An artist whose music has given her a very high profile over quite a few years now, Wendy Matthews has become one of the favourite artists for a generation of radio listeners, with a lot of commercial airplay n mainstream radio.
A
new album is on the way & the first single from it has just been
released, titled Free, which is something of a change in style for
her, though there are hints of what's to come on it with one of the
exceptional bonus tracks Vicious Boy being a wonderful song in it's
own right.
Doing some press work for the impending release of the album & to follow up on the release of the single, I caught up with Wendy, where we spoke with some difficulty by mobile phone because of a connection problem at my end. We did in the end get all the questions I had out of the way, Wendy wonderfully patient.
First up, I asked about the somewhat different & funky feel behind Free.
"Yeah... it's definitely something different for me. I think it's probably the heaviest sounding song I've ever been involved in. I think you've hit the nail on the head so to speak with the word 'funk'. That would really be due to my bass player. He's something of a techno head I guess you'd say & he had a big part in the sound of the song."
This is as opposed to the second track in, my personal favourite Vicious Boy & Wendy seemed pleased that I liked that song.
"Look, when I heard the results of that song, I'm a little disappointed that we chose to use that song as a bonus song on the single, because it's one of my favourites too. I don't know what it is about that song, but it really has a great feel. It's something of a personal sounding song I think."
As usual, I brought up the topic of airplay, which Wendy took to like a fish to water.
"It's funny you mention that I seem to get a lot of airplay & for that I am very appreciative, but a lot of the things of mine that get on the radio are like 8 years old & they just don't seem to realise that I've moved on & there are newer songs. It's the same for people who get heaps of airplay on Triple J & there are some really wonderful bands that do, but as far as any of the commercial radio stations know, they just don't seem to exist."
So where, I asked, does she think the problem lies.
"That's a really hard thing to know, but I think for anyone who does get airtime on the commercial stations, if you've got a reasonable body of work, it's going to be your earlier songs that get the attention. I don't know what the answer is, but that's definitely the problem."
Getting onto another favourite topic, the Internet, I asked how Wendy had used it.
"I really think it's a wonderful tool for people. I really intend to get further into it in the future, but I really use it for things like email & looking up things that I'm interested in. There is just so much information on so many different subjects that you could get lost."
Lastly, I furthered that question, asking what sort of impact her website has had.
"Well it's really given my fans something to... I suppose get closer in one sense. The thing I find hard is that the fan club actually own my name online, but I guess that's really no different to the record company owning my name for record releases. Whatever the case, I'm glad that people are taking the time to listen to my music & find out about it on the Internet."
Check out Wendy's new single Free out now through BMG & watch
out for her new album early in 2001
