G Flip Is Getting Serious About Having Fun, Curing Homesickness And Giving Up Perfectionism
Over her past stratospheric year, G Flip has learnt a lot - and there's one thing she'd do differently.
Georgia Flipo made her sister promise just one thing. Flipo is a self-described perfectionist, and made her sister promise she wouldn’t let anyone else hear any G Flip demos, since hates the idea of people hearing half-formed songs. As all siblings do, her sister didn’t listen — but for good reason.
The rule makes sense, since perfectionism’s worked so far for G Flip. On February 13 last year — almost a year to the day it was first written — she released her first song, ‘About You’, by uploading it to triple j’s Unearthed. Carefully crafted pop, ‘About You’ is a big, breathy and pleading love song, backed with an interesting, clever kick-line, since Flipo’s first love was the drums.
By week’s end, it was everywhere, including triple j’s high-rotation, YouTube’s 99+ million subscriber ‘New Music’ playlist and Pitchfork’s coveted Best New Music list. Tin foil hats assumed she was an ‘industry plant’, so stratospheric was her rise. But we hadn’t seen the iceberg underneath.
Yes, G Flip was already signed to Future Classic alongside the likes of Flume and Nick Murphy — but she had gotten her foot in the door via cold contact.
It wasn’t a conspiracy, but the result of time, talent and hard word, whittling her songs into shape before sending them out to labels, let alone the public. So you can imagine she was pissed when she found out her sister, Sam, had shown a board-room full of people a demo of her ballad, ‘Bring Me Home’.
“My sister now works as my personal assistant, helping me do heaps of stuff,” she tells me. “But before that, she was managing the office at the advertising agency… and someone she worked with came up to her, and was like, ‘Hey, I know your sister’s released two pop-esque tunes, but has she written any songs that are more emotional-based songs that have anything to do with homesickness, or something?'”
She had, just a fortnight before. This was mid last-year, when we still only had just two G Flip songs, having followed up ‘About You’ with the equally huge ‘Killing My Time’. Flipo had gone from having no name to performing across the world.
“I was going through a really bad patch of anxiety, and I was spending so much time away from home,” she says. “And I was overseas a lot, and on tour a lot, and I hadn’t seen my bedroom in forever.”
Her sister showed her co-workers, who thought it was perfect for a charity campaign they were working on: Curing Homesickness. Supported by some of Australia’s biggest children hospitals, it’s a campaign launching today to raise funds for medical research and equipment to ensure sick children return home from hospital as soon as they can.
Flipo was mad at first about Sam showing people, but soon came around to it — you can hear the song in Curing Homesickness’ video below.
“I’m totally fine with it now!,” she says. “When she called me, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Look, I showed someone one of your songs’. And I was like, ‘Sammy! No!’. But then she’s like, “‘No, hear me out’. And then I was so joyed, and I got behind it straight away.”
It’s a good example of a lesson she’s learnt over the past year, that perfectionism has its own faults.
“[Everything] happened so quick,” she says. “It stressed me out, and I wish I was more carefree. But yeah, I’m a perfectionist. I like things a particular way, and I have my hands on everything to do with my project.”
“[Looking back], I wish I was chilled out more and had a laugh a little bit more, and was less serious. Now, I try to relax with my work… it’s hard, battling with trying to be less hands-on and more carefree and easy-going. Which I am as a person, but when it comes to my art, it’s a different kind of story.”
That makes sense, as being a tightly wound musician is a few steps away from the protagonist of ‘Drink Too Much’, a summer anthem about being a bit of a shit girlfriend when you prioritise fun above other people’s feelings. I ask if it’s odd, to reveal your bad behaviour in such a meticulously crafted song.
“I think there was a second that was like ‘Oh wow. What are people going to think about these songs about me heavily drinking to get over a breakup?’,” she says. “But at the same time, every single song I write is very truthful… I literally just write the song on the day of how I’m feeling.”
“And I wrote ‘Drink Too Much’ the day after going out. Well, my girlfriend dumped me, and I was going out, trying to party and be single, because people think that’s what’s going to cure your heart after you have a breakup. And it just doesn’t fucking work. So I wrote a song about that.”
“I’m not uncomfortable doing that, because I feel like I’ve got no idea how else to write a song. I struggle writing songs [by] making up bullshit, or making up stories. I only know how to write songs about what’s happening in my world.”
“I struggle writing songs [by] making up bullshit, or making up stories. I only know how to write songs about what’s happening in my world.”
She promises we’ll hear more in due time, but her main plans for the future — besides playing Lollapalooza this August — involve having a little bit more of that fun she was talking about.
“You know how everyone has Christmas parties?,” she says. “Well, in a band, there’s not normally a Christmas party, but I feel like at some stage I want to take [bandmates] Toothpick and Ferntree to Bali or some getaway for a week, and we can all just celebrate what we’ve achieved so far.”
Curing Homesickness launches today. Learn more about getting involved and donating on their website. G Flip will play Sound On Festival in Perth this September, and Spilt Milk in Canberra and Ballarat this November.
Jared Richards is a staff writer at Junkee, and co-host of Sleepless In Sydney on FBi Radio. Follow him on Twitter.