Tones and I reveals sad reason she rarely does media interviews

Aussie singer-songwriter Tones And I reveals the reason why she refrains from doing media interviews.

Tones and I has topped charts and smashed records around the world thanks to her hit songs such as Dance Monkey, Fly Away and Cloudy Day.

But despite her global success and popularity, the Australian singer-songwriter shies away from doing any media interviews, preferring to let her music speak for itself.

Now, in a rare sit-down with Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne on their Life Uncut podcast, the singer has revealed the sad reason why she made a decision not to talk publicly about herself from very early on in her career.

“Honestly, I just think that when everything happened at the start of my career, people were just making so much out of nothing and mention my name was just something everyone did at a certain point in time, and I just hated that feeling,” the ARIA winner, whose real name is Toni Watson, said on the podcast.

“It made me feel so disgusting and so like I didn’t like it. I wanted to stay underground and I felt dirty when people made up sh*t about me and I felt gross.

“They could say anything and they did. There’s so much stuff if you really wanted to go look down there, that’s it’s just not true. So I just thought why would I give an inch when you’ve already taken a mile and saying whatever you want?”

In the episode, Tones – who is the first ever female artist to reach 3 billion streams on Spotify and only the second artist to do so – also said she felt the effects of tall poppy syndrome, where the media built her up only to tear her down.

Tones made the decision not to do media interviews very early on in her career. Picture: Richard Dobson

“It made me think why would I give anything to the public when I am literally an Australian singer-songwriter that started on the street that went out there and did my thing when no one knew me. I came up through other people’s support of me and, in my honest sense, no one f***ing looked after me.

“I have contributed nothing to anything that has ever been in the media about me. My thought was why would I give you guys anything more to work on? I want you to shut the f**k up about me.”

The singer, who is from Mount Martha on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne, said even her appearance was placed under a microscope and heavily scrutinised and criticised.

Performing in London in 2020. Picture: Isabel Infantes/PA Images via Getty Images)

“People put me on this pedestal. I was so out of my comfort zone, I looked like I just crawled out of the gutter. I didn’t have an aesthetic or a style, I was a chubby little girl from the street. You just put me up and then you just smash me so far down, like I didn’t have a say in anything,” she recalled.

“With me specifically, people were so offended by how I looked that I started pre-empting what people would think before anything was even out. And I judged myself as harsh as I could so I was really prepared for all that criticism. Then it wasn’t a tactic anymore. I started hating myself so badly that anything I did, I just couldn’t see a positive reaction to anything.”

However, now Tones says she is in a good place in her life where she feels more “like in my shoes”.

“I think I’ve grown a lot more as a human being in terms of my strength and knowing who I am and I needed that time to grow, and no one gave me that grace. I had to give it to myself.”