Guy Sebastian reveals T.R.U.T.H. behind new album, impact of Titus Day split and how The Voice can get him back

Guy Sebastian was crippled by fears he would never write a good song again after splitting from his manager Titus Day, who allegedly defrauded him of $1.15m. He now reveals how he fought back to make a new album he will take on tour.

Kathy McCabe

@McCabeRadar

8 min read

October 11, 2020 - 6:00AM

News Corp Australia Network

Music

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Exclusive: Before I Go, Choir, Standing With You. Guy Sebastian has struck a resounding chord in a world of broken hearts and minds with what he calls his “purpose” songs.

They are the backbone of new record T.R.U.T.H., a mission statement from an artist who loves to write a great pop banger but now appreciates how much his music with a message matters to fans.

As he launches the record, and announces his return to Australian concert stages with the T.R.U.T.H tour in November next year, Sebastian is reconsidering everything in his life through the prism of purpose.

Everything Guy Sebastian puts out into the world now has to be “purpose-driven”. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

So his return to the judging panel of a television talent quest has a big question mark over it.

Sebastian made no secret of not enjoying the final season of The X Factor in 2016 where he clashed with fellow judge Iggy Azalea.

With The Voice moving from Nine to Seven next year and as he enters preliminary talks with the network about a judging role, he says the reboot needs to be drama-free and focus on finding Australian pop’s next big thing.

Like MasterChef, Sebastian wants a singing competition to be nice TV again.

Sebastian was not a fan of the final season of X Factor. Picture: Supplied.

“Similarly to X Factor, I didn’t love where (The Voice) ended. I didn’t. Chris winning, that part, was obviously good. I didn’t want it to be awkward for him and I would have loved to have not been on the show that year,” he says.

“I feel like my presence tainted his win a bit because it creates controversy. But that’s not the issue for me.

The Voice Coaches: Guy Sebastian, Delta Goodrem, Boy George and Kelly Rowland.

“I genuinely just want to be involved in something that’s positive. I don’t want to bicker and I don’t want it to be about drama. I don’t think you can take that formula and just jam it up the arse of a show that it doesn’t belong in.

“So that’s the conversations happening now. Look, I would love to be involved in who looks after them post the show. But who am I? I’m no one to be talking about how to structure a show. I’m just talking about my personal view.”

Former manager Titus Day leaves Downing Centre Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper.

Getting personal has redefined the brand of an artist who has sold almost four million records and clocked up more than half a billion streams since he won the inaugural Australian Idol season in 2003.

He’s always written aspirational anthems about overcoming adversity but when he started on the road to T.R.U.T.H., he was crippled by fears he would never write a good song again.

The album’s first single Before I Go was released a year after he split with his manager of 11 years, Titus Day, who is facing 61 counts of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception relating to $1.15 million of his former client’s earnings.

Sebastian calls Before I Go his fight song. Its lyrics borrow from the last words he claims Day said when he told his longtime manager and friend he was leaving.

Sebastian couldn’t have predicted how the music he wrote from personal pain which resonate with thousands of fans around the world. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

“I was going to the writing session and I had all the negative thoughts. ‘What are you going to do in a session, you haven’t written a song for ages.’ Since it all went down, I couldn’t write,” he says.

“So I went there with the mindset that I had forgotten how to do this or an expectation it was going to fail.

“And meanwhile, in the background, I’ve got in my head ‘Mate, I’m going to ruin your life, I’m going to ruin your reputation, you’re done.’

“These were the last words that were left with me, that I’m done, that it was over for me.”

His wife Jules and sons Hudson and Archer inspired songs and sing on the album. Picture: Instagram/Guy Sebastian

Clearly, Sebastian was nowhere near done. He also wrote Believer in that session. That is one of a clutch of songs for his wife Jules.

He says he can’t remember why they had been fighting back then but the timing would suggest they were obviously feeling the strain of the break from Day.

And he wanted to reassure his partner he would do anything to get them back on track, communicating in each other’s “love language” and put the message into Believer, an absolute tear-jerker of a ballad.

Sebastian owns it when I gently tease him about the expression “love language”. He isn’t cynical about doing the work to keep their relationship strong after 20 years.

Sebastian cried writing about his wife for the foreword of her new book. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

When she walks into the house during our chat, fresh from filming a cameo in the new music video for her bestie Samantha Jade and home for a quick outfit change for her next commitment, Sebastian beams, offering all of the compliments.

