Last year was a whirlwind year for Lachie Gill after winning Season 11 of The Voice Australia. The singer-songwriter wowed the country with his powerful vocals and ability to have you feeling every raw emotion he sang. Since winning the show he found himself on the highest high while simultaneously experiencing the lowest low by going through his first intense break-up. Picking up his pen, he started processing this uneasy time by writing. His debut EP “Write It Out” (out now) is a reflection of that time, and perfectly captures the emotions as well as celebrates the healing and growth he’s gone through. From the angsty break-up track “Happy It’s Ending” to the powerful and soaring ballads “Holding On”, “Hate That You Hurt” and “Right People Wrong Time”, he will have you captivated. 

I recently went track by track through “Write It Out” with Lachie Gill to discuss the raw emotions behind the songwriting, the journey he’s had post winning The Voice Australia, and the production experimentations he’s made on this body of work. Check out the full chat BELOW;

THOMAS BLEACH: Your debut EP “Write It Out” is an introspective and reflective body of work that feels like a warm introduction to who you are as an artist. When you listen back to it in its entirety what emotions do you feel/take on?

LACHIE GILL: The EP started to come together after The Voice and the show finished, so there’s no songs from before that period. So it really is the last year and a half of my life. I’ve easily seen the most change in my short 25 year life so far during that period. I’ve experienced some pretty crazy things, and obviously everyone goes through their highs and lows but for me finishing that show was a massive high. So I started with that high, and then I went through my first and biggest heartbreak yet which was a massive low. Within all that craziness I found the time to write songs, and I guess this is just that body of work, and it is very personal.

There’s a few upbeat songs, but there’s also a few really sad songs. I guess it does make me look back on those experiences. I’m past my heartbreak now and, and obviously the show’s been finished long enough now, but it’s crazy to look back on and think that’s what happened.

TB: Your recent single “Happy It’s Ending” opens the EP, and it’s this sonically bright track that hits you with raw emotions and a slight cheekiness. When you were in the studio writing this with Joel Quartermaine and Edwin White, were you purposefully trying to find that balance of wit and emotion? And was that a tough line to edge upon?

LG: It was definitely a song that could have easily gone down the route of being a really sad ballad, and that would have probably been the easier road to go down with the way I write. The way I can kind of sing those songs very emotionally is very easy for me to do. So we definitely were thinking about that concept because I went in with the line, “this is not a happy ending, but I’m happy it’s ending” that I had just written down in my journal. I read it out to them and explained that I think it would be a cool concept to explore and they agreed. Joel and Ed were really keen to try something different as we had written a very sad ballad the day before, so we flipped the song idea a bit and played around with the production to find some cool bass riffs. 

So I guess that’s why some of the lyrics can seem a little bit sad, but we wanted to make the overall feeling quite an anthem, as if you just got through a breakup and it wasn’t what you wanted, but you’ve just got to kind of live with it.

TB: “This is not a happy ending, but I’m happy it’s ending” is a savage but honest lyric that I straight away was like – OKAY!

LG: Yeah, I definitely pushed the limit on this one in terms of not wanting to make anyone upset, but I also have to kind of be truthful in my songwriting and write the things that I want to write without thinking too much about the other people in the situation.

TB: “Right People Wrong Time” is this romantic song that is all about living in the wrong era and craving a bit more of a human connection when getting to know someone. The song has had an incredible response since its release, how was it seeing people so vividly react to this sentiment?

LG: This is one of the more straightforward, very simple, type songs in terms of production. It’s me and my guitar. There’s nothing crazy about how it was recorded. And I think people can just relate so much to that authenticity and rawness of it. There’s no bells and whistles. I think people can picture me sitting in a room and just playing that, and can see the story as I’m singing it. So I have a feeling that is why it’s kind of resonated with so many people in the way it has, not to mention the theme behind the song is something that everyone can relate to with how we’ve gotten to this very technological place of how we live.

TB: The opening line hears you singing “I think I’d like it in the 90’s, like the movies. I would show up at your window with my stereo, and I’d play your favourite song”. So what is your favourite 90’s rom-com/drama film? 

LG: Oh, that is a great question. But do you know what? If I’m brutally honest, rom-com is not one of my favourite genres. But do you know what movie I did watch and it’s at the forefront of my mind because I literally watched it two nights ago, and it’s maybe not the right song for this song, but Friends With Benefits with Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake. I loved it. But maybe I have to go back to the drawing board and watch some more rom-coms. So if anyone has any suggestions for me, let me know!

