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oh you got your taylor swift cardigan on you're showing off so hard right you recognize that quickly i didn't think you'd notice the one of 15. i really didn't now i want to take it off no never take it off troy live it on i
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command you leave it on i'm just jealous how many interviews you got to do with someone before they send you a sweater you know what i mean i know you'd send me a sweater you'd never leave me off you'd never leave me off the list no of course i'd always send you any
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match goodies i've got they're all yours how are you buddy i'm good um yeah just getting up in australia it's 10 a.m got a little photo shoot today you look really good man you look rested and happy i mean if i'm honest when we spoke in the beginning of isolation you were
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like i made it down to australia and i'll let you know in a few months if we're still in the situation how that feels well it's been a few months we're still in the situation how's it feel yeah we're back in lockdown as well in melbourne so there's no
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like going out or anything like that at the moment i mean l is a formality i don't know why we're not officially we may as well be but i mean it's crazy la's are bad in bad space are you like going out and stuff or are you just staying home no i'm not doing
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that i mean look we've got kids and and beyond the micro you know just to be responsibility with the macro thinking like i'm not going to put myself in the front line of anything that's going to cause any more stress on the health services that are
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they haven't had a letter totally people have conveniently forgotten a lot of people that it's still a pandemic that's putting so much pressure on real human beings doing real human stuff so now we're not man we're taking it easy we're playing it safe
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i'm just trying to stay in australia for as long as i possibly can i think i think that's my like my game plan are you enjoying it i am i mean i'm definitely like a bit unsettled i um i'm gonna move into my own place here soon which will help i think but
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like yeah i don't know i'm just sort of like waking up and just doing each day and then like it's so strange to not have any sort of plan you know for the last couple years i've known where i was going to be like normally like a year in advance or
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something if a tour is planned you know it's it's often done really far in advance so um yeah to just like not know anything is such a weird experience but it's been cool i think it's actually been um like kind of healing for me and important made me
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realize like what i actually care about and why i do what i do and everything like that so yeah it's been cool what do you actually care about troy family i think i've really realized like am i work actually like that's been a big thing
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is realizing how much i love what i do and like how much i miss it um but at the same time i think like being in australia i just feel like i sort of like make more sense as a person here you know what i mean like i feel very um understood and like i don't know
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everything just makes a lot more sense to me here so um like the idea of i don't know like i feel like i can confidently say now like i want kids by i don't know like 33 let's say whereas when i'm in l.a normally i'm like oh yeah like
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like 41 42 i don't know just random stuff that i i sort of like doubt myself on when i'm there when i come back here i'm like oh yeah yeah cool like i i'm right my instincts are correct this is how i feel like the world makes sense to me you know
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creation and procreation are the two fundamental pillars of choice those are like the only two things i care about yeah i'm glad you said that as long as you keep creating you're good because this new music that we're hearing sounds like that
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it sounds like you are free of of the you know the jacked up anxiety of trying to put music out in a competitive space where there's attention only so much attention data and i know you've never been driven by that that that needle but to me that's why artists take time it's
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never the result be disappointing if that influenced the result but the reason the artists take time is because of all the other stuff that just gets in your mind and in the process and this doesn't feel like you are being exposed to that to me i
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think that sort of came from like um it was sort of an integral part of what we were actually trying to achieve with this music like i i didn't go in thinking i was gonna write an album that's why i don't have an album i've got an ep because um i was just kind of going
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through a lot and um and i just wanted to start writing and i didn't know what i was writing for and i didn't know you know like this ep is such a weird little thing in that all of these songs sound pretty different from each other um
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and i think the the through line through all of them is just that i felt like i needed to write that that day and it's so cheesy to say because like everyone says like oh writing's like therapy or whatever no but it's that that's the furthest thing
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from cheese at all that's not cheesy cheesy is when you sit down with somebody and you conjure up a creative but put it on a whiteboard and then write the perfect song around it if you have to say it you say it totally well also especially with easy this song like um
