to introduce myself, be like, ‘Ha ha, Overnight Success, who’s this 43-year-old singer?’
“The gag is that it’s not my first rodeo.”
Anyone who lived through Australian music at the turn of the millennium knows that.
Killing Heidi, formed by Hooper and her brother Jesse as teenagers, became one of the biggest Australian success stories of its era.
Their debut album Reflector went to number one, became a multi-platinum smash and won the ARIA Award for Album of the Year, while songs including Weir and Mascara became part of the soundtrack of a generation.
Overnight Success remains unmistakably personal, with Hooper saying two songs are among the most intimate she has ever released, delving into the deaths of her parents and the role music played during the final stages of their lives.
“It’s about music being our love language and that’s a pretty full-on thing to recount for people,” she said.
“I have not yet played it live, so I don’t know how that’s going to work if I get emotional, but I’m kind of in that phase of my life where I don’t care, I’m just going to try.
“When it comes to a thing like that, I think you’ve just got to feel it out. There’s no right or wrong.”
Almost three decades in, Ella Hooper is still trying to get better, and perhaps that is the real joke behind Overnight Success – she is just getting started.
