BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
It’s easy to become swept up in the momentum of your career. For arts industry practitioners, each day can be filled with practice sessions, networking meetings, and portfolio building.
As you work towards your goals, it can also be easy to lose sight of the artist you’ve become, and the art you want to create.
This is Tim Minchin’s story. It’s told through the comedy and tragedy of his forthcoming album Apart Together.
Tim — critically acclaimed for his Olivier-winning Matilda: The Musical, and critically disappointed through the trashing of his multimillion-dollar Hollywood film project — is a master storyteller. Through his newly released singles including Leaving LA, I’ll Take Lonely Tonight, and Airport Piano, the Australian songwriter presents a bittersweet reflection of life (and death).
The album will be released in its full form this 20 November (but we’ll share a few of the early music clips from the album as we go). It might seem a little strange to call it his debut, when Tim has already won Tony, Helpmann, and Olivier awards for his extensive body of work. Nevertheless, Apart Together will be his first-ever studio album.
In this interview, Tim tells CutCommon how he feels about success and failure — and why he’s not afraid to sing about both. Perhaps more importantly, he tells us what his album truly represents. It’s not about “the market” or what people might expect of him. It’s about the music he wants to make for himself.
So kick back (preferably with cheese and wine), and take in the story of this incredible artist and his humble “me songs”.
Editor’s note: We caught up with Tim via Zoom. This interview features an excerpt from our chat (albeit a generous one).
Hi Tim, thanks for the chat. Let’s jump straight into it.
I will try not to answer my questions too long. I’m a long-winded person.
Of course. What’s one of your new songs called – Talked Too Much, Stayed Too Long?
Exactly, story of my life.
I saw your live performance in Hobart, back in March – your last live performance before the pandemic. That evening, the Australian government had announced it would ban “non-essential” mass gatherings. You told the audience you were going to spend your weekend drinking.
We had no idea what it was going to turn out to be – and we still don’t know what it will turn out to be. It wasn’t great. All the people on that tour were suddenly out of work.
It’s been crushing for our industry. I know you tend to write a lot of social commentary in your songs; has the COVID-19 pandemic influenced your songwriting or ideas?
I’m largely retired from writing social commentary in my songs. I’m not interested in trying to have my take on everything. I only speak when I have an angle I think I can take that no one has taken, and when I think I can help.
What the pandemic has influenced is what I’ve been concentrating on. And what I’ve been concentrating on is putting out this album, which is much more reflective and talks about bigger things. I think that’s another way to deal with the pandemic, rather than getting caught up in it. It’s certainly been how I’ve coped with it.
I’m not reading the data, I’m not reading the news. I don’t see any point in reading people shouting at each other on Twitter about total false assumptions about our leaders and conspiracy theories; it’s all just poison.
So I’ve gone: ‘Okay, this is a virus, and there’s no point fighting an ethical war against an unethical, amoral germ – so I’m going to try to make stuff that’s entertaining and makes people think. And I’m going to try to spend the time being creative instead of trying to dissect something.’
It’s weird how humans want to make an enemy all the time. You can’t blame anyone, really, for a virus. And yet, we want to so badly, don’t we? Because we need to blame someone; because we feel the world can’t be this chaotic – it has to be someone’s fault. So we scream at China or Trump or Daniel Andrews, or whatever your politics tell you to scream at.
I’m not interested, myself.
You know, one could suggest your views border on social commentary.
Yes, that’s right!
Still, Apart Together is deeply personal. I’d wanted to ask if it was difficult being socially isolated and getting drawn into such personal stories – but it sounds like it’s been a pleasant thing for you. Even though not all the songs from this album feel inherently happy or positive.
The album was largely made before COVID-19 came along, so this year’s been about mixing and making a music video and stuff.
It’s been interesting, putting out music videos, being restricted by restrictions – allowing the limitations of this time to define the sort of art you’re making. I think every time I’ve had to make a music video, I’ve had different access to space and people, and I’ve really enjoyed that challenge – that suits my brain.
I was really surprised to watch your music videos from Apart Together, with these songs representing the first taste of your debut album — because they’re very serious! The title track is about death. It’s kind of gut-wrenching.
I’m not interested in releasing a studio-recorded album of comedy songs and such. The idea of recording a bunch of songs with punchlines, away from an audience, sounds like hell to me.