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i always write with other top liners and how it's just been the way that i've always written and i really really enjoy that process and um love writing with other people and so then this day it was just me and oscar gore as a producer that i work with who's like
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freakishly talented um and leland was supposed to come into the session that day and and he couldn't and so it was this like kind of whatever day and i just wrote this song like by myself with uh you know to oscar's chords and really truly didn't think anything of it
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at all like i was so ready to to just like kind of start properly the next day or whatever um and then it was this crazy thing so oscar works for mxm or works with mxm who's like max martin's whole production crew and max came in
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at the end of the day and he's like oh like let's hear what you've done and i'm like sweating bricks like i was absolutely myself because i still get so nervous around him i hope he never watched this but i really think it's max
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it's well i mean there's nothing to be embarrassed about there is max martin anyways we played it for him and he just had really really complimentary things to say about it and um completely completely took me by surprise like it was his favorite of the bunch and um
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yeah that was when i kind of first realized oh like maybe this is like something it's one of my favorite things you've ever done because it sounds so natural like when you're coming over that track it's just like you're gliding it like you caught a perfect wave
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it doesn't feel like somebody else went that's great troy but what if you took it up half an octave there it would create a surprise and delight moment there's none of that yeah and i love all that part of writing i love that there's a math to it and i get it and
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it's amazing and i've worked with writers so incredible that sounds like you just caught something and put it down and that's what max the funny thing is like now that i think about it um there's no pre-chorus and there's no bridge there's just like an instrumental and so
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i think had i've been with another co-writer i probably would have been like okay well now we've got to write the pre and and pushed for it but because i was sort of doubting myself and being like oh i don't know if this is any good let's
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just go straight to the chorus um i think it ended up actually working in my favor because it's like a really simple song who'd have think a pop song would benefit from starting at the chorus who'd have thought yeah literally and i was talking about
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the other day with somebody i was saying how you taught me a lesson because i'd always tried to separate church and state my thing was like music is church and state is is media right that's content and um you're one of the first artists that
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came through and and showed me that actually you can go and use an environment to find your voice and then when you come out there's an authenticity attached to it it doesn't need to be separated from the original environment yeah i mean i made
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my first youtube video in 2007 um and youtube was one year old at the time so it just was a really like innocent space and i was 12 and so i was really innocent and there's just uh it was really pure and really nice um and i think i'm still
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in a way um like that sort of school like that education from those early years of like you know you got to connect with people in in like a real way um it still kind of informs everything that i do and i think like even you know writing a song like easy now or
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something like that where it's so uncomfortably like honest and blatant um i think i i'm i'm like even remotely comfortable doing that because i've been doing it for so long in all these other forms you know so um yeah i think i just learned a lot about
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um connection with people and and what actually connects you with people and what people are looking for because i know it as well as a fan you know like when i um i i just really enjoy connecting with with artists on social media
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sometimes i can tell when when a post is like you know genuine and when it's not or when somebody's really sharing their heart and when they're not kind of thing and so um yeah i i try and kind of like use keep that in the back of my mind all the time
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i've been really sort of blown away as i've been doing this for you know quite a while um and and the level of transparency that that your generation of of artists uh walking into the room with um and artists who have a lot to lose are very unafraid and don't mind either
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putting it in the music or as and when the time is right opening up and sharing and expanding on those feelings because i think to your point and beautifully made by the way you know that you're in a generation that grew up searching for connection
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in whatever capacity you could and if it's through a phone and a piece of content or a message or whatever then that's how it's going to go but it leads to somewhere real as you mature so your ability to connect matures with it when i think back to how formative the
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internet was for me as like as a person you know even like coming out and i didn't have a real life lgbtq community around me and so to find one online you know like the internet literally shaped who i am as a person personally and so
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not even publicly like actual you know made me who i am so um for me to kind of be vulnerable in in like the sort of public space or in the online space i think it's something that just has come kind of naturally i will say though releasing this song
