Stella Donnelly had to resist the urge to turn ‘Year of Trouble’, the piano ballad that anchors her new album Love and Fortune, into a Robyn-esque moment of dancefloor melancholy. She almost took it off the record when her bandmate, Julia Wallace, encouraged her to play it the way she already had been: keep it small. Yet her emotional devastation, the fragile power of her voice, has rarely sounded bigger. “I’m undressed, paperless, filter gone,” she begins as she confronts the loneliness of a friendship falling apart. She does dress up other songs, like its brattier counterpart in ‘Feel It Change’, but that nakedness is what helps the record move from one chapter to the next, like taking heartbreak by its daily swings. Searing and unguarded, Love and Fortune is not just a record about bridges burned and straining for reconciliation, but a reclamation of the dozen selves pecking for attention in the midst of solitude. “Take back my little life, and push you away/ I set myself on fire, for someone else’s flame,” she sings on ‘W.A.L.K.’. More than careful not to reignite it, by the end of the ride, Donnelly sounds caring, kind, and turns out, more than a little fortunate.
We caught up with Stella Donnelly to talk about a charity shop piano, a friendship breakup, self-help books, and other inspirations behind her new album Love and Fortune.
Normality and repetition
I’d decided that I wasn’t going to tour for a year or two, just to figure out if I was going to make music again, so I got a job in a bakery. It was my first time knowing what was happening that week: I wake up, go do the job, come home. And I do think that repetition, riding my bike along the same road every day, finishing the food in my fridge, all of those sorts of things really fostered that. I was finding a lot of joy in the repetition, playing in a netball team, just having those weekly things that I really look forward to doing. I got bored, which I think is the perfect recipe for me to write songs.
When did you feel the boredom leading to inspiration?
It’s like with anything new you start, you’re like, “I work in a bakery, this is the best fun ever.” And then a month in, your legs are really sore, you’ve eaten way too many croissants, and you’re really sick of the customers. You’ve just washed your 70th pan covered in oil, and it’s that point where you have that perspective of, “Okay, playing music’s not so bad.” [laughs] Working in a bakery is not so bad either, I loved it, but working those hours in hospitality – the charm wears off quite quickly.
Were you writing songs while working at the bakery?
I worked all the way through the record, so yeah. I’m still working part-time now, not in the bakery, but in different jobs. Now it’s nice, because I’ve got the repetition, but I do have a little bit of excitement and joy and playing music again, so it’s a nice combination.
A new box to write in
I was living in a share house, which had a really big shed out the back. My housemate works in film, and he’s a builder, and he had a bunch of materials, so he built me a box – a room that you could fit maybe three people in, no windows, and the box went inside the shed. It honestly was life-changing, because it was also the middle of summer, so this box was the coolest room in the house. We didn’t have air conditioning or anything, so I would just go into my dark little box and spend hours in there. It’s just like that feeling when you rearrange your furniture or something – it’s that “I’m in a new house feeling,” you know? It was such a beautiful gift to me.
So when you say you wrote songs in the shed, you mean in the box in the shed?
Yeah. [laughs] It was also because I was out in the shed, but I knew that my housemates could hear me, so I was feeling insecure about annoying them and the neighbors. It was also just a soundproofing situation.
Do you think that contributed to the atmosphere of the record?
I think the loneliness of it. Being in such a quiet space maybe contributed to the record being very introspective, more so than my previous work. It definitely contributed to it being all about me.
A charity shop piano
The piano was a big part of Flood as well, but it becomes a different kind of emotional thread through the piano songs on Love and Fortune. What role did the piano have in shaping this record?
I didn’t lean on it as much in this record. I spent a bit more time with the guitar on this record, but the charity shop piano, it’s that feeling of: you sit down, and there’s an opportunity to write a song immediately. I guess you could pick up an acoustic guitar, but I never had my guitars lying around. You pick up the electric, you gotta plug it in, you gotta get the pedals on, there’s a process to that. Whereas you could just be, literally, from getting out of the shower, within 30 seconds writing a song on the piano. Having a piano around is just really good for me.
I think the songs that I wrote on piano are more vulnerable just in the sort of physiological experience of playing a piano. It’s very there, whereas playing guitar, I kind of have this little shield. I feel like there’s a bit more confidence, and I’m standing up, whereas I feel like you can’t really lie when you write a song on piano. I guess that’s where I turned to the piano, when it was time to go there in some of the painful moments of the record.
