Jessica Mauboy on marriage, new music and life on the road

Jessica Mauboy has announced her fifth studio album and a huge national tour. She sits down with The Daily Telegraph to talk life, love and music.

Jessica Mauboy is living her own definition of married life.

Working hard, often travelling and being successful in her professional life feeds into her relationship with husband of one year, Themeli Magripilis.

“When I think of marriage, you think of this vision of being home, having children, doing home things, it is a very old school mentality that I grew up with,” Mauboy told The Daily Telegraph, sitting down in her home town of Darwin to announce a new album and tour.

Jessica Mauboy is living her own definition of married life. Picture: Richard Dobson

“Having absorbed and seen my friends having children and being married, it’s a very different take today, you know? My kind of vision now is that I’m a strong woman, I may be married, but that doesn’t tie me down to the married life. It doesn’t define me.”

Despite living life in the public life for more than half her life, Mauboy has largely managed to keep her relationship private and sacred.

“That works for me,” she said. “That is something that is really very precious to me.”

Mauboy’s fifth studio album, Yours Forever, is slated for release on February 9.

The first single, Give You Love, is a collaboration with Mauboy’s The Voice Australia co-star Jason Derulo. She also hits the road with her Yours Forever Tour in March, starting in Gippsland and finishing up in Auckland in May.

Jessica Mauboy with Themeli Magripilis.

Themeli Magripilis and Jessica Mauboy. (Photo by Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images)

Mauboy celebrated her 34th birthday earlier this month and said she had grown significantly as an artist, and personally over the past few years.

Her last album, Hilda, was released in 2019.

“I think when you are able to hold your own and you know what you’re capable of and using those strengths and really realising that you can do it yourself,” she said. “That really has come to light a lot in the last five years of my life, whether it’s in my personal life, there’s been a lot of change in my music, my work ethic has changed a lot is and how I really see my worth and what I really want to do with the things that I know that I’m capable of doing.”

Elsewhere in her career, Mauboy explained that she is ready to explore more acting opportunities.

She famously appeared in critically acclaimed films Bran Nue Dae (2010) and The Sapphires (2012, and hit TV show, The Secret Daughter.

Jessica Mauboy in Darwin. Picture: Richard Dobson

“I want to get back into more filming,” she said.

“That is something that I have in the back of my mind wanting to do, apart from music and touring and putting out an album, film is definitely in the works.”

She is currently starring in her third season of The Voice Australia, a role which took some getting used to for the singer that got her start in the industry on reality singing show Australian Idol back in 2006.

“I grew up with five girls and we all kind of had our place. I think it’s a personality trait and something that I grew up doing where it was like, ‘if it’s your turn to speak, I’ll let you go’,” she explained.

“If I don’t need to speak, then I won’t speak. And if you said it, then I won’t have to, I won’t repeat it. So it’s something that I was a little bit nervous about in speaking my mind to the whole world but I think the more that I speak on what I know about music, the more that I’m doing it right.”

Pre-Order / Pre-Save Yours Forever HERE

Tickets for 2024 Yours Forever National Tour HERE