She is kicking her own goals – as a stylist, with the Tea With Jules podcast and a big social media following for her funky cocktail mixes and family cooking segments. And there’s a book incoming.

“On a daily basis, I get comments saying ‘You’re great and everything but I love to follow Jules and I love her cocktails’. She’s doing all this different stuff and she loves it and she’s good at it,” he says.

“Her book is really cool. I’ve just written the foreword for it and that was a bit of a tear attack, just writing down the things that I love about my wife.”

T.R.U.T.H. also features their sons, eight-year-old Hudson and six-year-old Archer singing on In A Word. He wrote it for his youngest son on a promise, having penned Big Bad World for his eldest before his birth in 2012.

The album’s biggest song to date has been Choir, the song he wrote for his bandmate and friend Luke Liang after he lost his battle with depression in 2018 and released last year.

That song – bookended with this year’s hit Standing With You – have put him in the centre of an ongoing conversation with his fans about Australia’s mental health crisis, both on a public stage with the work of the Sebastian Foundation and privately as Sebastian and his team field thousands of direct messages on his social media.

There are the thoughts and thank yous shared by parents, siblings and friends who lost loved ones to suicide, and have found some comfort in his music.

But there are also heart-wrenching stories from those who are clearly struggling with their mental health issues.

Songwriters tend to be empathetic beings – it’s how they create art – but the majority aren’t trained counsellors. He devotes time every week, with his Sebastian Foundation manager Rebecca Oxenbould and his Private Idaho managers, to go through all the messages, and identify those which need urgent attention and direction to professional services.

“Choir was a specific song about my experiences and moments I shared with Luke, to process the grief of losing him, and I wasn’t sure it would take on a broader resonance with people and become part of a conversation about mental health and suicide,” he says.

“All the feedback I got was overwhelming, a flood of comments and messages from daughters, husbands, sisters, sons, so I wrote Standing With You with the knowledge I am talking about this issue and for people to absorb during this time.

“It gets heavy – how do you physically get to every single one and respond with a video or help? – and I got this point where I felt not being across everything was eating me away, so I had to have the sense that all if can do is the best I can do.

“After Choir, I was mind-blown by just how many people are affected by this, and then COVID hits and the darkness and isolation of that hits and I knew I had to write a positive anthem for those people, that we are standing with each other.”

Sebastian is optimistic touring will be back by this time next year. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

He is optimistic he will get to stand in the same room with them with the T.R.U.T.H. national tour in November next year, that Australia will be living in a post-COVID reality and live entertainment is back to some kind of normal.

“I am trying to be as responsible as possible and as realistic as possible; if I’m not able to tour by November next year, we’re in serious trouble, like serious trouble,” he says.

“If we all can’t tour next year, what are we going to do? How do venues survive, how does the industry survive? I’m feeling like November is a safe bet and we need a positive outlook on how we are going to get out of this.”

Sebastian, who says he has no regrets for standing next to Prime Minister Scott Morrison when the government announced its $250 million arts stimulus package in June despite some sledging.

Tickets to the T.R.U.T.H. tour go on sale on Friday. Picture: Damian Shaw.

“I saw it as an opportunity to try to get something going,” he says.

He has more quietly been working on ideas to reinvigorate the live entertainment industry with a cross-section of like-minded, behind-the-scenes industry advocates.

They have engaged consultants to cost a range of blue-sky initiatives including a GST tax break for venues – from cafes to local council spaces – so they can pay for musicians to perform.

“I want to see big cultural changes. People have to understand the thing that gives purpose and reason for living for people in the arts, they haven’t been able to do that for a long time and it’s almost this constant reminder that you are not essential, you are a luxury item in life. That’s the message that’s out there, if we don’t look after the arts,” he says.

“I head down to this headland in the middle of last summer and there’s a Cuban band playing and suddenly, the sound of music, gets 200 to 300 people out of their houses.

“Look at how our community are mingling, dancing, hanging out, neighbours meeting each other for the first time. Put some food trucks down there, make it every week. It felt like Europe down here, how hard is it to instil some culture in our community?

“Let’s do more of that. This would cost the government bugger all because the musician is going to have to pay tax anyway, more people will come into the restaurant and there is a flow-on economic effect and actual jobs.”

T.R.U.T.H. is out on Friday.

Tour tickets are on sale from 2pm on Friday, with a Team Guy Pre-sale from noon on Monday, and Telstra Plus pre-sale from noon on Wednesday.