Were there more songs like ‘Year of Trouble’, ‘Friend’, and ‘Love and Fortune’ that didn’t make the cut?
There were more guitar songs that didn’t survive. Most of the piano songs survived, maybe a couple of the demos didn’t make it through. I feel like the piano songs were carried the theme of the record for me, They really created these sort of anchor points to stretch and branch out on the record.
Was there a song out of these that was the trickiest to sing over?
Well, ‘Year of Trouble’ was tricky. I initially wanted it to be a sad Robyn sort of dance floor song, but also ‘The Look’ by Metronomy – that was the energy. And then it just kept not working. We ended up going to do a show, and I was gonna cut the song from the setlist, and Julia [Wallace], who engineered the record, they were like, “Do not cut that song. Just play it on piano, it’ll be great.” And I’m really glad they stepped in there and encouraged that for me. That was a tricky one, it felt like a bit of a beast that we were wrangling. ‘Friends’ and ‘Love and Fortune’ came very quickly.
Limitations
Going through a friendship breakup, I was writing so much, but in every song, I was trying to make sense of the whole situation in one song. Because I was still so close to the pain, I guess I was trying to figure it out in the song, and it got to the point where I was like, “Okay, enough. I’m just gonna let myself feel the one feeling, and then I can make up for it in the next song.” For example, ‘Feel It Change’ is quite petty in my eyes. It feels self-righteous and bratty, so I made up for it with ‘Year of Trouble. There were a few moments in ‘Year of Trouble’, where I’m like, “This so soppy,” so then I make up for it in ‘Love and Fortune’, which has a bit more wit about it. Each song really goes further into the feeling of it, and I think that also allowed me to expand on the character in each song – to not lean on the full story and just start to write more of a story around each situation.
Friendship breakup
‘Feel It Change’ and ‘Year of Trouble’ also complement each other as singles: there’s irony in wishing to be told you’re the perfect friend and then declaring that it’s all your fault, in a way. Having some distance from the record, what do you feel like forgiveness looks like in the context of a friendship breakup, where there’s usually more room for reconciliation?
I don’t want to go into it too much out of out of respect and care for that other person who hasn’t had the opportunity to write an album about it. [laughs] So much of it is just inspired by that situation, and it’s not just the truth in every detail. But there’s just so much shame in a friendship breakup compared to a romantic breakup. I have no shame about writing a breakup song about any of my exes, but when it came to this… There’s a reason I stopped playing music for two years. I wasn’t sure I was willing to go there, because it’s just complicated, and a friendship breakup speaks so much to your personality and your humanity. It was a very confusing time. I think when it comes to forgiveness, again, it’s such a complicated situation that I can only forgive myself for certain for the parts I’ve played, forgive the other person for the parts they’ve played. And just move on – I think that putting this record out is that, like, “I can move on now.”
Does being in music, or any kind of spotlight, complicate how you deal with that breakup, especially when it’s a shared thing?
For me, the friendship was over by the time I’d written the record, and that was not necessarily my choice. I had to do the work on my own to figure it out and to reconcile with everything that way, so the music in itself kind of allowed me to do that. It’s why we write songs, I guess. So much of the record is a love song to that person, and I had to justf let go of how they might feel if they heard it, because I had to write the record, in a way.
There’s a lot of overlap between a friendship breakup and a romantic breakup, but they don’t always demarcate your life in the same way. I’m curious if it had that effect on you.
I think what it made me realize is that there’s a very thin line between platonic friendship and romantic friendship. It’s a very confusing line. In a way, my life was very split. It was a very disruptive, eruptive, harrowing experience. You start to evaluate all of your other friendships. It’s quite destabilizing, because you start worrying this might happen with other friends, and it was working through that and finding my grounding again.
What did it change about how you approached other friendships? What were you more aware of?
I honestly think the dynamic that two people create is their own, and I realize that sometimes it’s just not the vibe. For a while, I was a little shaky, but I think now I just really cherish the people in my life, the friends that I have have had for a very long time.
Share house
How did it affect your day-to-day life outside songwriting?
