Ruby Gill has been doing back-to-back interviews promoting her new album Some Kind of Control.
It’s the second album of her career following 2022’s brilliantly titled I’m going to die with this frown upon my face, and the album’s recent single Touch Me There got a lot of attention with its honest and provocative lyrics.
As we begin our chat over a video-call we joke about job interviews, imagining if musicians’ interviews were like the chat for regular jobs, do you have a five-year plan? What attracted you to this role?
Her recent single has been described as the moment the singer came out to herself. She shares that when she wrote the song, she never had plans to ever let anyone else hear it, and it began life as a poem.
“When I was writing that song in particular, I was trying to prompt myself to write the thing I had always been too scared to say publicly, or even to myself, and I sort of just said, ‘Okay, write a song that no one will ever hear. Just do it as a practice in creativity.'” she shared.
The words were written in an idyllic setting when Gill was taking part in a poetry retreat, staying in a tiny house near a river.
“I was just writing every morning and so I just let this stream of consciousness of words come out. All the things that that I would never publish, and it just immediately felt like I was finally saying things to myself that I’d never said.
“It was about desire and about pleasure, but then also just about owning my needs as a person and my space in the world as a queer person.” Gill recounted, describing the process as a being a little bit like giving herself a good telling off.
Even though she’d personally acknowledged that she was attracted to women, and she’d been going on dates with girls and telling her friends about it, the singer says she’d didn’t really feel like she was allowing herself to own all her feelings.
“It’s not just about dating women or who you’re having sex with and who you’re kissing, although that is what the chorus is like. It was scary to begin that process, but it’s more it’s also just about owning how I would like to live my life and connect.” Gill said.
For Gill writing poetry and writing music are two very different creative processes.
“Poetry feels more vulnerable. I feel like it’s not couched in beautiful tones, and you can’t cover it up with a cool melody.”
“When you’re when you write a song, you there’s so much structure.” Gill said detailing how words and phrases have to fit into a melody or specific series of sounds. Poetry on the other hand she says can be more rogue.
“You don’t have to make every single word like fit in the right place,” she shares, “but, every word has to hold so much integrity, and I love that!”
Then at some point you have to take all your songs and poems and share them with collaborators and audiences, Gill says once she makes the work public, she lets go and audiences will find their own meaning in her words and emotions.
The new album features a collection of songs that were all written around the same time, and Gill says thoughts about control in many different forms was a common theme in her writing.
“They’re all sort of exploring these different ideas of control, like who and what I have control over, and really owning things in myself that I’ve left sort of unsaid or left even just unacknowledged in myself.
“It’s about control over me, but also over my community, or there’s lots of songs about politics and there’s songs about men and power dynamics. It’s about who controls my body, and my pleasure, and time.” Gill shares.
While Gill’s recently been spending time in the studio recording her new album, her favourite part of the process is playing in front of a live audience, something that she’s eager to get back to.
While Gill is singing about being queer on many of her new songs, she does think about the difference between being seen as a queer artist, and an artist who is queer.
“I don’t need it to be the thing that people associate with me, and I just am trying to be honest about myself all the time.” Gill said, noting that her experiences in life will be different to the queer person next to her.
“At the same time, I’m part of a queer community. That is incredible and liberating, but it’s a community also under fire and under vilification and experiencing all kinds of strife and violence.”
For Gill her experience of community is diverse. She’s usually based in Melbourne, but when we chat she’s visiting family in South Africa, where the local queer community experiences a lot of discrimination.
“It’s nice to recognise myself in a queer context… coming back home to South Africa and realising I come from this lineage and community of lesbians here who have faced such a different set of circumstances.”
“I feel so much pride and great gratitude to the queer community here, I just feel part of it, and I feel a responsibility to it, and it’s beautiful and powerful.” Gill said.
Ruby Gill’s Some Kind of Control is available now.
