Jessica Mauboy: ‘It makes me feel I’m not good enough’

JESSICA Mauboy knows she is a worthy representative of Australia at Eurovision. But why, she wonders, are Indigenous people not good enough for Parliament?

Jessica Mauboy: “I thought about the news stories about Indigenous issues I had been watching and reading that left me angry and feeling such sadness.” (Pic: Georges Antoni for Stellar)

JESSICA Mauboy is demonstrating how she combats pre-gig nerves: with a round of burpees, the gym staple and full-body exercise that involves a hectic, breathtaking round of standing, jumping and squatting.

Complicating matters, the pop singer is clad not in athleisure wear but instead a shiny gold trench coat and high heels, amping up the degree of difficulty. She is on the set of an exclusive photo shoot for Stellar ahead of her trek to Lisbon to represent Australia in the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest. And as they watch her attempt to bust a few moves in her designer gear, her team is in hysterics.

“I still really do sh*t myself,” Mauboy tells Stellar, right in the middle of a burpee. “For 10 to 15 minutes before every big gig, I need that time to walk up and down the hall or be running around, or doing tricep dips or burpees to get the blood pumping. It’s my Rocky moment — it gets me excited. But there are other times I can just be Zen, sitting in the make-up chair and taking in the environment.”

Warming up. (Pic: Georges Antoni for Stellar)

But Zen does not come easily for the excitable Mauboy, and she is anything but as she recalls the sessions she undertook to write ‘We Got Love’, the song she will perform for Eurovision. She was bristling with anger and dogged by sadness in the studio with her collaborators Anthony Egizii and David Musumeci, the same team who wrote contest entries for past Australian competitors Dami Im and Isaiah Firebrace.

Dozens of songs — written by others — had been submitted for consideration by Mauboy and the Australian team. In the end, she only listened to about four of them (“I feel bad”) before digging her heels in and putting her own words on the page.

She had a lot to say.

“I went into the studio with the boys and told them we just needed to sit for an hour or so and connect with the stories of the people I had met over the last few months; I thought about their names, shaking their hands,” Mauboy says. “I thought about the news stories about Indigenous issues I had been watching and reading that left me angry and feeling such sadness.”

The 28-year-old Darwin-born artist, whose mother Therese is of the Kuku Yalanji people from the rainforest regions of Far North Queensland, was feeling deep frustration after the Federal Government’s dismissal of last year’s Uluru Statement.

“I’m good enough to represent Australia, but not good enough to have a say?” (Pic: Georges Antoni for Stellar)

Mauboy says she was almost brought to tears when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull ruled out any further discussion of adding an Indigenous voice to Parliament last year. “I was angry and so sad,” she says. “You feel almost helpless. I’m good enough to represent Australia, but not good enough to have a say? That makes me feel I’m not worthy, or not doing enough.”

On its surface, ‘We Got Love’ is a typically anthemic Mauboy song — but she is singing out her frustrations: I know, I know what you must be thinking/That we are powerless to change things/But don’t, don’t give up/’Cause we got love, ’cause we got love.

Perhaps the most important critic in Mauboy’s life, her partner of nearly a decade Themeli Magripilis, was not initially won over by the track. So she was understandably deflated when Magripilis, with whom she lives in Sydney and who — in a change of pace from his usual low-profile approach — co-starred with her in the video for her 2017 hit ‘Fallin’, didn’t give it an immediate thumbs up. By the second listen, she tells Stellar, he had changed his tune. Though he accompanied her to Copenhagen in 2014 for her first appearance on the Eurovision stage, Magripilis is unlikely to be in the audience when Mauboy belts out the song next month, due to prior commitments.

Despite the song’s uplifting message, Mauboy believes it is important to bring a politically motivated edge to the Eurovision stage, which can at times be overwhelmed by spectacle and gaudiness. “I have my own way of talking about issues, and that’s music,” she says. “I want to have the conversation with love. I don’t want to fight, I want to talk. I want this to help start the conversation again.”

Jessica Mauboy: “I have my own way of talking about issues, and that’s music.” (Pic: Georges Antoni for Stellar)

Her return to Eurovision should also be a healing experience for Mauboy. When she last performed at the contest four years ago, Australia’s head of delegation Paul Clarke almost had to push her onstage. The contest organisers had requested Australia send an artist to perform as a special guest at the 2014 event, after years of diplomatic lobbying by Clarke and SBS CEO Michael Ebeid. The broadcasters who control Eurovision had long been bemused by our fascination with the televised clash of kitsch and talent, fuelled by more than 30 years of popular broadcasts on SBS.

Mauboy was selected to sing, realising a childhood dream. But she felt the full weight of representing her home country on her slight shoulders in the minutes before her performance, and momentarily freaked out. She quickly recovered, and her acclaimed turn is widely credited with helping secure Australia as a wildcard entry moving forward. This time around, the singer and songwriter is hesitant to emphatically declare a desire to win the whole thing, even as she admits she has always been competitive.

“It really does take me back to Australian Idol,” says Mauboy, who was runner-up on that show’s fourth season in 2006. “It’s easy to overthink things — it’s in the title: this is a contest, so you are thinking, ‘I have to win, I have to win.’ In this case, I don’t really feel competitive, which is unlike me. I think I am just so honoured — this is the singing Olympics. People train for months and months to get into the competition and you have one shot. If I was an athlete, of course I am going to think about gold, wanting gold. But I think I am also drawn to the humanity of it, getting to be with all those humans, feeling it all.”

Maybe she doesn’t want to jinx herself. Or she suspects going one better than Im’s well-received performance of ‘Sound of Silence’ two years ago is tough now Australia’s involvement is less of a novelty and more of an actual threat. In her favour, Mauboy already has thousands of fans in the Eurovision family. And she will need their votes; Australians can’t vote for our own contestant.

Jessica Mauboy is our Stellar cover star.

So she bankrolled a diplomatic mission a couple of weeks ago, visiting Eurovision fan parties in London, Amsterdam and Tel Aviv to win more hearts and ears. Social media shout-outs from actors including Russell Crowe and Lachy Hulme also buttressed the singer. “I got so choked up seeing those messages. People are listening. Those places I’ve never heard of, I would click on the map to see where these people live. There are girls in these little coastal towns in Russia who are singing my songs. I found videos of them. It’s crazy.”

Mauboy is working to create a suitably dazzling backdrop for her performance — and then there’s the dress. For her first go-round, she went shiny in a figure-hugging metallic Toni Maticevski gown. She hints this year’s costume will be “structured and dramatic, very colourful”. Not to mention engineered against any potential wardrobe malfunctions.

“There will be a lot of zipping up and zipping down before and after the rehearsals,” she says. “You have to get out of the dress after each rehearsal to try to keep it in the right shape and form. There will definitely be structure — because I do not want anything to fall out while I am taking it all in!”

So far, she admits, there have been “quite a few” disasters on that front. “My poor manager will be like, ‘What do we do?’ whenever it happens. I always say: ‘It’s all going to be fine. We have just got to be calm.’” And if it doesn’t, she sees an upside. “It all goes viral! It’s wild — people just love those photos.”

The 2018 Eurovision Song Contest airs on SBS from May 9 to 13.

Originally published as Jessica Mauboy: ‘It makes me feel I’m not good enough’