I love living in a share house. I find it so nourishing and nurturing. I was in a house with six other people, and then across the street was another house filled with our friends. I’ve since moved 100 meters down the road, so it still feels very much like we’re all part of the same community. None of my housemates were musicians, except my partner, Marcel. And I found that so exciting. I was living with a midwife who would come home at six in the morning, covered in blood, with stories of birth. People who work in film, or a school teacher, a landscaper. That was a very exciting space to be in, but also just the feeling of knowing my friends are around, having cups of tea. You can tap straight into community really quickly, but also tap out of it and know that that’s okay, and I think for me that feeling of writing music whilst there are people around is a really comforting thing. I hate being home alone. I feel like apartment living is the life. If I ever got to live in my own house somewhere, I’d want to live in an apartment so that I could hear people around.
Would they ask you about the music?
Yeah, I wouldn’t really talk about it. None of us really talk about our jobs. It’s a beautiful thing. We talk about food. We talk about planning our next camping trip, or we do the quiz, or we just laugh about random shit. It’s such a beauty, this feeling of: these people love me, and they may have not even listened to my albums. I think that’s having true chosen family. None of us really know what each other’s doing, but we all really love each other very much. One of my friends in that house, Grace, my best friend, she knew what I was going through. She’d been by my side through that time anyway, so I wasn’t gonna bore her with any more of my, like, whinging, or my songs. She hasn’t heard the record yet, she’s just hearing it as it’s coming out. I did send it to two of my best friends, we live in different parts of the world.
Could you talk about the ways in which friendship, and not the breakup, inspired the record?
The record was just me, Marcel, who plays drums, Jack [Gaby], who plays bass, and Julia, who plays keys and flugelhorn. It’s just the four of us, and I produced it. No one else knew what we were doing. It felt like we didn’t have an adult with us. I felt like we’d we’d snuck into a studio and we’re just doing what we could do with what we knew, which was very special and instrumentalin the sound of the record – it being, I guess, stripped-back. The two friends that I sent the demos gave me the confidence to put the album out. They were really supportive of me. I am a needy person, and I realize my well-being really relies on the people around me. Not even just in service to my music, but not being in my own world all the time. I’m really glad I got to step out of the box and share the songs with Jack, Julia, and Marcel.
Self-help books
You weaponize them in a darkly funny way on the title track. I’m curious if that was just a lyric that stuck in the context of the song, or if reading self-help books had actually become a habit.
Yeah, it had become a habit. I was just trying to make sense of the world. I think it’s ironic, really – I was in a share house full of people that loved me, but I was in my room reading self-help books, thinking that that was going to be the answer to getting over a breakup. I made a list of self-help books that I was reading. The first one was Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke. Then I read Unstuck by Dr. Emily Musgrove – that was really helpful. Then I got into The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, and then Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, which was actually the best one.
Why was it the best?
I’ve never read Eat, Pray, Love, so I don’t really know anything about Elizabeth Gilbert, but she was talking about how she wrote all these books, and she thought Eat, Pray, Love was going to be the trashest of all books. She kind of hated it, and then it ended up doing really well. It was this idea of: just let it go, write whatever the fuck you want to write, and you don’t get to decide what happens after that. I think that gave me the confidence to write the album and almost approach it the way an author would approach a book, rather than a musician approaching a record, splitting each song into a chapter.
I started moving on to reading women’s stories, Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner, Motherhood by Sheila Heti, The Outline by Rachel Cusk, All Fours by Miranda July. I was reading all these women’s stories where they were kind of alone in the world, and picturing them sitting alone, writing those books, gave me great comfort while I was sitting in my box in a shed.
Was reading a daily habit when you were writing, or did you take breaks from it?
No, I was so into it. I had a library card – because I was home, I guess, it was my first library card since I was a child. I had this huge list in my notes from recommendations of what to read, and I would just stand in the library and try and find any of those recommendations. I was deeply absorbing as much work as I could at that time; avoiding the pain.
One moment that stuck out to me in terms of the language of self-help showing up on the record is in ‘Please Everyone’: “We hide ourselves in always pleasing everyone, and you can’t please everyone.” That feels like one of the lessons of the record.
Yeah, and to be brave. I’m really learning that a lot, actually, at the moment. ‘Being Nice’, for example – I think I need to actually take the lessons from the songs that I write. I think I do a lot of impression management; I really want to make a good impression on people that I meet, and I work so hard at doing thatthat sometimes I forget who the fuck I am and what I like. I hope that I can begin to get over that and just grow up.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Stella Donnelly’s Love and Fortune is out November 7 via Brace Yourself Records/Dot Dash Recordings.