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um i've never felt this uncomfortable before can we just talk about how remarkably good this taylor swift album is and by the way how much we were kind of waiting for it and openly waiting for it in my case like i mean terrible like going on my
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radio show and canvassing for this kind of record from her like i have any investment or stake in that decision but just willing it to happen i could not have hoped for a better list of collaborators are you kidding the destinies justin vernon come on yeah i feel like
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for me as a fan i i've also wanted to speak like years you know i i think since 1989 i have i just feel like that was when i truly truly was like i'm such a fan of this songwriter and um now it just feels like the most um it feels like she just released and
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like let go of any sort of uh pressure outside pressure and just wrote music that like she loves and wrote lyrics that it feels like it just went like to i don't know a huge leap but for me personally um and yeah i i'm i'm obsessed with it i
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really really like it and i i i'm listening to it so like actively i'm listening to every single lyric and i feel like i'm you know i'm truly being told stories and stuff and so it's just it's good fun how are you writing are you sort of like um are you finding
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space to write when you're not in the studio are you absorbing things and dotting things down as you're moving through life right now are you sort of trying to keep it compartmentalized that's the one thing that i haven't been able to bring myself to do
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over the last couple months like i i directed the easy video so that was like a nice creative flex that's my first time ever directing um you know a lot thank you a lot of just like you know graphic design like interior design uh cooking like all of these different
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creative designs wait hold up did you just drop the id did you just drop a little id like i've just been you know i directed my first video i've done a little interior design like it just does a little interior design yeah i mean it's been really really fun
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though i know a designer you worked with oh nice and uh she said you had great great taste nice nice okay cool geez you're making me seem like such a like baller today you showed up in the taylor swift cardigan bro it was only
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going one way it just it just went downhill from there yeah so yeah i mean i've been doing all of this stuff that feels like a nice release but songwriting for me has always been about collaboration and i just um first of all i physically can't be with other people
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at the moment and second of all i don't want to do it over zoom with like a delay on the audio and none of that like spontaneity and none of that vibe it's just like everything that i love about songwriting can't happen over zoom but you can tell in the room
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when someone's not feeling it and that's and that's how your instinct comes into play last time we were on zoom with tow i asked her um to send me tracks and she sent me and they're so good and then i'm like sitting here and i'm
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trying to write and i'm just like i miss people which is what let's boil it down what is the thing you're missing the most about it you talked about the collaborative nature of it but what specifically do you get that absolute joy from when you're doing it not like
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people everyone else is doing it now for me it's about um sitting with the producer and and you know i i'm not like classically trained in music or anything like that so it's trying to explain and whether it's me making the dumbest
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sounds of my mouth or explaining like an emotion or playing a reference or whatever getting to a place that i feel like is magic that like is something that i wouldn't know how to kind of like um explain to someone but it's like a feeling i don't know how to get there
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over zoom well you are a collaborator and you've had some incredible collaborators it's funny you know actually i spent some time via this uh with ahri for the first time and i never really talked to her it's weird we'd never really cross paths
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and you know i can tell that you're an artist artist because she doesn't show off anybody and she thinks the world at you i mean she thinks you're the you're the bee's knees i've made no secret of it but i just adore her like yeah to me it's insane that um
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like i literally forget that she's like one of the biggest artists in the world because i just i love her as a person so much and then on top of it i just think she's like one of the most talented people i've ever met so how are you at at self maintaining your
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balance i sort of drop off the face of the earth a little bit sometimes um and i i think i think it's okay i don't really know it's it's just sort of my way of like coping with things sometimes uh yeah yeah i just sort of unplug from
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everything and like pretend i don't exist for a second and what do you do do you how do you spend your time i mean how meditative do you get i wish i was like meditating and like exercising and having like a you know mental health day where i'm like
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self-care whatever it's um it's not that uh like pleasant i don't think you know it's like a little bit um it's a little bit but at the same time it's not super self-destructive either like i i just kind of switch off always good you stay well stay safe you