Why Kate Ceberano is apologising to the guys she’s kissed
Her smash hit single Pash about her first kiss in a shopping mall dominated the charts in 1997, but now 25 years later Kate Ceberano opens up on why she feels the need to apologise to any boys from her youth who may have felt “used” because of her obsession with kissing.
Stellar
Don't miss out on the headlines from Stellar. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Floating effortlessly from recording radio-friendly pop hits and cabaret jazz standards to touring with a full symphony orchestra, Kate Ceberano has been a bright constant in the Australian musical firmament for nearly four decades. But in the past few years, the singer has explored her creativity through folk arts and poetry. Now, as she combines those elements with stories about her life in a new memoir, Ceberano tells Stellar she is exploring storytelling in a new way.
Kate Ceberano was formidable, feisty and 14 years old when she forged her armour against the sexism lurking in music industry boardrooms and heaving pubs in the 1980s. The street-savvy school dropout – who was destined to become an Australian singing great and, ultimately, one of its pop survivors – was fearless. She would bat away wandering hands and push leering faces out of her space in the clubs she frequented in Melbourne’s pulsing underground music scene.
She also enjoyed the protection of venue security guards. Most had been trained by, or worked for, her Hawaiian-Filipino father Constantino “Tino” Ceberano, who was a karate master. “There would be punches flying over your head, and chairs and tables, and someone would take your hand and quietly move you aside and frame their body across yours,” Ceberano tells Stellar.
Today, as she celebrates her 40th year as a recording artist, and side hustles as a folk artist and author of an innovative new memoir titled Unsung – A Compendium of Creativity, the 56-year-old is defiantly staring down that other lingering societal prejudice: ageism.
She’s at another peak in her illustrious career this year, with the release of her 30th album, My Life Is A Symphony – an orchestral reinvention of her songs that has been nominated for Best Adult Contemporary Album at next month’s ARIA Awards. But fans and industry insiders have bristled at the fact Ceberano was once again passed over for induction into the ARIA Hall of Fame, in favour of rock band Jet, who are celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album Get Born. They say it should have been her year.
Network 10 entertainment editor Angela Bishop tells Stellar the ARIAs “missed a pretty special opportunity”. As she points out, “There have only been 12 women among the 80 acts selected since 1988. Nothing against Jet – the boys absolutely deserve to be there, too. But to celebrate Kate in her 40th year in the business would have been an incredible moment. Kate more than satisfies the criteria, which stipulates a career of at least 20 years. She’s doubled that. Maybe not-so-young boys are ARIA’s weakness.”
Of course, this tongue-in-cheek dig refers to Ceberano’s 1989 song ‘Young Boys Are My Weakness’, one of the hits in her decades-spanning catalogue.
The singer, who was first heard on the 1985 smash ‘Out Of Mind Out Of Sight’ by the new-wave rock band Models, has conquered genres from jazz to pop. Her breakthrough came alongside Zan Abeyratne as lead singers of the funk-pop band I’m Talking, the ARIAs Breakthrough Act of 1986.
While being courted by international labels, a teenage Ceberano was flown, first class, to London by the legendary British rock impresario Malcolm McLaren for a collaboration. As she writes in Unsung, things didn’t work out because “sadly it turned out I was just an Australian imitation of a star he had ‘already had before’.” The band had signed to London Records but Ceberano chose to part ways with them when they returned home, disillusioned after being treated as “poor colonial nobodies” by the UK label.
In 1989, she released her debut solo pop album Brave, featuring that aforementioned track and ‘Bedroom Eyes’, a No. 2 smash that remains the highest-charting of her career.
One of her most loved tracks is 1997’s ‘Pash’, a top 10 hit that she still introduces in concert with the story about how she experienced her first kiss at a shopping mall. In the book, she apologises to any boys from her youth who may have felt “used” because of her obsession with kissing.
“I was giving them away because I felt like I couldn’t get enough,” she says. “And I was actually disappointed later when we got to the fumbling and the actual sex act. To me, kissing is more intimate than the sex act itself; speaking in tongue is the most personal thing you could choose to do.”
She’s revelling in the romance and prestige of performing her reimagined songs in grand theatres on a current national orchestra tour celebrating her new album. No wonder, since Ceberano is at heart a working-class musician who booked 100 gigs for reduced fees after Covid restrictions eased, just so she could sing. “A song isn’t a song until it’s heard by someone,” she explains to Stellar. “Similarly, if you’re sitting there writing or creating and you’re just a fart in the dark, the only way you know you exist is when you present yourself to another person and ask them, ‘Do you see me?’ And they say, ‘Oh, I see you.’ Then you know you exist.”
Her memoir also shines a light on her aborted attempt at an acting career in the 1990s. (She adds: “I was a sh*t actor.”) Full of optimism, the third-generation Scientologist had gone to Hollywood, crashing in fellow church member and actor Jenna Elfman’s basement. “I was there trying to act, trying to sing, trying to learn about life,” Ceberano says.
They survived on spaghetti and broccoli until Elfman was cast in the 1997 sitcom Dharma & Greg. Soon, truckloads of designer dresses were arriving at their door and invites to the Vanity Fair Oscars party were commonplace. Seeing the Hollywood machine up close changed her mind about acting.
“I was watching old Hollywood turning into new Hollywood – the [reality] television Hollywood,” she recalls. “The thing I concluded about Hollywood is that being a musician is so much cooler, because everything you do is totally innovated by yourself and the creativity comes from you.”
She unlocked another creative vein during the height of the Covid lockdowns. Unable to sing to people, Ceberano poured her feelings into painting guitars and making quilts, turning the Melbourne home she shares with Lee Rogers, her filmmaker husband of 33 years, and their daughter Gypsy, 19, into an art studio. (On a recent episode of Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About, Kate Langbroek confirmed that her son Lewis and up-and-coming singer Gypsy – “two beautiful nepo babies” – are dating.) Colours, swirls, flowers and shapes were the physical manifestations of the songs she would have written had she been on the road. “I think people see them as a beautiful folly, something to make their day in the same way as we choose a piece of jewellery to put on,” Ceberano says. “I have collectors now who trade the guitars. “Although,” she adds with cheek, “none play guitar.”
Unsung – A Compendium Of Creativity by Kate Ceberano (Simon & Schuster, $55) is out November 1. For tour dates, visit kateceberano.com.
Originally published as Why Kate Ceberano is apologising to the guys she’s kissed
‘Opens your eyes’: Pat Cummins on his mother’s death
As captain of the Australian cricket team, Pat Cummins is used to life in the sporting spotlight. But nothing prepared him for the loss of his true hero – his mother.
Mel Leong reflects on MasterChef exit
The former MasterChef judge opens up about leaving the reality series – and her latest role on the new season of Dessert Masters, as she teases what’s next.