TB: “Holding On” is this somber and beautiful piano ballad about someone walking away from a relationship while you’re still holding on. There is this raw intensity that is captured so beautifully and honestly. Did you ever play with any other versions of this song, or was the stripped back nature of this song always important to you?

LG: Yeah, this was always gonna be a very raw piano ballad. We didn’t want to add much to this, and we really wanted it to be similar to “Right People Wrong Time”. The lyrics and the vocal kind of speak for themselves, and they don’t need too much going on around them. I feel like sometimes it can just be very distracting from the main message and the emotion and rawness of the song. In terms of this song and recording it though, we had three cracks at this one.

I recorded it with a producer here and that was almost the demo version just to kind of show where we wanted it to sit. It was actually a really good version and could have easily been the one we released. Then I had another shot with a couple of other producers and it just didn’t quite hit. It didn’t quite feel the way it should have after there was a bit of production put on it. And then I was in Sydney at the Grove Studios with the Mak Brothers doing some other songs and we sat down at the piano and I showed them “Holding On” and we played it on the grand piano. And their instant reaction was “oh my god, we need to do that right now in this studio”. So we jumped in the studio box and Andy was on the grand piano and we recorded at the same time. It was kind of magic. 

I always knew that this was going to be a very raw emotional piano ballad, and I didn’t want to do too much to take away from that. It’s a very beautiful song.

TB: “Sad Summer” is sonically quite upbeat and playful, with lyrics like “Play that Lana Del Rey song that you like. The one that used to always make you cry” echoing throughout it. It does give me big Shawn Mendes energy. So what were some of the sonical references you had for this particular song?

LG: This was a very different feeling for me. It was kind of my first experience with creating an upbeat, fun song, rather than the sad songs I tend to lean towards. It started on piano, and the Lana Del Rey reference came from the “hate to be sad in the summertime” because of her song “Summertime Sadness”. But in terms of the upbeat production I was inspired by artists I love like Shawn Mendes, Lewis Capaldi and Dermot Kennedy who all do the sad songs but have their upbeat and fun tempo spins. I knew I didn’t want to be an artist who only had sad songs out. I wanted to have songs that friends could play to each other on the way to the beach, and this is that song for me. 

TB: The emotionally charged “Hate That You Hurt” is heralded by the lyric “I don’t want to be happy and sad at the same time” – can you explain the inspiration behind this lyric, because it feels quite pivotal in the track. 

LG: “Hate That You Hurt” was the first song I had written after winning The Voice. There was maybe a couple of weeks after the show where I got to enjoy just winning the show and doing all the promo around it, and then I flew up to Sydney to start working with The Mak’s. This was the first song I had written with them and it was when my relationship had started to show its cracks and start to kind of fall apart a little bit. And whether it was because of the show or not, I’m still to this day not sure. But it wasn’t working out for whatever reason, and so it was a very hard period where I’m almost at the very peak of a career moment, and winning this show was one of the biggest things that had ever happened to me. So I’m trying to take that all in while trying to somehow work this relationship out that wasn’t. 

And so this song was kind of written partly about me, and partly about my partner at the time because this whole show and experience was a lot for the both of us, and was a lot for her to kind of go through. She had to sacrifice parts of her life to kind of just go along with the ride for me. But there was definitely a moment where I looked at her and just didn’t see that same joy and excitement that I was feeling from the show. So that’s kind of where this song came from.

TB: The EP closes with the title track “Write It Out” which feels like a centre-piece of your songwriting and to me signals where I can imagine your project heading toward. Can you explain the creative process behind this track? 

LG: It’s funny you say that because I predominantly did this song by myself at home. I didn’t go work with any producers or any other writers. It was just me. I’ve been journaling for a long time and I always wake up and write down what I’m feeling in my journal, and I always title it exactly what it is. One day I sat down and decided I should try to write a song about this process of what I do every morning. I thought it would be quite fitting for the EP and it turned out to be a song that I just absolutely loved acoustically that when we put some production on it it’s going to be great regardless.

The bridge was written at one of my live shows but my best friend Ray Santos who comes out with me. I put him on the spot during the show to come up with something for 30 seconds max to fill the space I hadn’t finished writing and he absolutely crushed it and I knew that was what the song needed. 

TB: I love the little guitar chord that ignites just as you begin the chorus – it feels very summer and festival ready 

LG: I’ll definitely give some credit and props to the Mak brothers who produced this song up when we were at the Grove Studios. They absolutely smashed it.

I’ll have my friend Ray up there accompanying me as well on guitar and piano. So there’ll still be the piano ballads, but the songs that are upbeat will be in the full form. I even had a dance lesson last week with a movement coach to start getting more comfortable on stage with moving around. 

“Write It Out” is out now