My concern has been that, over the years, I don’t know who I am anymore. I write music for theatre, and I write musical comedy. And this question of, ‘If I was just left alone to write the songs I feel like writing, what would it be?’ has been answered by this record: it’ll be whimsical and romantic-unromantic, and a little bit bombastic. And on the other end of the scale, incredibly unbombastic, and they’ll just be stories. They’ll be unconventional in form, and they’ll be too long for radio.
I like what it is. I think it’s a fair representation of who I am as a songwriter.
Some of your other songs on Apart Together are hilarious, though. I believe I can judge that as a listener – even if you don’t like the idea of producing an album filled with straight-up comedy songs. Do you see yourself as an amusing or interesting subject to write about, or is it more about telling the story of your recent life?
One tries to write one’s own experiences in a way that people can take the universal truths out of them.
I did think [while writing these songs]: ‘Oh, I should take all my comic instinct out.’ But all I discarded was punchlines that require laughs to make sense. Those songs that build tension, and then drop – and have punchline, punchline, punchline – that’s a live form, for me.
With the idea of writing whimsical or quirky phrases, I realised very quickly that shutting that off would be completely fraudulent, because that’s how I like to write. It’s in my musicals, and it’s playing with words and phrases.
The line, ‘Only the wrappers of Pringles and Snickers for which to atone’ [from I’ll Take Lonely Tonight] is not the sort of line you’d hear in your average pop song – but I think it’s a cracking line. And I’ve learnt not to be ashamed of my indulgence. My linguistic indulgences. Even though it is pretty daggy.
It might be indulgent. But even if you combine that with the idea that you’re such a big star, critically described as a “genius”, you still don’t seem to project ego when you’re performing. So you can say that it’s indulgent, but I’d argue there’s a difference between writing your music and boosting your ego.
I really appreciate you saying that, because I have enough insecurity about my place in the industry to keep me working hard to make stuff that I think is valid. I certainly don’t approach art by thinking: ‘What’s this genius going to do next?’ And I pity anyone who gets to a point in a career that they start believing that they are really good.
I do wonder a lot about where my music belongs. I am a child of the ‘90s, and in this album, you can hear Randy Newman and The Beatles and Beck and you can hear U2 in [my opening track] Summer Romance and some of those big stadium bands. You can hear some of the bombastic string vibes of Queen, and all that stuff that I was built on. And you think: ‘Am I just an old guy that’s writing music that’s old?’
Another reason I’m perfectly satisfied with this record is that I have stopped caring about that, as well. They’re just me songs.
You describe them as “me songs”, but you’ve also candidly ripped into your failures through your music. Your press release described your time in the United States as a “wreckage” with a film project that was “trashed”. Is there some tall poppy syndrome in there? You don’t shy away from failure, but do you undermine yourself by confronting it so openly?
I’m happy to undermine myself because it’s how I feel.
There are grand traditions of self-diminishment as being the main source of material, and I am very scared of being seen as being ‘up myself’. I fear that. And when I get attacked by right-wing people – when I do a Cardinal Pell song and they call me ‘smug’ and stuff – it really sh*ts me.
If you come to one of my shows, I spend a lot of time ranting and eviscerating – but if I’ve done my job, the feeling people walk out with is elevated. I don’t think people walk out thinking that I’m a cynic or I’m cruel or anything.
Self-deprecation [is part of] my whole life philosophy – because I understand there’s no such thing as free will. I think I’m just lucky, I don’t deserve anything I get […] it’s just luck. If you’re not humbled by that, you’re not thinkin’ about it proper.
At what point in your music career did you realise it’d be more effective to simply be yourself, even when it might risk p*ssing people off?
That’s a really good question. Often, people ask, how do I have such self-belief, and that doesn’t resonate with me at all. People are very complex, and I’m very sure you and your readers all know that they wake up some mornings feeling like they can kick the world’s arse, and some mornings feeling like they’re a piece of sh*t.
In If This Plane Goes Down, I talk about finding a balance between self-loathing and pride – and that is my life. I try not to believe the voice that says I’m not great, and I try not to believe the voice that says I’m great.
But you’re absolutely right – there just came a point, in my late 20s, where I realised you should be careful about thinking you know what the market wants, and trying to be that. That’s what Hollywood does all the time, and it’s why I didn’t get along very well with Hollywood. In the end, my movie over there fell foul to people who just couldn’t see that something different was worth taking a risk on. They thought they knew what the market wanted; or at least, they didn’t have the confidence to do something they couldn’t predict the market would want.
The thing that gave me a career was being less someone else’s version of me, and more my version of me.
In my late 20s, I was trying to be an actor, trying to go to auditions, and I cut my hair off and called myself ‘Timothy’. My agent had my photo on the wall: ‘Timothy Minchin, short-haired and normal-looking, but not-hot-enough-for-Neighbours kinda guy’.
Then, I was trying to be a good musical director for cabaret shows, and trying to take the jokes out of my songs so that I had a chance of getting a record deal. When I left the jokes in the songs, the record companies asked if I was a novelty act. Eventually, the thing that gave me a career was being less someone else’s version of me, and more my version of me.
Since then, the more I could be honest and do what I thought was right and good – and say what I thought was right and good – the better my career has gone.
The trouble is, that’s not necessarily a great lesson because it’s mostly luck. There’s no sure-fire way of doing it.
Yeah. You seem to be a case study for what the market does want, even when it’s not built on any sort of typical –
Assumptions?
— yeah. So how would you give advice, as a role model to artists, when there’s no clear pathway to success? Should they try to conform to a personal brand that matches a target demographic – or should they just be themselves? And if they are being themselves and it fails, then that’s so tragic, isn’t it?
I think it’s much worse if you try to be something else and you fail – and of course, you have to define ‘failure’. If you be yourself, and find there’s not a market for you – you can’t make a living in the arts by being yourself – then at least you’ve been yourself.
If you try to be a version of something, and you don’t find a market for yourself, then you’ve lied and failed. I’d rather be truthful and fail than lie and fail.
The fact that I’m kind of mainstream couldn’t be more shocking to me.
The market is unpredictable. So the fact that I’m kind of mainstream couldn’t be more shocking to me. But there I was, doing funny complex songs about God and sex and death, and there was a market.
The only advice I ever give – because I know it’s all luck – is get good. I’m not a very good pianist or a very good singer, and I’m not a very good actor or a very good comedian. But when you chuck them all together, I’m okay. I’m the champion in a field of one. So if you can create a field of one, and be as outstanding as you can, then you’ve got a chance.
If you look at the really successful classical soloists of our time – and even all the way back to Franz Liszt – they were personalities. They were fiercely themselves. And they were very, very, very good. They did a lot of f*cking practice. And even though my stuff’s weird, I’ve done a hell of a lot of work on my stuff.
If you don’t see yourself catering to the market – or, to put that in stronger words, you don’t see yourself as a consumer product – what do you perceive as “success” for Apart Together when you release the album in full this November? Do you aspire to commercial and critical acclaim, or does success mean something else to you?
That’s a really good question, and kind of probably is the key question to this whole project. And the answer is: All the success I want from my record is done already, before anyone heard it.
No one wanted a studio album out of me. What the audience and industry want out of me is another comedy show, another DVD, another TV series, and definitely another musical. That’s what everyone wants.
I wanted to do a record, and I wondered who I was as a songwriter. I’ve spent so much time writing through other people’s voices for theatre and for laughs, for comedy. I thought I should find out what sort of songwriter I am now.
I am, however, proud of it. And to that extent, I want other people to like it too. The weird thing is, you just can’t f*cking pick it. Like, Leaving LA is a great song, and the music video is one of the most awesome things I’ve ever seen, by my friend Tee Ken Ng. It cost about $75k and took 18 months to make, that music video. And Airport Piano, which came out two days ago, and which I made [the music video] for $3k in a garage, has already gone triple the number of hits.
I don’t really think much about the future. I’ve got a strange brain, in that way.
I feel that’d be another conversation, but for fear of having “talked too much, stayed too long” as you sing in a forthcoming song, I will go. Is there anything else you’d like to mention about your debut album?
In this weird COVID-19 time, where people have a bit more time and are being a bit more reflective, I feel like I’ve put out a record that matches that time – even though it was written before it. And it’s titled with a COVID-style title.
In this weird era, when we mostly listen to whatever Spotify spits at us, I think the record is an offer that is best consumed from beginning to end, with a glass of wine and some cheese, and some really good headphones or speakers.
If people really want to know what this record is like, that’s how I’d love them to listen to it. That would be an honour.
Thanks for sharing your intention.
I think it’s a nice thing to talk about it in those terms.
And there’s cheese.
That can be the title of the article: ‘Dot-dot-dot, and there’s cheese.’
Tim Minchin’s debut studio album Apart Together will be released on 20 November and is now available for pre-order. The music videos for his new singles can be found on YouTube.
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Images supplied. Tim captured by Damian Bennett.
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Great article, great questions, fascinating insight into the man himself